Newsletter – July 2012
Dear members, our next meeting will be held on July 12th, 7pm at the Archive, 301 Williams Ave. Picayune. Charles Gray, Executive Director of the Hancock County Historical Society will be the speaker. Our business meeting will follow Charles’ presentation.
Our membership is now at 152, but we need to reach 200 by the end of 2012 to have enough to pay our bills.
Ann Anderson gathered a group to clean the research journals and they are now on the shelves.
Due to our expanding need for shelves, Helen Clunie agreed to hire a contractor to build shelves in where the office is now. The office will be moved to the smaller middle room. The museum will remain in the front room, so when you walk in, the library will be visible through the window that was cut out of the wall separating the two. Ann donated $300 to help pay for the expenses for the library.
We have been having a steady stream of visitors, maybe 10-12 a week and it seems to be picking up a little with more interest in family history.
Our organizational meeting is tentatively set for November where the membership will legitimize us by voting to approve the by-laws and electing a new board. I’m hoping we can increase the board from 8 to 11. A set of by-laws will be sent to you along with the nominees and their bio so those who can’t attend the meeting can comment and vote by mail, e-mail or by proxy.
Anne has agreed to set up a Genealogy Round Table in September. Will let you know more when the time gets closer. After taking a month to scan the Civil War Pension applications we developed a method to photograph unique items (Hilda’s 134 boxes of family histories plus new items we get in). We have a stand with a 14.2 Megapixel digital camera that can be adjusted to fit the item scanned. This will go a lot faster and should have the same quality as the scanner. We’re digitizing those files to preserve them and will still have the original files for visitors to go through. The fragile items will be kept safe and copied for visitor use.
Clara Howard has been going through the history files (not associated with family histories) to organize and file them in the five file cabinets. Unidentified pictures, calendars, newspapers, short histories, and incoming family histories. Family histories that are bound will be put on the shelves in the new library.
We still haven’t gotten Indian or Civil War artifacts for the museum, so if any of you know how we might acquire them please let me know. They are a vital part of our heritage and will add greatly to what we have. We’re also looking for other small artifacts from Pearl River County. Our initial intent was to represent a timeline of our history but people seem reluctant to give up those treasurers. We always need copies of pictures of people, events and buildings to post on our picture boards and walls.
Picayune Main Street donated a black and white network printer that will print for less than a penny a page. Helen acquired a donation of a similar color printer, but it needs some work before we can use it.
We’ve paid half of the insurance bill and contracted for monthly payments for the remainder leaving a balance of around $900. Our bills range around $300 a month.
All of us have been working hard but still could use 100 more volunteers. We’ve come a long way but still have miles to go. Keep us in your prayers and I hope you’ve had a happy 4th. Hilda passed away on July 4th, 2010 and we need to keep her in our prayers also.
Don Wicks, Chairman