Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883

Former resident compiles and donates archival resources to public library

For anyone who has ever ventured into the world of genealogical research, you know dates are the key unlocking the past. Birth dates, census dates, enlistment dates, marriage dates, and of course— death dates. It can be overwhelming and exciting all at once, to find those dates and get one step closer to understanding the past. Now the task of sifting through local historical archives just got a bit easier thanks to one woman and her ambition to document the past residents of her hometown.

This fall, Phyllis Schafer, now of Olympia, Wash., sent a letter to the Eddy-New Rockford Library announcing the imminent arrival of a collection that she had carefully prepared. Schafer says in her letter, “While I wish I had enough money to pay for something significant for New Rockford, that’s impossible as I am living modestly in retirement. So I’ve compiled some notebooks which include a few of the thousands of folks who lived, worked, attended school, attended church or otherwise involved in New Rockford over the years. Because I had a teenage brother and sister, my memories of names spans about 40 years. To me, these notebooks are a gathering of some of the people who’ve lived in New Rockford over many years.”

When the “notebooks” arrived, librarian Susie Sharp was surprised to find six large three-ring binders filled with archives and information, all available for public use. She retrieved much of the information from the Find-a-Grave website, an online resource. The archives are arranged in alphabetical order by last name. Within the last names, the heads of households are roughly filed chronologically by birth year. Each head of household is followed by spouse, then children with spouses, with grandchildren under each couple. Where relationships are not clear, folks were organized in a group at the end of the last name. Following the Z names are some extra history notes and war deaths that didn’t fit within families.

It is Schafer’s hope that this collection will motivate people to add their own relatives to Find-a-Grave website and/or check existing information for accuracy. “Perhaps they'll want to donate letters, stories, and pictures to the library or museum,” she says.

In a final reflection, Schafer says, “As I worked on this project, I checked further on some of the names. Some folks have impressive lists of achievements, publications, etc. We can be proud that our community nurtured them.”

We can also be grateful for those who have taken the time to collect and compile these pages of the past.

 
 
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