Two college students spent the summer sorting through the Borough of Narberth's historical archive, uncovering wartime letters, pocket-sized board games sent to troops and old copies of local newspapers that advertised door-to-door milk delivery.
Rory Crisfulla, a senior at Elon University studying economic consulting, and Willa Salmonson, a student at Middlebury College with a background in history, worked as interns cataloging the collection. Crisfulla described the experience in a blog post published Oct. 20 by the Lower Merion Historical Society.
"What began as the practical task of sorting and documenting a large collection quickly became something much more interesting," Crisfulla wrote, calling it "an opportunity to see the past not through major events or famous figures, but through the lives of ordinary, local people."
Among the items: issues of Our Town and other local newspapers whose pages advertised shoemaking, telegram services and other features of small-town life that have largely disappeared, Crisfulla wrote.
One standout was a small, pocket-sized board game that someone from Narberth had sent to local troops serving during World War II. Crisfulla called it memorable precisely because of its simplicity.
During the internship, Lower Merion Historical Society board member Dennis Montagna gave Crisfulla a tour of the society's own holdings. That visit introduced Crisfulla to the Russell Byerley Memorial World War II Collection, a separate archive held by the historical society. The Byerley Collection consists of more than 2,000 letters and photographs sent during World War II by 1,392 former Lower Merion High School students to their shop teacher, Russell Byerley, who taught at the school from 1928 to 1951.
To share the letters, Byerley edited wartime newsletters and enlisted the high school's Girls' Service League to mimeograph, fold and mail them to hundreds of service members. When the volume grew too large, he persuaded local newspapers, including the Main Line Times and the Ardmore Chronicle, to publish the newsletters.
The original letters were donated to the historical society by Byerley's son David, a 1946 Lower Merion alumnus who had saved them for more than 50 years. Longtime volunteer Farilyn Leopold organized every letter in alphabetical and then chronological order.
Crisfulla expressed hope that some of the Narberth collection's most significant pieces will eventually join the historical society's holdings for long-term preservation. No formal decision on a transfer has been announced.
How the internship was arranged — whether through the students' colleges, Narberth Borough or the historical society — was not detailed in the blog post.
