Unboxing Over 100 Years of Historic Files

unboxing

Phase 1: History Grant Book Project Complete

Phase 1 began with the unboxing of over 100 years of historic documents, newspaper articles, and photos.

Background: The Womans Club was awarded a History Grant for Special Project by The Monmouth County Historical Commission. The project we submitted for the grant was to edit and expand our history of the Woman’s Club book. The book will include the history of the Womans Club organization, the history of our clubhouse – the Reckless estate, and some early history of Red Bank.

The funding for the grant is being provided by the New Jersey Historical Commission’s County History Partnership Program. We will be picking up the award/check at the end of February at the Historical Commission meeting in Freehold.

The grant did NOT include monies for archival storage supplies. But categorizing and archiving had to be the first step in gathering information for the book project.

History Grant Book Project Update. 

The 1st phase was to unbox all our historic files. After 4-days and help from Joyce DiamondCarol Ingaro, and Jill Merriman we completed the initial categorizing into decades spanning pre-1890 through 2022. The photo above was taken during the sorting process. We sorted the paperwork by laying down two queen-size sheets with lines and dates added to denote the decade. It was interesting … our most recent decades have few documents, most of our files are digital now.

Next, we meet with our own member and experienced museum archiver … Gilda Farias Healy to figure out the best way to store this information. Then we’ll sift through the docs to extract information and photos for our book. We’ll also meet up again with our own professional organizer Audrey Tesora to help make this office multi-functional.

Mary Ellen Landolfi will help write the book. Carol Ingaro will format the digital book doc. Anna Cohen-D’Adamo and Jill Merriman are interested in sifting and organizing historic content. 
Anyone else interested in participating in this project contact Kate Rafferty (kate@kateraffertyseo.com)