With the work of our City Social projects finally finished, our focus now centers on our City Beautiful projects. This past week we spent a significant amount of time at the Dauphin County Historical Society (DCHS) and the Pennsylvania State Archives doing research on our respective topics. We have learned many things that are really interesting. Did … Continue reading Making Discoveries
Lessons from the Archives
One of my favorite parts of Messiah College’s Digital Harrisburg efforts has been the opportunity to explore local archives and delve headfirst into primary source research. As my fellow classmate Rachel pointed out in another Messiah College student-run blog, it truly is an unparalleled experience to have the original copy of a primary source sitting … Continue reading Lessons from the Archives
From Mayor to Chair
This past week, I have spent several hours at the Dauphin County Historical Society researching Vance McCormick. At the start of this research project, I did not know much about McCormick. From our class reading of City Contented, City Discontented, I knew McCormick was the Mayor of Harrisburg from 1902-1905, and one of the influential members of the … Continue reading From Mayor to Chair
What Can We Extrapolate?
For those that have been keeping up with our posts, you probably have noticed that we have finished entering census data. It has been an extremely tiring and exhaustive process for each of us in the class to digitize at least twenty sheets of census records. As we came to an end, there was a … Continue reading What Can We Extrapolate?
Excelling in Census Data
These past few weeks we have been hard at work taking census data from 1900 Harrisburg and putting it into Microsoft excel. This work was done with help from Ancestry, Dr. Pettegrew, patience, attention to detail, and numerous cups of coffee. Below, you will see one of the many sheets from the 1900 census. I … Continue reading Excelling in Census Data
Warren Manning
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
Visiting the Archives
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
The Beginning of Digital History at Messiah College
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
New Initiatives in Digital Harrisburg
There is a new buzz about our campus about the digital humanities, digital history, and the prospects of creating a digital project, or series of projects, related to the people, culture, and history of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital. The Department of History at Messiah College has created this site to publicize our new initiatives in … Continue reading New Initiatives in Digital Harrisburg
Digital Harrisburg 