Our group began 2014 by collecting, compiling and storing vestry minutes missing from the early 2000s. We also located, identified, and hung portraits of former rectors on the parish house stage.
Ongoing projects included giving talks and tours to church visitors, answering questions which come to the church office about church history, genealogy or entries in our church records, beginning to photograph plaques on exterior church walls and fences, and keeping the church stocked with brochures and other historical materials.
We were very pleased to welcome Carolyn Hawkins to our group this year as a volunteer archivist. Carolyn brings a great deal of knowledge in identifying, handling and preserving historical material.
Much of the year has been spent in the “Gundry Room” (next to the treasurer’s office in the parish house), which had become the repository of St. John’s material of all sorts. We have begun the work of identifying, photographing and cataloging the material there.
St. John’s has a long history and our goal is to organize this material from its past for the use of future generations.
Originally published in St. John’s Epistle (Annual Report), February 2015.