Chester County Historical Society

Laura Olds Schmidt

Chester County Historical Society (CCHS)

225 North High Street, West Chester, PA 19380
Education Intern

I began my internship during Spring Break and will continue working both at the Chester County Historical Society and at home for CCHS throughout the summer and next school year. (I arranged an extended internship to avoid childcare during the summer when my children are out of school.)

I am interning in education, under Beth Twiss Houting, a UD Winterthur Program in American Material Culture alumna. I began my internship with lots of tours, beginning with the offices, permanent galleries, and temporary exhibits. (CCHS uses the term exhibit versus exhibition. I notice that this varies by institution.) The Society also has a library and photo archives at their site in West Chester and administers the County Archives with the County of Chester at a large government complex in West Chester. I had personal tours of each. I also followed a school program through the city of West Chester on a two-hour architecture and history walk. I reviewed all the education and public program offerings via brochures. Once I understood the Society, I began project work.

Because my schedule is sporadic, my projects are as well. Each time I’m on site, I learn about a new development that has occurred during my absence, and as a result, a new task for me to help out with. These projects range from setting up for events to transcribing oral histories taken during the recent Chester County Quilt Documentation Project. The Quilt Documentation Project resulted in CCHS’s book and exhibit, Layers. (http://www.cchs-pa.org/calendar.php) The exhibit consists of three separate installations of local quilts; the next installation opens August 1^st. If you’re a quilt fan, visit now and again after Aug 1^st to see an amazing variety of local quilts. For this exhibit, I researched and compiled an e-mail and mail list of quilt guilds, magazines, newsletters, and fabric stores for promoting the exhibit and associated lecture series. I modified existing flyers and composed cover letters that were then sent to this list of recipients.

In the late Spring, CCHS received funding for capital improvement, and a much-needed HVAC system was commissioned. This meant that their stored collection had to be packed and moved. I helped to pack objects. It was surprisingly fun. I wish that the public could see collections this way; it would make instant financial supporters out of them. I packed and inventoried fascinating objects like telegraph machines in all shapes and sizes, medical equipment that appeared more like torture devices, and even a hangman’s noose possibly used in the last hanging in Chester County (saw how powerful just the object itself can be in triggering emotion). I have never been interested in objects (people and education have always been my focus), but I had a great time working with the collection, and as a result better understand the attraction of things.

I have a long-term project as well. When I began early this spring, Beth, the Director of Education, discussed a wide variety of project ideas that are waiting to be executed. I was able to select the one that interested me the most. I selected researching the senior community in Chester and Delaware Counties. Once I understand the make-up of this audience and their needs, I will set goals for developing new programs or revamping existing ones and will research funding and write grant proposals to fund this expanded area of outreach for CCHS. Eventually, detailed program design and hopefully implementation will complete my project. This week, I created a survey for activity directors at retirement institutions and am working on creating a comprehensive contact list. I will administer my survey in a shortened form using Survey Monkey and will use a longer version to gather information by phone and mail.

That’s it for now. If you’re local, visit CCHS! http://www.cchs-pa.org/index.php