The Raymond M. Blasco, M. D, Memorial Library, located at 160 East Front Street in Erie Pennsylvania, maintains an expansive and expanding collection of genealogical and historical information pertaining to Erie County. A good portion of the second floor of the library is dedicated to the Heritage Room which houses county and local histories, standard reference works, family histories, and many other resources which would be of use to the genealogist in search of ancestors in Northwestern Pennsylvania and the surrounding tri-state area. The library’s website is http://www.erielibrary.org/
The Heritage Room is under the direction of a fulltime archivist/librarian. The room is open during regular library hours and is staffed at all times by a library employee and/or volunteers who are available to assist patrons with finding materials and working with the equipment. A search of the Blasco Library’s electronic card catalog, which can be accessed on the Library’s computers or at the Library’s website (http://www.ecls.lib.pa.us), produced a list of1751 titles related to “genealogy,” including 76 family history history compilations and published lineages. The vast majority of the Heritage Room’s holdings are non-circulating.
The Heritage Room has devoted a great deal of shelf space to its collection of Erie County histories and biographies, including the highly regarded early histories published by Nelson, Bates, and Reed. One which is particularly useful to genealogy researchers is Hebert Reynolds Spencer’s Erie… A History, published by the author in 1962. There is also a good selection of histories covering Erie’s neighboring counties, as well as a number of early New England histories.
In addition to books, the Heritage Room subscribes to a large variety of genealogy and regional history periodicals, many of which relate to Northwestern Pennsylvania although several, such as the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and the Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine are national. One periodical local genealogists will find particularly relevant is Keystone Kuzzins, the bulletin of the Erie Society for Genealogical Research, which has been published quarterly since 1972. The focus of Keystone Kuzzins it to promote local Erie history and provide a resource to those seeking information about ancestors in the Erie County area. An issue will typically include a query section, an essay or two on a local historical figure or event, and an article featuring extracts or abstracts of records found in the Erie County Historical Society’s archive collections. An article in the February 2006 issue, entitled “Lost and Now Found,” tells the story of the discovery of a set of old documents in someone’s attic. The documents are of historical significance and are now in the care of the archives of the Historical Society. Individual issues of Keystone Kuzzins do not feature an index, however there is an annual index for each year since the periodical’s inception.
Patrons have access to two computers in the Heritage Room with subscriptions to Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest, which includes a subscription to PERSI. (Anyone with an Erie County library card is able to access the Heritage Quest subscription from home computers as well.) There are also direct links to Historical Societies in neighboring counties. There are seven microfilm readers in the room, all with printing capabilities . One copier is available for use, however the library staff prefers to make copies themselves if the books are fragile or oversized. The library does not have a special manuscript collection as any original collections donated to the library are handed over to the Library and Archives of the Historical Society where they are better able to be preserved and protected.
The Heritage Room is the repository for the library’s microfilmed newspaper collection, including the New York Times and all the Erie City newspapers published from 1822 to a few months ago. The most recent incarnation of the local Erie paper, The Erie Times News, is available on microfilm from 8 August 1888 to 30 April 2010. The library participates in interlibrary loan, and original copies of the last six months of the Erie Times News are available through interlibrary loan as well. Local U.S. Federal Census records as well as Erie County Marriage applications from 1885 to present, and some Wills and Deeds are also available on microfilm in the Heritage Room.
In addition to its local histories and genealogy titles, the Heritage Room has assembled a large collection of local, county, and state civil references. There is a set of DAR lineage books as well as what appears to be a complete collection of U.S. Patent Office Reports. The library also offers a wide selection of Military History books including works detailing Erie County’s and Pennsylvania’s involvement in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the War of 1812, and both World Wars. A general history section and a number of local and state atlases and gazettes are available to give family historians a broader understanding of the world and times in which their ancestors lived. Of particular note is the Historical Atlas of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Illustrated, 1876, which features maps of the townships in the county that detail owners of farms and property, and is an excellent resource for Erie County genealogical research.
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Works Cited
Devenney, Ann. “Lost and Now Found.” Keystone Kuzzins, a bulletin of the Erie Society of Genealogical Research, 34 (February 2006): 5-7.
Historical Atlas of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Illustrated, 1876. Philadelphia: Everts, Ensign & Everts, 1876. Reprint, Indiana: Windmill Publications, 2000.
Spencer, Herbert Reynolds. Erie… A History. Erie, Pennsylvania: Privately Printed, 1962.