It’s the final week of fall semester at Messiah University and as I type this, students are working hard to finish their projects and practicums in digital public humanities as well as a variety of exams, presentations, and projects for other classes. Earlier in the semester I noted here that students were then working on Harrisburg history projects of a wide variety. It’s been a wonderfully rich semester working alongside these students in partnership with Harrisburg-area historical societies, libraries, agencies, and community partners. This week students will be posting updates on their projects and some concluding reflections on their activities this semester.
I worked with Professor Peter Powers, director of the Center for Public Humanities, and six public humanities students, on some truly remarkable projects.
One of those centered on developing tours of important places connected with the long quest for civil rights in the region from the 18th to 20th century. This initiative, which grew out of the Commonwealth Monument Project and a Council of Independent Colleges grant program, will result in a new mobile app called Harrisburg Historical, which we plan to launch in February 2025. J.T. Crocenzi, Jake Kocher, and Kylie Smith have continued the initiative of an earlier cohort of Messiah students in developing two tours for Harrisburg Historical. We’ll be working on two additional tours in the winter and spring. Stay tuned for an update on Harrisburg Historical and the Chester Way later today.
Public Humanities students and Professor Peter Powers (director of Messiah’s Center for Public Humanities) test-run a new walking tour of the state capitol complex in November 2024. They stand in front of the USCT historical marker on Seventh Street. Photo by David Pettegrew.
Phoebe Lemin and Isa Kern continued digitizing headstones and footstones from Lincoln Cemetery, Harrisburg’s oldest extant African American cemetery. This is a project we’ve worked on since 2022 in collaboration with Saving our Ancestors’ Legacy, and The Center for Applied Environmental & Geospatial Technology at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. Phoebe and Isa made outstanding progress this semester building on earlier work on this project. I would guess we’ve geocoded about 90-95% of visible stones at the cemetery. I’m still hopeful we’ll have a fully interactive map in place by the end of the academic year. You’ll hear about that later this week.
Professor Albert Sarvis of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology flies a drone to capture new high-resolution images of Lincoln cemetery in December 2025. Photo by David Pettegrew.
Three other students (Sarah Meeks, Phoebe Lemin, and Matthew Merlo) worked on consolidating earlier digital resources related to the Old Eighth Ward and Thomas Morris Chester—resources that came out of the Commonwealth Monument Project and Messiah’s participation in two Council of Independent Colleges grants programs (in partnership with IIPT and the Dauphin County Library System). Matthew worked to create a database of past inhabitants of the Old Eighth Ward based on the groundbreaking work of Penn State University Harrisburg. Phoebe and Sarah creates posters that will display at the Pennsylvania State Library and McCormick Riverfront Library in February. More soon on that as well.
Students in my Digital History course visited area archives and developed Story Maps and Harrisburg Historical stories on various topics related to Harrisburg history. You’ll hear from them as well.
Students in Digital History receive an orientation from Mr. Ken Frew (acting archivist of the Historical Society of Dauphin County archives) in October 2024. Students explored collections ranging from Mira Lloyd Dock to Harrisburg floods to health and zoological parks and beyond. Photo by David Pettegrew.
Professor Pettegrew and students of Digital History digitize collections at the Pennsylvania State Archives in October 2024. Photo courtesy of Tyler Stump.
Finally, one of the highlights of the semester was attending a Harrisburg Rotary Club event saluting the Commonwealth Monument Project and honoring the descendants of those who once lived in the Eighth Ward. I got to attend along with two students. A wonderful occasion.
Mr. Lenwood Sloan, Executive Director of the Commonwealth Monument Project, presented a lecture on the work of the Commonwealth Monument Project.
Thanks for reading and supporting our work. Thanks to all of you experts, organizations, institutions, funders, and change agents whose work on Harrisburg has made our own projects possible. Together we can continue to build resources that showcase our region’s rich histories and celebrate stories of faith, leadership, justice, and reconciliation.
Digital Harrisburg 