Springfield Friends Meeting is one of the oldest congregations in High Point. It dates back to 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence. According to oral history, many members of Springfield participated in the Underground Railroad and gave illegal reading lessons to slaves. During the Reconstruction, Springfield was the hub of a massive statewide project to rebuild schools, train teachers, and help restore the shattered economy of North Carolina. During our first 120 years, Springfield hosted a large school, which we ran until it was adopted into the public school system. Springfield was instrumental in the founding of Guilford College. Early in the 20th century, members of Springfield were pioneers in the furniture industry, which remains the commercial heart of High Point. The Springfield Memorial Association oversees the Museum of Old Domestic Life, a wonderful collection of artifacts from Quaker homes in the 1800's. The Museum is housed in an historic Quaker meetinghouse which was built in 1858, just before the Civil War. The building has recently had new lighting installed, a new roof and gutter system, and is in the process of having the masonry repointed this spring. As part of our 250th anniversary celebration in 2023, we created a 2-volume history of the church The Memorial Association also has a rich collection of original documents, letters, minutes and ephemera from the same period, which is stored in a climate-controlled room next door in the church. This collection is poorly organized and not cataloged. Behind the Museum is a Quaker cemetery, one of the oldest in Guilford County. We have fairly complete records of burials in the cemetery. We had a drone survey done several years ago using LIDAR technology to create data points for all of the grave stones, but we have yet to match the data points with our paper records. Going back to 1907, most of the work of the Memorial Association has been done by dedicated volunteers. During the summer of 2025, we will be participating in the Traveling Archivist Program, organized by the North Carolina State Library. As part of the program, two professional archivists will be visiting us early in June to advise us on how to better care for our collections. Because of the nature and scope of the work to be done, they recommend that we get a volunteer intern who can bring time and expertise to help us to organize, protect and preserve our collections, and help us to share our materials better with the public, especially for online researchers. We are hoping that a volunteer intern who is enrolled in a graduate-level program would bring a more knowledgeable perspective, and help move us out of the 1800's and into the 21st century. This should be a deeply immersive and professionally satisfying project for the right person. Tasks to be done We anticipate a variety of tasks which need to be done, such as: - scanning fragile materials in the archives and copying them onto acid free paper, using equipment we have here at the church - sorting and organizing materials into files, helping us to build a catalog of what we have, and providing appropriate metadata when possible - selecting and preparing material for possible future digitization by the North Carolina Digitization Heritage Center (DigitalNC.org) - cleaning some of the hundreds of artifacts in the Museum, and helping us to build a database with appropriate metadata (nearly everything has been photographed already, but we are still working from the hand-written accession list started in 1927) - working with the Museum's volunteer curator to identify, label and catalog some of our hundreds of old photographs - going through our collection of family Bibles, and copying and transcribing family data for use by genealogists - evaluating our collection of 19th century school books - when possible, correlating materials in the Museum and the archives with our database of family information from the cemetery - working with volunteers to correlate data points from the LIDAR survey of the cemetery with our paper-based cemetery guidebook - helping to plan and design a future online catalog and website for the Memorial Association archives and the Museum Scheduling The work can be largely self-scheduled, though we anticipate most tasks will be done here on the premises during normal business hours. Whether the hours are full-time or part-time will be up to the intern, which may be helpful if there are family responsibilities. Accessibility The Memorial Association archives are kept in a climate-controlled room in the church, which is fully accessible and has an accessible rest room across the hall. The Museum is not wheelchair accessible, and has 4 shallow steps with a sturdy handrail at the entrance. Supervision One or both of the archivists from the Traveling Archivist Program will provide appropriate, graduate level supervision, probably remotely. Day-to-day help and supervision will be by the pastor, Joshua Brown, and the Museum curator, Brenda Haworth. To apply If you are interested, please send a letter and a short resume to the Springfield Memorial Association, 555 E. Springfield Road, High Point, NC 27263. We will make every effort to answer all applications promptly. If you would like to visit the Museum and the archives before applying, please email Joshua Brown (joshbrown@northstate.net) or call or text 765-969-5504.
