Our History
The Fort Vance Historical Society had its beginning on Saturday, February 8, 1969, when seventeen citizens of the community, concerned with preservation of local history, gathered in the Hillcrest UP Church, Burgettstown, for a preliminary meeting.
The purpose of Ft. Vance was to bring together those people interested in history, to provide preservation of historical material, and to promote a better appreciation of our American heritage.
Today, Fort Vance's goal is to increase awareness, expand, display, and digitize its collection for the community to experience. The current membership of Fort Vance has started a major reorganization program to complete that goal and to revitalize its membership. A grant was received from PNC Bank to help insure their success.
Our Future
This organization project is the precursor to our plans to digitize much of our family and local history resources. Part of the digitization will include building in name recognition capabilities to our documents--something earlier scans of the Burgettstown Enterprise lacked. Until this task is near completion, however, Ft. Vance will staff our new room inside the library on Wednesdays or by appointment for any people wishing to do research.
In February 2014, the Fort Vance Historical Society celebrated their 45th anniversary by launching our original digital collection. Since then, our site has been updated bi-monthly until all our vast collection of files have been digitized and made available. It is hoped that our site--both in the library and online--will become a major aid for genealogists and local history enthusiasts alike!
Our Work
Over the past several months, volunteers have generously donated their own time each Wednesday afternoon, to build a collection of local news, obituaries and photos. Currently, we are organizing this collection into books that show a story of everyday life. The books we are currently working on include:
- Period photos and articles for each local town
- The Burgettstown Fair 1856-1936
- Civil War Letters
- William S. Bradley, Sons of Veterans -
Camp 96 - Burgettstown - Burgettstown American Legion
- Burgettstown Post Office
- Local Advertisements from 1900 to the present day
- Local Obituaries
- School Sports / Adult Sports
- The Lee & Martin Funeral Home Directory
- Area Churches & Group School Photos
