Pennsylvania Room

Wilmer O. 'Red' Harter poses with his wife Helen Elizabeth Schnure and their son Harry at their home on Chestnut Street in Mifflinburg in the late 1940s.

    The Herr Memorial Library’s second-floor Pennsylvania Room collection features awide range of items of cultural and historical significance, including books, pamphlets, original documents, photographs, postcards, local news clippings, and local family histories.  Also noteworthy are a number of bound volumes of local, regional, state and Civil War history.

    Many of the items in the Pennsylvania Room are one-of-a-kind and are in fragile condition.  Therefore, prudence dictates that certain restrictions be placed on their access, use, and care.  Most items do not circulate but, with the help of a librarian, patrons may use the Pennsylvania Room collection to do research on personal histories as well as to find background information for historical books.

    The collection includes materials about landmarks, schools, churches, and buggy manufacturing, as well as histories of local family names such as Gutelius, Aurand, Boop, Reish, and Pawling. 

     Some of the titles on our shelves are: Richard H. Steinmetz’s Bells and Whistles in Olde Perry; Francis Trevelyan Miller’s ten-volume Photographic History of the Civil War; The 151st Pennsylvania Volunteers at Gettysburg: Like Ripe Apples in a Storm by Michael A. Dreese; autographed first editions of Herbert Stover’s work including Song of the Susquehanna; Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania by Frances Lichten; and the Pennsylvania volumes of the Encyclopedia of Biography.

Photograph of the Mary Koons oral history interview DVD.

    In 2004, the Herr Memorial Library began an ambitious project to preserve on DVDs and in corresponding booklets interviews with some of the oldest members of the community to preserve an important part of the history of the Mifflinburg area.  In August that year, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission awarded a $4,650 Local History grant to the library for a special oral history project, “Memories of Mifflinburg: Changes After World War II.”

    Seven oral histories have been completed with funds from that grant and from contributions by members of the community.  They feature interviews with the following Mifflinburg residents:  Marie Purnell Musser, Mary Eleanor Koons, Hannah Pauline Rotering, William R. Ruhl, William K. Kerstetter, Helen Jean Sterling Snook, and Helen Elizabeth Schnure Harter.

    All oral history materials are available for public viewing in the library’s Pennsylvania Room.

    Library staff members are available to research requests for information using materials in the Pennsylvania Room collection. Requests can be sent to herr@herrlibrary.org .  There is no charge for staff research, but there is a 20-cents per page cost for photocopies.  Postage is an additional charge.