Most people associate the Derby Historical Society the red David Humphreys House on Elm Street, Ansonia, or the Day in 1762 educational program. But there’s much, much more to it than that.
The Society’s Web site, for instance, has been online in one form or another since 1998.
Originally part of the Electronic Valley project, the DHS website received its own URL in 2001. In 2004, the website’s management was taken over by the Society’s Executive Director, Robert Novak Jr., who is also the City of Shelton’s Municipal Historian and wrote the Hometown History column in the Huntington Herald from 1993 to 2009. The website rapidly expanded from that time on.
One of the most popular features has been the This Week in History page, which features Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour, and Shelton news from 50, 75, and 100 years ago this week, as reported by the original Evening Sentinel. It has been updated every week since it began in August 2005, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Black Friday Flood of 1955, and has an extensive archive. This feature was later expanded to the Lower Naugatuck Valley History Portal, which includes reprints of old Sentinel articles, a definition page, old maps, and original local history essays. Some of the essays include contributed material from Valley residents.
Another popular feature is our page on Derby’s famous Sterling Pianos. There are a surprising number of them all over the world, and after years of people offering us their pianos, or asking where they could obtain one, we started the Sterling Piano Exchange to help preserve these magnificent instruments and find homes for all of them.
The webpage is updated constantly, and is packed with information and links. The index page look is a bit dated (hey, we are a historical society!), and we recently put out a call to web designers to help spice up the look. These efforts should bear fruit in the near future.
So take a trip through time on the Historical Society’s website, and come back often to catch up on what’s new This Week in History, and with the Valley’s own regional history organization!
Robert Novak, Jr. is the executive director of the Derby Historical Society.
