Portraits at the Miles-Humes House now tell a story

Centre County Library & Historical Museum boasts an extensive collection of portraits and paintings, many of which have been recently rotated! Some portraits moved rooms, some came out of storage, and some moved back into storage. Now, as visitors ascend the main staircase, they will encounter former owners and residents of the Miles-Humes House in chronological order.

Portraits of Catherine Miles Green (left) and Joseph Green (right).

Portraits of William Potter (left) and Lucy Winters Potter (right).

Portraits of Lucy Winters Potter (left) and Lucy Winters Alexander Humes (right).

Small portrait of Edward Crouch Humes (left). Large portrait of William Potter Humes (top right). Two portraits of Ann Elmira Humes (bottom right).

At the bottom of the stairs, a portrait of Catherine Miles Green and her husband, Joseph Green, introduce visitors to the home's early history. Catherine Miles Green was the daughter of the builder and first owner of the house, Joseph Miles, and presumably lived in the house from its construction in 1816 until her marriage in 1828. Unfortunately, we do not have a surviving image of Joseph Miles.

Continuing upward, visitors will pass William W. Potter, whom Joseph Miles sold the home to in 1830 and William's wife, Lucy Winters Potter. This was the only time in history that the house was sold and not inherited or bequeathed. Unfortunately, William died in 1839, leaving Lucy with no family in the house.

Lucy Winters Potter was kind enough to have two portraits commissioned of herself, so continuing on, visitors view her as a young woman, and then as an elderly woman on the next landing. Next to the older Lucy is a portrait of her namesake and niece, Lucy Winters Alexander Humes. Lucy Potter invited her niece, Lucy Humes and Edward Crouch Humes (pictured next to Lucy Humes on the landing) to live at the house with her when the couple was married in 1843. They all lived together at the house until Lucy Potter's death in 1875. On her death, Lucy willed the house to Lucy Humes and Edward Crouch Humes.

Finally, when visitors reach the top of the stairs, they will find the last owners of the house, William Potter Humes and Ann Elmira Humes (Lucy and Edward's children). Edward left the house to both of his children when he passed away in 1895. Then, the house was left in Ann Elmira's sole possession when her brother William passed in 1920. Possibly in response to the founding of the Free Library of Philadelphia and Andrew Carnegie's funding of libraries during her life time, Ann Elmira decided to bequeath the house on her death in 1935 to the Borough of Bellefonte and the community for future use as a public library and meeting place. The library and museum opened on Oct. 25, 1939.

You can explore more about the history of the Miles-Humes House in the historical collection we have uploaded on www.powerlibrary.org (Pennsylvania's Electronic Library) by clicking the button below. The collection includes more images and copies of sales and transfer of the house.

The Memory Lab is Migrating to the Bellefonte Library

We’re excited to announce that the Memory Lab - our public space designed for conversion of outdated media to a digital format - will be moving across the street to the Bellefonte Library at 200 North Allegheny Steet! This move will come with expanded appointment availability, walk in service, and a new computer for faster digitization and media conversions. Appointments will be suspended while we work on moving around furniture, adjusting workflows, and waiting for the new computer to ship. If you have further questions, please direct them to our Assistant Director, Nicholas Struble at nstruble@centrecountylibrary.org.

New Historical Museum Acquisitions

Crazy quilt made by Blanche Tate Fetterolf, Pleasant Gap, 1890, Donated by Ruth A. Roush

On February 10th, 2025, the Historical Museum received a donation of a crazy quilt made by Pleasant Gap resident Blanche Tate Fetterolf around 1890. This quilt joins an already existing collection of crazy quilts made in Centre County, PA at the Historical Museum. 

Blanche created the quilt for her sister, Rachel Tate Noll. It features a variety of fabric patches, including silk, satin, velveteen, and printed fabrics. Each seam is adorned with embroidery stitches, and many patches showcase intricate hand-embroidered designs.

Crazy quilts were a popular yet sometimes criticized form of woman's sewing art during the last quarter of the Victorian Era. American Patchwork & Quilting explained that while the exact origins of crazy quilts are unclear, historians believe that the quilts' style was influenced by women's increased amount of free time due to industrialization, Queen Victoria's sense of fashion (featuring rich, dark colors and lavish accessories), and the Japanese Pavilion display at Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exposition.  According to www.metmuseum.org, by the mid-1880s,crazy quilts were so popular that some manufacturers offered them in ready-to-sew kits that often included appliques. The criticism of the quilts was derived from their clear consumption of women's time and energy. Some argued that women should spend their time on other pursuits, like reading and writing (see this 1884 article in Harper's Bazar). This sentiment contributed to the decline of crazy quilts' popularity in the 20th century.

