SUNY Plattsburgh a feeder for interns for CCHA

Yahoo

30-01-2025

PLATTSBURGH — On Fridays, Desmond Meacham time travels centuries within the collections of the Clinton County Historical Association & Museum, 98 Ohio Ave., Plattsburgh.
Hailing from Port Jervis, he is a SUNY Plattsburgh Class of 2022 alum who volunteers at the museum.
He first crossed its threshold as an intern recommended by professors Dr. Vincent Carey and Dr. Gary Kroll at the college.
'I was really looking into seeing how museums worked because what I wanted to do was apply for museum studies after graduating,' Meacham said.
He met with executive board members Helen Nerska, Geri Favreau and Bill Laundry.
'I must have impressed them in some way because I got the internship for researching veterans of the American Revolution who lived here in Clinton County,' he said.
'I found quite a bit of information on those people fortunately. Way too many people because I wasn't able to put as much attention to everyone. But I found many very interesting stories that I really liked. At the end of the project, I was supposed to select several of the people covered in my research and do three presentations on.'
His second project centered on America250, 'a nonpartisan initiative working to engage every American in commemorating the 250th anniversary of our country. This multi-year effort, from now through July 4, 2026, is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation's past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.'
Website: America250.org
'A very large project, very lengthy project, that we worked on here with many, many people who were involved outside of this room,' Meacham said.
'That was to work toward the development of a planning manual, a tool kit and an area guide for America250. The planning manual was a primer on how to set up your own commemoration for America's 250 birthday because the federal government kind of had these guidelines to make it more grassroots-local based instead of throwing these big events. They wanted people all around America to do their own stuff.'
The tool kit contains resources, which volunteers and stakeholders working on the commemoration can use locally as well as an area guide.
'Which was potentially sort of a tour guide of the area mentioning the events that will held here in 2026,' he said.
'Some small bits of information like trivia, contacts for CCHA, illustration of Clinton County and surrounding Lake Champlain. I worked on the content of those three documents while the designer of the documents was Randi Christodoulou. She worked on the layout of the three documents.'
Afterward, Meachum worked on an array of smaller projects. Currently, he is working on collections manager Maurica Gilbert's Plattsburgh residence project on the homes that have historical or architectural significance in the area.
'Record what we know about them, get pictures,' he said.
'So collecting whatever information we have on those homes as well as any photographs or documents that we already know about that are in our PastPerfect system here, then making that information available to the public on our website.'
PRIVATE EYE
Aubrie Bourgeois sifts through the ephemera of lives lived in Clinton County, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Reared in Keeseville and a Chazy resident, the history major, graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh in May 2024.
Her entry into CCHA was via Dr. Richard Schaefer in her senior semester when she interned for four months transcribing Civil War letters of Franklin Prairie.
'I transcribed his letters, and I uploaded them onto the PastPerfect database. and from that, I used my research from that semester to conduct my senior thesis, Emotions, Letters and War: Through the Eyes of Civil War Soldiers Franklin Prairie and Joseph South,' she said.
'I compared both letters to see how they wrote home because it's very different. During those times you weren't censored. You could write about anything. It's very interesting. I felt I knew both men from reading at least a hundred letters each from both of them. I did my paper on that.'
The Cole Collection, named for native Adirondack archivist, historian, and folklorist George Glyndon Cole, a librarian for Special Collections at Feinberg Library, was her next project, which Bourgeois is still working on. The trouve also includes more than 160 maps.
'There's, I want to say, around 60 boxes full of documents that we got from the Plattsburgh Public Library,' she said.
'The first step that I did was to go through all of the documents to see what pertained to the county. If they didn't pertain to the county, I didn't really focus on them anymore.'
Bourgeois poured through mayoral letters from the 1930s and 1940s, photographs from Plattsburgh Bigelow Co., and uploaded her discoveries on spreadsheets.
'I attended a few of the collections meetings where the items I recommended yes or no to go into the museum, they went through,' she said.
'And once it was approved by collections, I had to wait for it to go to the board. and from the board, anything that was approved, which is the next step I am at. I am sleeving all the documents correctly of the ones that can be accessioned into the museum. I am giving them accension numbers and I am uploading them with correct descriptions onto the website for PastPerfect for the museum.'
Bourgeois enjoys discovering the county's rich history.
'Which is why I am here,' she said.
FLOATER WITH FINESSE
A Lake Champlain Basin Program museum studies grant is why Lily LaValley is at CCHA.
A Class of 2026 computer science major with a minor in philosophy, her main project is sorting through photographs to describe and scan them.
'We have amassed like 800 photos that have not been accessioned,' she said.
'They all needed to be collected into a spreadsheet, described accurately, find where they were, scanned into the correct format, arranged in order, numbered, uploaded into the system, accessioned. So, I did that.'
LaValley floats as a receptionist and clerk for the gift shop.
'I kind of fill in doing small projects and working on things that people need help with,' she said.
'I've done a lot of scanning and transcribing of Civil War letters. Another thing that we received from the library was Lt. Col. Frank Palmer's letters that I'm going through right now and scanning in preparation to transcribe them.'
A wedding exhibit, 'The Honor of Your Presence,' which documents Clinton County nuptials from 1816 to 1969, will open on Valentine's Day.
'I have an exhibit within the exhibit,' she said.
'Because wedding dresses you tend to preserve them, we have many. We have them on display. Because these people were local, we have a lot of information about who they were and who they were related to and stuff like that. You tend to keep your wedding paraphernalia like wedding invitations, lists of who gave you what, etc. You hold on to that stuff. So, it was a really interesting exhibit to put up because of the wealth of information that we had. It was also a real interesting look for me into what you keep and how it lives beyond you in a way.'