These past three weeks, our class has been entering into the heart of our digital history projects. For the “City Social Project”, as noted by previous posts, our class is digitizing US census data of various wards in Harrisburg. We are digitizing these records, which can be found on Ancestry.com, to showcase the people of Harrisburg … Continue reading Paving a Path for Recognition
As David Pettegrew noted in his original post at Digital Harrisburg, I am teaching a course in Pennsylvania history this semester at Messiah College. This course is part of our newly revamped public history concentration, so students are not only learning about the history of the Commonwealth, but they are also getting training in local … Continue reading Digital Harrisburg: The “Pennsylvania History” Perspective
Messiah College's Digital History class is currently finishing the digitization of the 1900 Census Records from the city of Harrisburg. I have digitized segments of Wards 3, 4, and 9. In looking at the map below, you can identify the wards by the large numbers throughout. While working on digitizing these wards, many interesting discoveries were made. … Continue reading Harrisburg and the 1900 Census
As you must have gathered from exploring this site, students at Messiah College are working on projects that involve bringing historical information about Harrisburg, PA and the City Beautiful Movement into the Digital Age. But with all the information about census data, archiving and digitization, it’s easy for details about what is occurring within the … Continue reading So What Exactly are We Doing?
Warren Manning is not a very familiar name to everyone, let alone those that are reading our engagements in Digital History or those who aren't knowledgeable of the "City Beautiful Movement" in Harrisburg. Although that may be true, to those that are writing the history of this city, he matters quite a bit. Warren Manning, a student … Continue reading Warren Manning
This past weekend a group of Digital History students drove down to Daulphin County Historical Society to take a peak inside the archives. We took time out of our Sunday to begin research for our digital exhibits on the City Beautiful Movement in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Upon arriving, we noticed the connection Harrisburg still has to … Continue reading Visiting the Archives
Our most recent obstacle, as we continue with our research of Harrisburg’s City Beautiful Project is designing a website to display our work. Since many of us are novices when it comes to creating any website, let alone an omeka.net site, we need to start with the basics. Even understanding basic terminology was a challenge; … Continue reading Bringing the Past into the Present
The world around us is changing. Laptops, smartphones, and other technologies are increasingly becoming an integral part of our daily lives. As historian Charlotte Lydia Riley pointed out in the book History in the Digital Age, members of the millennial generation have lived most, if not all, of their lives surrounded by technology that is … Continue reading The Beginning of Digital History at Messiah College
In our digital history class we are learning about the City Beautiful Movement in Harrisburg. The City Beautiful movement was prominent in cities across the country, but Harrisburg’s was one of the first to be successful. However, for a movement to be successful, it needs people with a vision to get the ball rolling. For our exhibit, our group … Continue reading The Visionaries
1899 Harrisburg. The city was falling apart. There were talks of the Capital of Pennsylvania being moved. From all of this emerged a female leader determined to transform the city into the beautiful place she knew it could be. Mira Lloyd Dock was this proactive woman who saw the potential in Harrisburg. The City Beautiful movement … Continue reading City Beautiful and the 1900 Census
Digital Harrisburg 