Keweenaw Time Traveler
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CLIR-Funded Employee Card project is Complete!

3/31/2023

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A long-awaited data creation project is now complete and available for researchers and the public. About 39,000 archival employee records from the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company collection in the Michigan Tech Archives have been digitized and incorporated into two online research platforms:
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Copper Miners Employee Cards Database (CMEC)
This brand new research platform at the Michigan Tech Archives lets you keyword search and see high-resolution scans of individual employee cards. Check it out here 
https://miners.mtu.edu.

The cards featured in this database were filled out by C&H company clerks whenever someone applied for work. They record the person's place of birth, family members' names, and current residence as well as all the jobs they held while employed by the company. These cards offer a wealth of information unavailable in other kinds of archival or municipal records.
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The Keweenaw Time Traveler’s Explore App now includes data about individual C&H employees connected to historic maps and other archival data. Access it at www.KeweenawHistory.com.

Along with an individual's information recorded in the US census and city directories, now any information from their related C&H employee card is also available in the Explore App. Look for new kinds of information tagged "C&H," especially under the Employment heading. 

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED!
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This project has been a major three-year endeavor for a team of researchers in the Michigan Tech Archives, the Geospatial Research Facility, and the Department of Social Sciences. Project leads Sarah F. Scarlett (Social Sciences), Don Lafreniere (Social Sciences and Geospatial Research Facility), and Lindsay Hiltunen (University Archivist) received a grant for $240,012 in January 2020 from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), a DC-based non-profit whose “Digitizing Hidden Collections” program is made possible with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

We brought together a collaborative team across University units with several interrelated and ambitious goals:
  1. To scan, digitize, and make publicly accessible one of the Michigan Tech Archives’ most referenced collections: a group of 38,951 employee cards kept by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company;
  2. To transcribe the cards to create a historical dataset of names and details about the lives, families, and work histories of people who came from all over the world to work at C&H;
  3. To integrate that data set into the backend of the Keweenaw Time Traveler so that each employee could be mapped to their home, and connected with other records including the US census, city directories, and school records already available.  

After three years, a one-year no-cost extension, countless hours of patient scanning, painstaking transcription, geocoding, record linking, debate about user interface design — all during a global pandemic! — this team is very pleased to announce the successful completion of the Michigan Miners at Home and Work Project! 

Over the next weeks and months, more Project News stories will appear with in-depth reflections from some of the over 25 student workers who were the heart of this project. Each of these students learned to read cursive (something new to many of them!) and dedicated themselves to deciphering and making sense of the abbreviations used by C&H clerks. They got together on Zoom to share their experiences and lend mutual support during the isolation caused by COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021. Thanks to all of them!  
Thanks to all the students who worked on this project:
Brooke Batterson
Julian Blann
Chris Charteris
Julianna Cummings
Becky Daniels
J. Zach Dill (Lunch Time Chat Video with Zach!)
Adi Hanany
Charlotte Hildebrandt
Nicholas Hundt
Ben Imig
Nev Indish 
Melina Lopez
Jacob Maxon
Michelle Perini
Ashton Powell
Grayson Reyes
Lynn Roberts
Ellie Sackrider
Cheyenne Scott
Anna-Marie Seitter
Ezekiel Stark
Chris Trevino
Cas Tuson (Student Spotlight Video with Cas!)
Dalton Vas Binder
Kevin White (Read Kevin's Blog Post!)
​Tyler Zetty
Thanks to the Michigan Tech staff who worked directly on this project:

Geospatial Research Facility:
Ryan Williams
Dan Trepal
Bob Cowling

Michigan Tech Library:
David Holden
Chris Chosa
Emily Riipa Schwiebert

Look for more reports and reflections about the completion of this project in the coming weeks. In the meantime, explore the C&H employee card data in CMEC and KeTT! 
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This project was supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (https://www.clir.org/) (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Michigan History Day - District I Competition!

2/27/2023

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Yesterday, the Michigan History Day District 1 competition was held at Michigan Technological University! High school students from around the Keweenaw presented their amazing work covering unique historical events! Topics included: 'the Implementation of Hockey Helmets', 'The Frontier of Feminist Journalism', 'the Match Girls' Strike', 'The Banana Massacre', 'Title IX: A Frontier for Female Equality', and many others!

Students also played some History Bingo using
keweenawhistory.com to explore the changing landscape of the Michigan Tech campus! Thank you to the Michigan Tech Department of Social Sciences and the Michigan Tech Archives for such a special day!
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A Second Round of Postcards from the Past!

1/27/2023

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A new set of post cards from the past are headed to over 90 lucky people in the Village of Calumet, Houghton Michigan, and Hancock, Michigan! This is the second batch of postcards that use www.keweenawhistory.com to share with people the history of their home and the amazing people who lived there before. Is your home in our second batch? Check your mailbox over the next week to find out!
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Keweenaw Time Traveler coming soon to businesses near you!

1/20/2023

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​Helping others engage with local history is one of the main goals of the Keweenaw Time Traveler! This winter, we are working with many local businesses around the Copper Country to bring local history to the businesses we use every day. Over the coming months, we will be installing window stickers which link to stories you’ve shared about these businesses.
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Congrats to our latest graduate!

