Chicago Genealogical Society Announces New Donated Collection
Bob Jerich, retired executive from Lucent Technologies (the company that acquired one portion of the former Western Electric Company), recently made a gift of a significant collection of corporate newsletters of the Western Electric Company. The Microphone was the newsletter of the Western Electric Hawthorne Works facility in Cicero, IL. The corporate newsletter was initially a weekly publication (from 1922 to 1932), before it was changed to a once monthly publication.
Bob had the foresight to save this collection of newsletters from the dumpster when the Hawthorne Works factory was closed in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but he also had the wisdom to have the newsletters professionally bound to help preserve them. The collection seems to be near complete, ranging from 1922 to 1985 and including over 900 different editions containing more than 7,200 pages.
For genealogists, researchers, and historians, these newsletters are a true treasure trove of personal information. The newsletters are chockful of employee names and occupations, plus dates of employment, anniversaries, retirements, and passings. And, of course, the newsletters are filled with ample photos of the employees. With the Hawthorne Works being such a large and iconic employer for decades, we know that many of you will find these to be important documents in researching your Chicago family genealogy and history.
To make the content of these newsletters useful and useable to a broad audience, the Chicago Genealogical Society (CGS) will be undertaking an important project to scan every page of the more than 7,200 pages in the collection. The digital images will later be made available to members of CGS via the Members Only section of the CGS website. It is also important to note the scanned newsletters will be created with OCR applied to enable text search.
As CGS does not provide archival and caretaking of original documents, once the scanning project has been completed, the entire collection will be gifted to the Chicago History Museum for long-term archival and stewardship. The original newsletters will thereby be available to individuals, families, and researchers for generations to come. And if you do not need access to the originals, or if you live outside of the Chicago area, the digital collection will be available online via the CGS website for members.
The cost to scan this amazing Chicago collection is $4,300. Our Society is kicking off a fundraising campaign for this project. CGS is extremely grateful to have recently received an offer to match gifts made through September 30th, up to $2,300.
Help us reach our goal and double the impact of your gift. Donate today at www.chicagogenalogy.org.
Note – any donation amounts over $4300 will be applied to the next CGS scanning project.
