EAST LIVERPOOL – Judi Allison moved to the city a year ago with her husband Jim Allison, who is an East Liverpool native. One of the first things they did was join the E.L. Historical Society. She always had an interest in the history of people and the “nitty-gritty of life.”
When doing Jim’s family geneology, Judi noticed that while there are plenty of online sources of information for areas surrounding East Liverpool, there was nothing for the city itself. She brought up the idea for a Web site to the other historical society members and discovered that although everyone fancied the idea, no one knew how to do it.Because of her work in graphic design, copywriting, editing and her self-taught knowledge of basic HTML (hypertext markup language), she offered to compile the data and hammer out a site. Back in the 1990’s, when the Internet first appeared, she made a few Web sites for the business she worked for, which more than qualified her for this task.
Several historical society members—including President Tim Brookes, Vice-President Joan Witt, Treasurer Bill Gray, Trustee Nancy Wetsel and others—helped gather information and shape them into articles, while Judi worked on the design.
“It’s a joint effort of the club, with me acting as a funnel to produce the actual material that appears on the site” Judi said.
The mission of the East Liverpool Historical Society is to find, protect, and make accessible historic, tangible objects and information to the public. Educating people about their heritage is what it is all about.
The Web site will help with making this information available to the public eye. Old and delicate documents and artifacts that are in danger of disintegration can be protected and showed off simultaneously with an internet presence. Another goal of the society’s site is to become a reference tool for school projects and a public-fueled source for family folklore and discussions about history.
“I think it is one of the best things we’ve done in quite a while,” said society President Tim Brookes. “It has attracted a number of new members and donations of historical documents and photos that we wouldn’t have received otherwise. Even the historical society needed to join the 21st century.”
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Click to the East Liverpool Historical Society Web site. Judi Allison also is webmaster for The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State.
Allison Brookes also contributed to this story.
