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03/28/2023 01:42 PMThe Essex Historical Society (EHS) is getting a boost thanks to a grant from CT Humanities.
The CT Cultural Fund Operating Support Grant for $7,300 will be used to help EHS continue to serve the community. Director Melissa Josefiak said EHS plans to use the funding to help convert its analog database system into a digital database.
Josefiak said EHS would purchase a new cloud-based system called DonorPerfect. Josefiak said a digital system will be “much more nimble and effective than our analog system.”
Funds will also go toward the ongoing support of the membership and programs coordinator position. That position is currently assumed by Andy King, who is spearheading “the effort to convert all of the old data” on the analog format into a digital model on DonorPerfect.
“It’s really pushing EHS into the 21st century so we can best serve our audiences and really expand the people that we reach,” she elaborated. “It’s really about improving the customer service for our growing membership base.”
The grant will also support additional community and educational programs, helping EHS to “provide more history access to the greater Essex community,” according to Josefiak. This includes putting a focus on the village of Ivoryton as part of the Follow the Falls program, which, in partnership with the Essex Land Trust, looks “to tell the remarkable story of the Falls River which binds together the three historic villages of Ivoryton, Centerbrook, and Essex to form what we know today as the Town of Essex,” according to the EHS website.
“We’ll be having a major booklet, the final booklet in the series rollout in September, and this will be the largest one that we’ve produced,” said Josefiak.
Thanks to the grant, a partnership that was formed by EHS and Essex Elementary School (ESS) for virtual history lessons during the coronavirus pandemic will resume with in-person lessons and illustrative historical artifacts.
Much of this education will be interactive, centered around EHS representatives showcasing examples of the over 7000 artifacts in its collection that are relevant to the topics of study by third and fourth graders at EES. While the former grade’s social studies classes will be learning about the history of Lower River Valley, the latter grade’s class will touch upon Westward Expansion. Artifacts from the EHS on the western movement of Americans during the 19th century should present a fair picture of what life was like years ago, even in different geographical areas.
“Even though they’re studying…the Midwest and we’re able to bring in something like a milking stool or a sunbonnet, or railroad spikes. Even though they’re not necessarily studying about Essex or even Connecticut history, we’re going to talk about Western migration,” said Josefiak. “So there are ways to complement the social studies curriculum, even though it’s not necessarily focused on the local story right now.”
Josefiak said the EHS is looking to be especially creative for sixth grade students at John Winthrop Middle School, whose studies on World Geography include European immigration to the United States. Such a focus should be particularly timely, according to Josefiak. It was last year that a teacher tied the topic of immigration to the refugee crisis as a result of the war in Ukraine, the movement of people from one country to another.
Josefiak said this is one of the numerous parallels that can be drawn to show how “Essex history, in many, is American history.” It is important for students to be not just interested and preservative of history but also curious and imaginative too.
“We just need to put on our creative thinking hats and work with the teachers so that the students understand that they are the stewards of their town’s history and that history is much broader even than our town’s borders.”