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Annual Report
2007
JCHS Mission: To
actively discover, collect, preserve, and promote the heritage |
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Historic Properties Survey In 2007 the Historic Properties Survey became a functioning tool that is now in use by people wanting information of the historic buildings within the County. Past surveys of historic properties have all been combined into a single source of information. It is now easy to look up information on buildings starting with a current or historic address or with a name associated with a business or house. Thanks to work done by past teams of volunteers, the database is quite a good source for information on commercial properties within Port Townsend's National Historic District. It was extensively used as a source by the Main Street project that posted historic information in downtown buildings. During 2007 the commercial property information was enhanced by the addition of complete property location information, by addition of historic street address information, and by placing photos from the excellent Historical Society photo collection into the database. Much more work is needed on residential properties, and the work now underway is concentrating on homes within the Port Townsend Historic District. Current photos of all residences in the district, detailed property location information, and all information from past surveys are up and running at this time. Discovering the history of hundreds of homes that have not been previously researched is a huge job made possible by the rich data at the Research Center. Progress is now about 80 percent complete on documenting the changes in street addresses that were recorded in old Sanborn Maps. The Sanborn Maps also bracket the dates of construction for all houses. Knowing the historic address of a house, we will be able look in our collection of old City Directories to find who lived there and to then search in other files at the research Center for information about their lives. As with the commercial buildings, in 2007 we began a comprehensive search of our photo collection to find any available image of each house. These photos will be placed into the database in 2008. The information already gathered is being used on a daily basis by people asking for help at the Research Center. There is more than enough work for the team in the coming year. Work is needed to describe the architecture of homes, a great deal of research will be done on individual homes, and we hope to start sending our work out to homeowners for comment by the end of the year. Committee Members: Bruce Freeland, chair, Vicki Davis, Elisabeth Mention, Bryan Shrader.
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Jefferson County
Historical Society |
