K.W. Beecroft, President, G & DHS. Dated April 20, 2022
Our April 20th Members Meeting represents G&DHS’s 44th anniversary. A wonderful achievement for our organization.
With Covid 19 hopefully on the decline, we hope to move ahead with Program ideas and initiatives that will be informative and educational for our members and the public. We plan to have at least four or five member’s meetings and several events, which has been mentioned that we normally attend or sponsor annually. Hopefully, we can also present an “Open House” event where we can invite people in, and see what we’re about.
We also intend to broaden our relationships with other area historical organizations, and participate and promote events of common interests. Just recently, on April 2nd G & DHS was featured in a presentation sponsored by the London/ Middlesex Genealogical Society. We are also pleased to be involved with Backus Page House. Certainly, the Wardsville Museum and Ekfrid Museum are also close partners.
During this past year, we have reached out to the Lower Thames Conservation area, in order to promote preservation of historic buildings in their care, and also to support restoration efforts of the Fugitive Slave Chapel in London. We will continue efforts into this year toward heritage preservation.
One special Project which we have planned in partnership with the Municipality of Southwest Middlesex, is the manufacture and installation of standardized Cemetery Signs within the municipality. These signs will outline to the public the name of area cemeteries and when they were established. We intent to sign the forgotten ones also, so that our pioneer ancestors will be remembered.
We hope that our volunteer sub-committee will move forward with cataloging and inventorying. We will continue to work with standardizing our approach to the handling and storage of archival material. These activities are viewed as being an activity to be focussed on in the coming year with the involvement of our members.
In closing, the 2021/ 2022 year was full of challenges, but we look forward to continuing in the coming year.