Date Posted: Monday, October 10th, 2011

 

Over the next few weeks in celebration of Archives month we will be hosting guest bloggers.  They will share their point of view and stories from the archives.  Today’s blog is from Sarah Denison, processing archivist.

As the resident newbie here at the Archives, I’m regularly impressed and intrigued by the arsenal of information our vaults hold. Every day I get to immerse myself in the personal histories of Delawareans as I preserve and catalog items in our huge collection of personal records, the Small Manuscripts Collection. I also pick up fun facts about the state along the way. Do you know why the 110th General Assembly in 1946 was followed by the
114th General Assembly in 1947? I do. (You want me on your trivia team.)

But here’s a secret. I’m not from here. I’m from… Pittsburgh. Sorry Ravens fans — I’m still a perfectly nice person. And before Pittsburgh, I grew up in a small city called Johnstown about an hour and a half east of the ‘Burgh. If you’ve ever heard of this little Rust Belt city, it’s probably because of one of two things: steel and floods. I’ll never understand why they chose to build an industry-driven town
on a flood plane, but they did, and in 1889 they had a pretty destructive flood that put Clara Barton and an organization called the Red Cross on the map.

And why would this be of interest to Delawareans? Well, as I was scanning the shelves in the vault, I came across a collection of letters and ledgers from the Johnstown Flood Relief Fund. It’s possible someone from
your family donated money to the relief effort. Maybe your church or the company you work for sent blankets, food, or clothes to help people survive and rebuild their lives in a small mountain town, hours and hours away from the Delmarva.

Donations from hard working Delawareans helped rebuild the town I grew up in and well, that’s just cool.

Johnstown Flood Relief Committee
Johnstown Flood Relief Committee

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