Eagle Scout Project for the Lawrence History Center
Fall 2010
Braden Charles Nieburger
Preservation of Scouting Records - Essex County
Projects for the Eagle Scouts take many forms. Usually they involve outdoor activities such as building hiking trails, bridges, playgrounds. My Eagle Project was unique in that it involved helping the History Center with a collection that was donated to them.
I first became aware of the Lawrence History Center when I was a sophomore on high school. My geometry teacher assigned a study of bridges and how they were built. I was given the assignment for a bridge in Lawrence. I was having difficulty finding information on the Lawrence bridges and somehow ended up at the History Center, located on Essex Street, where the director, Barbara Brown, was very helpful. She had me return on a Saturday and took me to see the Pemberton Mill Bridge and let me borrow her camera to take some photographs. She also told me about the mills and showed me the original architectural drawings for the bridge. I got a very good grade on the report and became a member of the Lawrence History Center.
When it came time to decide on an Eagle project, I remembered how helpful Barbara Brown had been. I stopped in to see if there was something I could do to help. She was delighted because for many years they had hoped to find someone to work on a collection of scouting records of Essex County that had been donated to the Lawrence History Center by long time Scout leader Al Koch. The records were located in plastic crates on the second floor of the Carpentry Shop, one of the outbuildings of the Center. They were dust covered and stacked precariously.
Before beginning my project, I determined how much money I would need to raise to purchase shelving, boxes, and acid free folders to hold the items. I began my project by contacting the Lowe’s Home Improvement Store in Haverhill where Mr. Phil Oak, the Store Manager, and Kevin, the Operations Manager, generously donated one complete shelf unit, an extra shelf, and a twenty percent discount on other necessary items. The shelving is extremely sturdy and can easily hold the weight of the new boxes to hold materials. It also has metal shelves instead of the pressed wood in so many other shelving units available.
The shelving was picked up, lugged up to the second floor, and assembled. A herculean effort at cleaning was accomplished by members from Boy Scout Troop 75, North Essex Yankee Clipper Council which meets at the Sportsman’s Club in Andover. The Unit Leader of Troop 75 is Mr. William Hauck. They brought several shop vacuum cleaners which made the clean-up job go remarkably well. As Amita Kiley, the assistant to the director, said: “ It even smells better!”
Once the cleaning was done, my crew was able to assemble the document boxes and unpack the hundred or so plastic crates holding papers and memorabilia from the original scouting office in Lawrence. The items were put into new boxes and then labeled, numbered, and placed on the shelving. An inventory list was made.
Some of the items which have appeared shed an interesting light on the history of scouting and the history of our country. During the first half of the last century, scouting played a very different and important role. This could have been because of the lack of television or because the country was involved in wars.
There were actually novels written about scouting. In 1916, The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound or A Tour on Skates and Ice Boats was published. In 1921 The Boy Scouts To The Rescue appeared. In 1942 there was book called Air Scout Manual published.
In addition to the obvious Boy Scout items, there were other items of interest including the Manual of Activities for the Girls of America, a 1920 publication for Camp Fire Girls. Perhaps the oldest item was a 1905 tourist photo booklet of Santa Catalina Island. Although this obviously is not directly related to scouting, it found its way into the items saved. Perhaps it was a scout leader who had it from a vacation trip?
In addition to the books, there were many Norman Rockwell posters depicting scouting. There were also photographs showing activities involving scouting in Essex County including the former Camp Onway that many residents once attended and was sold by the scouts.
Having this information enables the Lawrence History Center to offer another facet on the history of Essex County. And of course, there are many interesting items still to be discovered. The project now awaits more volunteers to begin scanning the materials and filing the originals. Are you available?
