History Taskforce Digitizes Spring Museum Archives
The History Taskforce, a local history research group in Montgomery County, had many Next Door viewers following the progress of their restoration of Thomas Chapel some months ago. We have been busy preserving historic records since then.
The History Taskforce has partnered with the Spring Historical Museum in Old Town Spring to use high tech software to digitize the documents and photos in the museum’s archives to make them available to people online. The museum’s information, location, and hours can be found by googling Spring Historical Museum.
The three-month project was completed on May 6. The 7,000 images in their collection are now available on the museum’s website at https://springhistoricalmuseum.org/. You will find it interesting to look at the old photos of the town and people who lived there. A direct link to the collection of documents now online is:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10nyoiWQm__oBbdn0FRDFBEvlLYl0MCUH
The Spring community was founded by groups of farmers from Germany in the 1840’s. The museum’s records contained many photos of early settlers and detailed family histories of settlers who first came to the area after the new Republic of Texas advertised for German farmers to immigrate to the area to buy fertile farmland.
As more early German settlers arrived in Texas and wanted to settle along Spring Creek, they found that much of the land had already been taken. They had to buy land west of Spring and eventually built the settlements of Klein and Tomball. Some of the earliest documents that survived from the original settlement of the area in the museum’s archives include wedding and baptismal certificates from the late 1800s written in German.
Taskforce cameras use Optical Character Recognition (OPR), creating a searchable PDF file. OCR technology has become more accessible and usable in the last 3 years. When a searchable PDF file is scanned, the computer reads each word in the document and indexes it automatically making it searchable in just minutes. This makes it possible to search using a key word or name that is within a document, according to Cindy Cheney, the Taskforce’s digitization expert.
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Without the technology of searchable PDFs, using these documents for research would be more difficult. Saving documents and photos from deterioration is important to the Taskforce. As generations pass away, we lose the personal narrative of life in these older people’s times and these digitized items are all that survive to tell their story.
The Taskforce is now indexing this archive for placement on the Family Search website. Here it will eventually be programed to link to people doing family tree research on their site for individuals who do not know they have connections in Spring and therefore are not searching the museum’s own website.
The History Taskforce works closely with the genealogy website Family Search to discover and digitize collections of historical importance so that anyone with a computer anywhere in the world will have free access to this information.
The link below is to the story about this project that appeared in the Conroe Courier:
https://www.yourconroenews.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/spring-history-database-documents-museum-20325426.php?utm_content=cta&sid=6165d2ce76b36e3c69f3cae2&ss=A&st_rid=6acc5116-556c-4516-937e-ee1bd9b1e0f2&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=
The History Taskforce has partnered with the Spring Historical Museum in Old Town Spring to use high tech software to digitize the documents and photos in the museum’s archives to make them available to people online. The museum’s information, location, and hours can be found by googling Spring Historical Museum.
The three-month project was completed on May 6. The 7,000 images in their collection are now available on the museum’s website at https://springhistoricalmuseum.org/. You will find it interesting to look at the old photos of the town and people who lived there. A direct link to the collection of documents now online is:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10nyoiWQm__oBbdn0FRDFBEvlLYl0MCUH
The Spring community was founded by groups of farmers from Germany in the 1840’s. The museum’s records contained many photos of early settlers and detailed family histories of settlers who first came to the area after the new Republic of Texas advertised for German farmers to immigrate to the area to buy fertile farmland.
As more early German settlers arrived in Texas and wanted to settle along Spring Creek, they found that much of the land had already been taken. They had to buy land west of Spring and eventually built the settlements of Klein and Tomball. Some of the earliest documents that survived from the original settlement of the area in the museum’s archives include wedding and baptismal certificates from the late 1800s written in German.
Taskforce cameras use Optical Character Recognition (OPR), creating a searchable PDF file. OCR technology has become more accessible and usable in the last 3 years. When a searchable PDF file is scanned, the computer reads each word in the document and indexes it automatically making it searchable in just minutes. This makes it possible to search using a key word or name that is within a document, according to Cindy Cheney, the Taskforce’s digitization expert.
.
Without the technology of searchable PDFs, using these documents for research would be more difficult. Saving documents and photos from deterioration is important to the Taskforce. As generations pass away, we lose the personal narrative of life in these older people’s times and these digitized items are all that survive to tell their story.
The Taskforce is now indexing this archive for placement on the Family Search website. Here it will eventually be programed to link to people doing family tree research on their site for individuals who do not know they have connections in Spring and therefore are not searching the museum’s own website.
The History Taskforce works closely with the genealogy website Family Search to discover and digitize collections of historical importance so that anyone with a computer anywhere in the world will have free access to this information.
The link below is to the story about this project that appeared in the Conroe Courier:
https://www.yourconroenews.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/spring-history-database-documents-museum-20325426.php?utm_content=cta&sid=6165d2ce76b36e3c69f3cae2&ss=A&st_rid=6acc5116-556c-4516-937e-ee1bd9b1e0f2&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=
Big Boy and Ned Eastman Barnes
THOMAS CHAPEL - WILLIS, TX - Restoration Completed March 2024
Restoration work on Thomas Chapel has been completed. The History Taskforce is grateful for all donations and funding by the Montgomery County Historical Commission. This project has wrapped up and services are once again being held in this historic Texas state landmark. |
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