Union County Historical Society
Fall 2006 Volunteer Awards

          At the Union County Historical Society annual John B. Deans Dinner and Program, on Thursday, November 9 at the Lewisburg Club, the Society presented two awards for volunteer work that has benefited the Society and the preservation of our area history.   


          Emilie Jansma
of State College received the Outstanding Achievement Award for generously sharing her knowledge and research on the "Tight End" of Union County.  She has published The Community of Weikert, Pennsylvania: Homesteads, Cabins and Camps that traces ownership of more than 230 properties, and Louise Goehring Scott's Oral History Collection, a two-volume, 1200-page transcription of tape recorded interviews about life in the west end of the county.  Emilie organized Weikert Heritage Day, the Weikert History and Genealogical Workshop and the West End Historic Bus Tour.  Other endeavors include serving as curator of the Koch Collection of historical photographs and the Jack & Doris Sapia Collection of historical negatives, and serving as co-chairman and instructor of the State College Oral History Project.

         Hertha Wehr was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award for her many years of service to Union County as a community member, farmer, and volunteer.  Knowledge gleaned from her 30-plus years of dairy farming will be shared in the Historical Society's Heritage Volume XXII, to be released in 2009.  Her interests and experiences currently inform readers of her column in The Millmont Times.  A major gift of dairy equipment, supplies and ephemera from the collection of her late husband, Karl Wehr, forms the nucleus of the archival dairy material of the Union County Historical Society, on whose Board Hertha served.  Other organizations benefiting from her work include the Vicksburg Library, 4-H Club, Hospice, First Lutheran Church of Mifflinburg, Habitat for Humanity, Union County Extension Office and Planning Board. 

            The Society, and our communities, greatly benefit from the efforts of these women and we thank them for their work.



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