Change is in the Air

I’m happy to share the news that I have accepted the position of Interim Director of Library & Archives at the Hagen History Center here in Erie, PA, effective 2 March 2020. I am still working on military repatriations, but at this time I am not accepting any new genealogy client work.

Never a dull moment for Lantern Genealogy!

(March 2018) Things are as busy as ever in my little corner of Northwest Pennsylvania, but first things first, as you may have noticed from the change in my website’s header, I’ve reverted back to my maiden name Varrieur which, if you don’t speak French, rhymes with carrier!

In other news, I have shifted slightly from private client work to military repatriations and I am absolutely enamored with the work! Back in March 2018, I was invited to join the team at Stone House Historical Research, owned by Catherine Becker Wiest Desmarais, CG®. Stone House Research is contracted by the United States Army to help locate family members of soldiers missing from past wars. The Department of Defense maintains an active effort to identify remains of U.S. missing servicemen still not fully accounted. They wish to re-establish contact with these soldiers’ families, and to seek family DNA donors. It is an honor to be a part of this heartwarming project and I can’t thank Catherine enough for asking me to participate.

As if that weren’t enough excitement, in July 2018, I became an independent contractor with the Erie County Historical Society. Executive directory George Deutsch has taken on the heady goal of digitizing the ECHS Library & Archives and has asked me to spearhead the creation of a digital index which will afford researchers easier access to the people and content featured in the society’s impressive archival collections which, when lined up box-by-box, stretch to two linear miles! As a long-time volunteer archival processor, I’m well acquainted with the gems found in our archives and am thrilled to be working so closely with the material for the next couple years or so!