You can view this quilt and our others at the Historical Museum inside the Textile Room and Linn Room.

Coverlet woven by Emanuel Ettinger, Aronsburg (sic), 1836; border called 'Rose & Crow'; central pattern called 'Double Rose.' Donated by Illinois State Museum

In January 2025 (last month), the generous Illinois State Museum donated a 1836 Jacquard coverlet made by Emanuel Ettinger of Aaronsburg to our Centre County Historical Museum! This coverlet joins a collection of Jacquard weavings created in Centre County in the museum's textile room on the second floor of the Miles-Humes house.

Emanuel Ettinger wove coverlets from 1834-1861 in Aaronsburg, PA. His work features a variety of patterns, some of which can be investigated in the museum's collection. In the 1836 piece, the border pattern is called 'Rose & Crow' and the central pattern is called, 'Double Rose.'

Much of the weaving that occurred in Aaronsburg during the 1800s made use of the Jacquard attachment on the loom. This attachment offered more design versatility and better fabric control through use of a punch card system. The word "jacquard" comes from the inventor of the attachment, the Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard who invented the device in 1801.

Preserving Centre County's Heritage: Estate and Marriage Records are Digitized

A "can" of Estates in the basement of the Miles-Humes house.

In September 2023, Kerry and Lynette Kirsch, two professional digitizers from Ebensburg, PA were contracted to digitize Centre County, PA records by the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) in conjunction with the Centre County government. Kerry, who had previously digitized all Cambria County records, and wife Lynette, also a professional digitizer, were hired by the LDS to convert historical records at Centre County Library & Historical Museum (CCLHM) to digital format, which would then be available through the church's open source genealogical database, Family Search.

Background:  In the early 1990's, Centre County government gifted all their Estates (documents produced by Probate Court upon the death of an individual) to CCLHM.  In the words of the County, "CCLHM serves as the caretaker for some of Centre County's oldest government records to ensure that they remain accessible to people in Centre County."  As a result, the basement of the Miles-Humes House stores 15,840 separate Estates, one for every property owner who died in Centre County between 1800 (the birth of the Centre County) and 1990, when the County began its own process of storing Xeroxed copies of the estate records on their database WEBIA. (Note:  If used by a researcher in the PA Room, WEBIA is free. Otherwise, a researcher can buy "clicks" on WEBIA directly from Centre County, and thus gain remote access to the database.)

September 2023:  Kerry and Lynette Kirsch met with Bonnie Goble and Judy Dombrowski, Branch Co-Managers at the Miles-Humes House.  They designed a method to physically transport the "cans" (metal drawers) in which the Estates are housed from the PA Room cellar to their professional digitizing studio in Ebensburg. This was no easy feat, as the cans can individually weigh in excess of 10 pounds and dozens of cans were being transported at one time by the digitizing professionals. The scanning machine they used was one of 400 owned worldwide by the LDS Church. Many of the LDS scanners had been taken off domestic digitizing projects by LDS handlers, sent instead to Ukraine to digitize historic records as Russian bombardment became more relentless. At the height of the project, Kerry and Lynette might visit every 2-3 weeks to return cans and pick up new ones. 

Late fall 2024: The Kirsches were nearing the end of the Estates, and received LDS permission to digitize the "Marriage Books," records of Marriage License Applications between 1885 and 1990.  Their request to digitize the Spangler Collection, research produced by genealogist Adele Spangler which is unique to the PA Room, has gone unanswered and is considered still pending.

February 2025:  The Kirsches returned the last of the Estate cans, completing digitization of 15,840 Estates, consisting of hundreds of thousands of small historic paper records. In addition, they digitized the voluminous Marriage Books, each with hundreds of applications. The digitized materials are now searchable on the open source (free to the public) LDS database, Family Search using a method called full text indexing. When accessed through full-text indexing, each of the pieces of a digitized Estate appears in high resolution on the researcher's screen, to be examined and printed if desired. 

Photographing even a small Estate previously took the librarians at the Miles-Humes House hours of painstaking time and was expensive for the researchers, who paid according to how long the scanning lasted. This project, funded entirely by the Church of Latter Day Saints, has reduced searching and printing out the contents of an Estate to a matter of minutes. 

It is a marvelous example of historic information married to modern technology, all to benefit today's researchers. 

Centre County Library & Historical Museum

814-355-1516

www.CentreCountyLibrary.org

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