Laurel History Museum

Okay, so taking a short break from the witchcraft series (don't worry we'll resume on Monday) to give you all a little information on what I've been up to at the museum. So many of you know that I volunteer at the Laurel History Museum in Laurel, Maryland. I work with the collections there doing anything from updating databases, organizing photographs, handling artifacts and currently sorting through newspapers.

So the project that I'm working on now is quite awesome. What we're doing is going through these stacks of old Laurel Leaders (local newspaper) from 1897 - 1910. We're carefully looking through them to see if there are any interesting news bits, obituaries or ads that would be cool to display in the museum. Needless to say we've found quite alot, including the photo above which is of an old Winchester Rifle ad out of a paper from 1908.

In addition have found multiple headlines that caught our eye like "Man arrested for assassination attempt on Roosevelt" in 1910. For me the obituaries were in fact the most fascinating. My favorite: "Man found in field with four bullet holes in his side and a gun laying next to him. According to police he had been there for quite sometimes until two young boys found him. Upon investigation it was ruled that he committed suicide." - Laurel Leader 1905.
Now I know that CSI and all that jazz wasn't around back then, but come on! I mean does that sounds like a suicide to any of you?

These are the kinds of things that I get to handle when I'm at the museum and I can't tell you all how much I love it! From a young age I always wanted to be behind the scenes to be able to handle the history and to create exhibits for others to see. At Penn State I got that opportunity at the Matson Museum of Anthropology and now I get to here at the Laurel Museum. One day I hope to be working for the Museum of the American Indian (Part of the Smithsonian) which any of you who know anything about me should know it's my dream job.

I'm happy that I can share this information with all my followers who I know share a lot of the same passions that I do. Thanks for the support you guys!