Gathering History, Making Bridges
History major John Bowden prepares to digitize an artifact brought to the History Harvest.
Organizers of the first Shenandoah Valley History
Harvest, held at James Madison University in April, are overwhelmed by the
public's willingness to share their historical religious artifacts for eventual
online research.
"The History Harvest was a huge success," said
Dr. Andrew Witmer, an assistant professor of history. "It generated an
estimated 8,600 individual digital scans and 17 outright donations to JMU
Special Collections. We collected clothing, congregational histories,
photographs, church records, letters and journals."
One beauty of the History Harvest was that people did not
have to "give up" their artifacts to participate. Instead, 35
students in Witmer's Introduction to U.S. Religious History class, working with
professionals from Special Collections and the Center for Instructional
Technology in Libraries and Educational Technologies, digitally scanned or
photographed religious items with connections to Rockingham, Augusta, Page and
Shenandoah counties. "People love their stuff, but they are willing to
share them for scanning and photographing," Witmer said.
Artifacts gathered represented the Jewish, Mennonite,
Amish, Presbyterian, Brethren, Episcopal and Seventh-day Adventist communities.
By far the largest treasure trove is a collection of 18 banker's boxes from the
Shenandoah Valley Academy in New Market, a Seventh-day Adventist
Church-affiliated boarding high school established in 1908, the same year JMU
was founded.
One student who worked to make the harvest a success, Kim
Twomley, was instrumental in the sharing of the SVA collection through her
assignment to the Page/Shenandoah Counties Outreach Committee of the project.
The natural fit, given that she works for the academy and lives in Shenandoah
County, led her to talk about her class and the harvest with coworkers in hopes
of learning more about her church's Valley history.
"Jan Osborne, our director of alumni affairs, was
born and raised here, has lived here all her life and knows everyone connected
with the school and church for the past 60 years," Twomley said. "She
handed me a book written by Richard Harris, a former pastor of the New Market
SDA church, which chronicled the founding of the school. Sure enough, the first
few chapters of the book were all about Mr. Charles Zirkle, the man who donated
the property for the school to be built on and whose family was the first
Seventh-day Adventists in the Shenandoah Valley."
Even better, Harris' research documents are property of
the alumni department at the academy. "Embedded in those archives is the
Zirkle family history," Twomley said, "and thus the founding
documentation of the SDA church in the Valley. Jackpot!"
Archivists in Special Collections are currently
organizing the collection, which is on loan to the library, and placing pieces
in non-acidic folders for safekeeping, said Mark Peterson, archive specialist
in Special Collections. "There's quite a bit of material and it will take
us a while to scan the artifacts," Peterson said. "The Adventist
collection will be important for the local community." He believes the
collection will be available for researchers to access by the end of 2012, with
much of the finding guide completed by the end of the summer.
Beyond the wealth of new materials the project generated
for the library, the harvest's "crop" was practical experience for
students. "As a history major, I appreciated the experience because it is
exactly what JMU has trained us to do – value history and its story," said
May graduate Kayla Patterson. "But more than that, we took something
valuable to others and made it known to the public."
"I was pleased with how invested the students were
in the project," Witmer said. "They represented JMU well."
"Our aim in holding this event was certainly to have
valuable religious documents brought in for digitizing, but we also wanted to
establish some ties to the community around JMU," said Russell Leary, who
earned his undergraduate degree in political science in May and is now a JMU
graduate student working toward a masters of art in teaching degree. "I
believe the true value of the History Harvest came through many of the
connections we were able to make through the process of reaching out to the
academic and religious community around us."
