The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PA) has an article, Armstrong history now on Internet, about an alliance of historical/genealogy societies from Armstrong County working together to put the county’s history and genealogy information online. It’s not so much the records (although it sounds like they are working towards that), as it is information about which society holds what records and where you can physically access them. They believe together they will be able to be eligible for more grants and resources.
The alliance is called the Armstrong History Alliance, and is made up of these historical and/or genealogy societies:
Apollo Area
The Kittanning-based Armstrong County Historical Museum and Genealogical Society
Brady’s Bend
Dayton Area
Freeport Area
Leechburg Area
Lower Crooked Creek
Excerpt from the article:
In addition to listing events, the Web site details the different historical buildings each society operates and provides contact information for each, including independent Web sites for those that have them.
Mateer and Kane said they’d eventually like to catalog all of the information and artifacts each society owns and post the catalog on the site.
Mateer said the Armstrong County society also has a database that lists details of most of the tombstones in the county’s 300-plus cemeteries. Those details also could be made available on the Web for people searching their genealogy.
The alliance is applying for a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to make the catalog happen, Mateer said.
Kane said many of the individual societies would have a difficult time affording their own Web sites and large-scale promotions, but together they can do more. He also is hopeful the consortium will be more eligible for grants than each society would be on its own.
You can access the website at: www.armstronghistory.org. Hopefully they will succeed in their goals and provide an example for other socities in other areas to follow. Individual societies can sometimes have difficulty in securing the funding to do things like this, and these kinds of alliances might help overcome that obstacle.