History alive and well on Treasure Coast and going digital
The Eighth Annual History Festival is in the books, but the work continues.
The festival held Jan. 11 was our biggest yet. Our company founded the festival in 2017, and today it is produced by the St. Lucie Historical Society at the Regional History Center in Fort Pierce. Next year’s festival is planned for Saturday, Jan. 10.
One of the great things about the festival is that it brings historians from the region together. Thankfully, our local historical societies learned long ago that it was better to cooperate with each other than compete, as people interested in history don’t necessarily care about county lines. At this year’s festival we had representatives from the historical organizations in St. Lucie, Martin, Okeechobee and Indian River counties.
One of the things I was interested in discussing with the other societies was how they made the transformation to digitizing their archives. This process involves scanning photos and other historical documents and putting them on a server where they can be publicly accessed on the Internet.
The advantage of this is that the archival material doesn’t have to necessarily be physically stored — local history centers are typically cramped for space — and the material then is easily searchable on the Internet. Digitizing the photos and documents also makes it available to other family members and interested parties and prevents the risk of important pieces of history being thrown away.
The more data available the closer we can get to the truth of the past.
The Indian River County Library was a pioneer in digitizing archives by establishing the Archive Center and Genealogical Department at the main library in Vero Beach. The late Pam Cooper launched the center and her successor, Michelle Wagner, has developed it as the resource it is today. Michelle, by the way, is also chair of the Indian River County centennial committee that is producing events throughout the year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Indian River becoming its own county. [See Janie Gould’s story starting on page 14.]
Martin County just recently launched its Martin Digital History Archive at martindigitalhistory.org. The site was launched by archivist Georgen Charnes with support from local historian [and Indian River Magazine writer] Sandra Thurlow, the Martin County Library, Martin Historical Society, Black Heritage Initiative, Stuart Heritage and the Library Foundation. Today, the digital library has a collection of more than 8,000 photos and documents that can be retrieved at the site.
The St. Lucie Historical Society is in the process of establishing a digital archive, and we hope to get it launched within the coming months.
That means all three counties will have a digital archive where important historical photos and documents can be stored and easily accessed. So get your documents ready to be scanned and share your family’s local history.
Gregory Enns
Reach Gregory Enns or 772.940.9005.
See the original article in print publication
March. 6, 2025