12/17/2022

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​Please join us in congratulating Timothy Stone on his completion of a Master’s Degree in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology. His thesis looked at how children’s environmental exposures are studied and included the development of an index to compare student exposures in 1920 Calumet and Laurium. His project incorporated local school records into the Keweenaw Time Traveler, which are now available to the public through the Explore application.
​You can read his thesis here: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr/1482/.
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Postcards from the Past!

12/12/2022

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​Have you ever received a postcard from some exotic place? Maybe a friend was vacationing in France, or a family member in Hawaii? Or maybe Calumet?
​As David Lowenthal put it, “The Past is a Foreign Country,” and you might soon be receiving a postcard from that foreign country! Yes, the Keweenaw Time Traveling crew will be sending out several rounds of postcards throughout the Copper Country over the next couple of months. We’re going through our records and finding historic houses that are still standing and sharing some information about their inhabitants.
​With lots of help from several Michigan Tech Social Sciences students, we were able to get our first round of postcards out on 12 December 2022. We have LOTS more postcards, so keep an eye out over the coming months!
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Keweenaw Time Travelers at the Social Sciences History Association

11/17/2022

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Several Historical Environments Spatial Analytics Lab faculty, staff, and students presented their work at the Social Science History Association meeting in Chicago this week.
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​Dr. Don Lafreniere (Project Director) began the conference as a roundtable participant with other scholars from the U.S. and U.K. discussing models for building and sustaining Historical GIS projects. He also shared the next stages of the Keweenaw Time Traveler project, highlighting our recently released mobile app. He demonstrated this by importing a map segment of Chicago that allowed participants to see the historic Palmer House (where the conference was held) just as we can see towns around the Copper Country!

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​Dr. Dan Trepal (Senior Geospatial Research Scientist) presented recent work linking people’s census records through time. This allows us to follow people as they move throughout the area and country and sets the stage for lots of future projects!
​James Juip (Senior Research Associate) participated in a roundtable discussing a variety of projects related to place and attachment. This touched on a variety of subjects, including project sustainability and how to continue public engagement after funding has ceased.
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​James was also joined remotely by Dr. Sarah Scarlett (Co-Project Director) for a presentation on education and outreach, during which they discussed how the Time Traveler has been used for K-12 education and some exciting future plans (stay tuned!).
​Timothy Stone (Senior Research Associate) presented an abridged version of his thesis which he defended two weeks ago. Here he focused on results and case studies, demonstrating how projects such as the Time Traveler allow for population-level and fined-grained analysis.
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​Ryan Williams (Geospatial Research Scientist) presented his work and partnership with Monte Consulting to bring us version 2.0 of the Explore App (i.e. the current Time Traveler Interface). He also discussed the relationship between the databases housing Time Traveler data and the public interface.
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Chassell Historic Interpretive Trail

11/15/2022

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The Keweenaw Time Traveler team is partnering with the Chassell Heritage Center to help build interactive digital interpretation for the new Chassell historic interpretive trail. The trail will run from Chassell Township Park along Pike Bay and through the former site of a lumber mill. Using maps and aerial imagery The Time Traveler will give people unique insight into how the site changed from 1893 to the present day as they travel down the new boardwalk trail. Through story points created by the Chassell Heritage Center team guests to the park will also be informed about the unique value this site has to the history of the Copper Country.  You can learn more about this amazing project by visiting the Chassell Heritage Center on Facebook, or through this excellent 'Discovering' Episode from 906 Outdoors found below. Be sure to check out this great trail and be sure to bring keweenawhistory.com along!
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Time Traveler at Hamtramck Historical Museum

11/12/2022

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​This week, Dr. Dan Trepal (Senior Geospatial Research Scientist) had the opportunity to present on work he is doing in Hamtramck, Michigan. Hamtramck is located in Wayne County and has a rich industrial and cultural history which Wayne State archaeology students have been unearthing since 2018. During his Archaeology Day presentation, Dr. Trepal discussed the deep mapping used to create the Keweenaw Time Traveler, and the vision for a similar project with Hamtramck which he is working on with Dr. Krysta Ryzewski, who is the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State. This project will focus more on archeological data collected at Hamtramck sites while maintaining the flexibility and easy access we are proud to offer with the Keweenaw Time Traveler.
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Time Travelers at the Association for Preservation Technology

11/7/2022

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This week, Dr. John Arnold (Co-Project Director) and Dr. Don Lafreniere (Project Director) travelled to Detroit, Michigan to present at the Association for Preservation Technology’s annual conference. Dr. Arnold, who now works with the Keweenaw National Historic Park, continues to focus on ‘vernacular preservation,’ which he discussed at length in his dissertation in 2017. This means working with the community to preserve buildings and other parts of the physical landscape that aren’t necessarily known for their historic uses and may be used to this day. 
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​Dr. Arnold and Dr. Lafreniere showed many of these local buildings (such as the Copper Country Curling Club) and discussed the various levels of attention and assistance they get for preservation before introducing how projects like the Keweenaw Time Traveler can help! By having a detailed record of the built landscape, we can easily and accurately assess historic value and tell the stories of the buildings that continue to shape our communities!
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  • Home
  • ABOUT THE PROJECT
    • About the Data >
      • About the Maps
      • About the Datasets
      • About Sharing Your Stories
    • Behind the Scenes
    • Our Partners
    • Our Funders
    • Meet the Team
    • Citizen Historian Apps
    • Time Traveling Experiences
    • Publications
  • Upcoming Events
  • Project News
  • Help