History matters

You may think from the website inactivity here lately that the government shutdown has resulted in us being furloughed, but nothing could be further than the truth.

steamboat landing sign installation by (l-r) Roger Prichard, Bill Brown, and John Laverty, Dec. 2017

The next Gaslight News will go out the first part of February.

One article will tell about Roger Prichard‘s continuing work on researching and producing  and producing historical markers.

The next two markers will be about homes at 309 and 311 Bank Avenue.

We have long made issues of the Gaslight News available online since developing our website in early 2011. However, the older mimeographed newsletters produced before our use of personal computers, and some others written through the early 2000s, were only available as hard copies and had to be scanned.

Short story – I scanned them all, saved them as PDFs, and started backdating them and posting them on our Gaslight News page.

You can now see back issues to #100 March 2001 (maybe more by the time you read this.)

Only 91 issues to go back to #009 December 1977! (We do not have the first 8 issues plus a couple of others, but still, this recovers and makes available a huge trove of local history. Look for more details on this project in the upcoming February 2019 Gaslight News.

The first General Meeting of 2019 will be on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 at 7 pm in Riverton Library. The presentation will be on our effort to organize, catalog, and store the collections of the Society. More details will follow later.

All through November and December folks near and far bought our historically themed mugs for gifts, but we couldn’t say much with giving away secrets.

The holidays are over, but you can still buy mugs. Just see this post that explains more.

We shared Bob Foster’s Facebook post on Klipple’s Bakery to HSR’s FB

On December 23, I shared Bob Foster‘s Facebook post from the River Towns’ People group to the HSR Facebook page and it received lots of views, some comments and shares.

Recently, Bob kindly sent me a better file for our records.

Klipple’s Bakery, Broad and Main, by Bob Foster, no date

A post to our website the next day, seen here, explained how the contributions of many members and website visitors have helped to… “add another stitch to the fabric of Riverton history.”

Who knows how much more history is tucked away in drawers, attics, basements, and family photo albums? Maybe someone will even find one of those missing newsletters.

Our goal is to make this a meeting place for crowdsourcing local history.

Nothing better illustrates this than Yesterday’s news rediscovered posted here in early December, which advised readers of the availability of viewing PDFs for sixteen issues of various hometown newspapers dated mid-1930s thru mid-1960s given to us by Ed Gilmore.

Over time, since our founding in 1970, despite adding to that patchwork of history, it still has a lot of holes in it. Please do not assume that the HSR has a monopoly on Riverton history.

Here comes the commercial…

If this history matters, please support the Society’s efforts by starting or renewing your membership.   -JMc

Published by

John McCormick

Teacher at Riverton School 1974-2019, author, amateur historian, Historical Society of Riverton Board Member 2007-2023, newsletter editor 2007-2023, website editor 2011-2023

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