As the days are getting colder, our research is getting warmer. At the moment our Digital History course at Messiah College is waist deep in our third project for the semester. Over the past few class periods we have been learning a lot about the inner workings of ArcGIS, a digital mapping technology. We take … Continue reading Mapping the African American Reformers of Harrisburg
Industry is a facet of modern city life that keeps the economy afloat. Yet, cities are often characterized by their unique emphasis on certain industries. Today, we often associate Pittsburgh with the steel industry or Baltimore with seafood. What can be said about Harrisburg, especially in 1900, a time of industrialization? Dr. Pettegrew and the students in … Continue reading Industry and the Population of Harrisburg
The League for Municipal Improvement is often identified as the organization that campaigned for and facilitated the improvements of Harrisburg's City Beautiful Movement. Yet, there was another group of prominent men, women, and businesses, who were not all members of the League, who pledged donations to fund prominent national experts to draw up plans for … Continue reading Donors for Improvement
The past two weeks we’ve been getting lost in Harrisburg, 1900, as we continue to work on our second project, “City Social.” We learned how to effectively make use of Microsoft Access, as we explored the City Social Database, which is a record of the citizens of Harrisburg in 1900. This massive database includes a … Continue reading Harrisburg’s 1900 Population… In the Books
As this semester progresses, I realize more and more how similar Digital History is to Historical Archaeology. Where one researcher is brushing dust off artifacts, another is pouring through archives and databases for their very own dusty material. The more time you spend digging around, the more information you can gather and the more you … Continue reading Digital Archaeology
Cities all across America in the early twentieth century pushed for the implementation of parks and other open spaces. This movement is known as "The City Beautiful Movement" and it was a push to beautify and improve American cities. Among these cities was the capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. Vance McCormick, the mayor at the start … Continue reading The City Beautiful Reformers
For our first project, we were each asked to choose The Patriot newspaper articles, from among those we'd previously collected, and analyze what they tell us about Harrisburg's "campaign for beauty.” As a class, our hope is that this brief study will provide us with a better understanding of the progress of this movement and how … Continue reading Ask Not What Your [City] Can Do For You…
No movement can be successful without a group of people willing to lead the charge, to organize events and inspire people to action. Thus, the ways in which reformers interact with the public and with each other can say a lot about the change the reformers created. This holds true for the Campaign for Improvements … Continue reading The City Votes: Spatial Influences of the Reformers
A week ago, at the Dauphin County Historical Society, I found my project of interest to be but a small fish in a big sea. Our Digital History class took a trip to these archives to conduct research for our third project where we will be creating biographies for important figures in the improvement campaign. … Continue reading For Richer and Poorer
The rapid pace of a new semester at Messiah College and the good things happening with the Digital Harrisburg Initiative have left not a single moment to write an update about our collective work in the Digital Harrisburg Initiative. At mid-semester, I've finally got a moment to give readers a sense of the growing energy of the new initiative. 1. Digital History Course Student … Continue reading Digital Harrisburg Project: A Fall Update
Digital Harrisburg 