Four Westminster students highlighted in Pleasant Hill Historians internship program

Four Westminster College students, in partnership with Pleasant Hill Historians and the Lawrence County Historical Society, presented their internships with Westminster alumni in personalized Zoom sessions over the fall semester.

The first Zoom session showcase allowed senior Environmental Science major Ethan Brady of Clymer, Pa. to present a forestry report for Cascade Park in New Castle, Pa. Brady’s report inventoried the park’s trees and speculated which ones might have been there when the park opened in 1897, based on measurements taken on specific trees.

Brady shared his Zoom session report on Oct. 28, 2021 with the help of alumni host Ben Nelson ’06, Board of Trustees Community Sustainability Committee member.

Kicking off the second Zoom, senior History major Logan Minch of Grove City, Pa. focused his internship on the newly-opened Quaker Falls Recreation Area. Minch’s time in the internship was specifically spent processing a recent donation from Youngstown State University to the Lawrence County Historical Society pertaining archaeological material excavated at the site by Dr. John White, a former professor from YSU.

Minch presented some of the artifacts and context about the site in his Zoom session alongside alumni host Alexis Shellow ’15 on Nov. 4, 2021.

Third to present their internship was sophomore double major in History and Biology of Pocono Summit, Pa., Ryan Armstrong. His project focused on the “Melting Pot Project,” which was initiated in 2017 at the Lawrence County Historical Society as a way of preserving the Immigration Collection through digitization. Armstrong utilized the height and weight documented in Lawrence County’s Court of Common Pleas’ Declarations of Intention to review the health of immigrants who declared their intent to become a citizen within Lawrence County.

Armstrong took his findings and presented them on Nov. 11, 2021 with alumni host Harry Bittle ’14.

The fourth, and final, member of the Pleasant Hill Historians to present was senior Sara Small of Beaver, Pa. Small, who is double majoring in Environmental Science and Project Management, took her knowledge to work on an open source website called northhillhd.live. This website focuses on the North Hiss Historic District and offers a free marketing service to the North Historic District, the third-largest historic district in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Small’s project lays the foundation on a phase-based approach to build out a website and encourage access to information for renters, homeowners and potential new homeowners in the historic district. She presented this project on Nov. 18, 2021 with the help of alumni host Christie Nelson ’06.

For more information on the Pleasant Hill Historians and Lawrence County Historical Society, contact Andrew Henley ’17 at Andrew.henley@lawrencechs.org.

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