HISTORICAL RESOURCES PROGRAM

Over the years, many Society members plus people off the street and over the phone have contacted the Harsha House Museum regarding the best method  to research any number of topics—family genealogy, property records, Earl Young’s houses, our grand hotels, the coming of the railroad, the name of great-grandfather’s schooner, Charlevoix County’s roads in 1900,  what Bridge Street looked like before it was paved, Venetian Queens, our lighthouses, Ernest Hemingway’s relationship to Charlevoix, the building of Loeb Farms.  The list seems endless.  It’s all at the Harsha House—untold thousands of photos and documents, artifacts, CDs, audio and video cassettes— relating to the enormously rich history of Charlevoix and the surrounding area.  

Our program for March will focus on how this invaluable collection can be utilized, hosted by Harsha House Museum Co-Director Steve Goslee with the assistance of your editor and Past Director Betsy Reynolds.  

When: Tuesday, March 4 at 7:00 P. M. 

Where: The Depot. 

Steve has assembled many examples of the research tools available, including Charlevoix tax records from 1900 to 1980, abstract of title ledgers dating back to the late 1800s, Sanborn fire insurance maps of property locations, the classic original 1901 plat map of Charlevoix County, binders of family history, and census records for genealogy.

We will also be showing a brief PowerPoint program on the photo archives and the categories into which almost 10,000 photos have recently been placed on a computer data base, and an explanation of how over 7600 of these can be instantly searched.  (We now have the capability of searching for and printing a photo in about five minutes.)

Steve will also focus on what is in our document files, our boxed collections, the value of both the Harsha House and Depot buildings and how we utilize them, our artifact collection, what is in the museum library, how we build exhibits and produce publications, in general what our resources have done for us and what they can do for you.

Please join us. 

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MUSEUM SPRING HOURS 

The Harsha House Museum will be open three days a week in March and April from 1 to 4 P. M. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The side office door facing the First State Bank will be open Tuesday-Saturday from 11 A. M. to 4 P. M. for anyone who needs to conduct Society business or make a store purchase during off-hours.

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Donation (unrestricted) from: Patti & Paul Nowak, Jr., Anonymous

Lighthouse restoration donation received from: Don & Kay Heise

The Society deeply regrets the passing of longtime member Edna Wells, and Patron Mary Pew (Mrs. Robert).  Mr. and Mrs. Pew donated the Depot to the Society in 1992, and have been generous benefactors in many, many ways for many years.

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