At about 5:30 on the second Wednesday of every month this year, I walked across the New River from my house in Dun Glen to attend a town meeting in Thurmond. Once there, I joined with the town’s five permanent residents to discuss town business over dinner in Thurmond’s one-room town hall. We approved the minutes from our last meeting, went over the town’s budget, and discussed plans for upcoming town projects and events. Sometimes our meetings were interrupted by a train passing by on the tracks just a stone’s throw from our meeting place. In that event we all filed outside to wave at it as it made its way through town. Once the train passed by and the noise subsided, town meeting would resume in West Virginia’s smallest incorporated town.
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Though Thurmond is an incredibly small town, it cannot be described as sleepy. The people of Thurmond take great pride in their community. This year alone, they repaired their Main Street, installed new town banners, and started making plans to build a municipal sewer system. On top of that, they do light maintenance and mowing in the town’s public spaces and host an annual litter pick-up event called Thurmond Clean-up Day. In years not affected by a global pandemic, they host a triathlon and a family festival called Train Days.

The people of Thurmond are not alone in their efforts to care for their town. The National Park Service owns most of the property in Thurmond, including about 20 historic buildings. As an AmeriCorps member serving at the New River Gorge National River, I was involved in a project to develop a historic preservation field school using Thurmond as the “classroom” where participants will learn how to care for historic buildings. Over the course of the year, we developed a plan for our project, presented our ideas to the park’s leadership team for their approval, and contacted colleges to gauge their interest and ask them to participate. Between December and October, PAWV's executive director, Danielle Parker, alongside myself and Park Staff made great strides toward getting the project off of the ground; the project was approved at the park level, and we have six colleges interested in partnering with us in this project. The next steps will involve more in depth and specific planning and coordination to determine how we will work with colleges, and what work we will accomplish together.

Working on this field school project was an incredibly gratifying part of my term here at the New River Gorge. Not only because of how the project is coming together and how promising it is, but also because it has been a way for me to play a role in caring for the town of Thurmond, just as its residents do.

On July the 24th, 2020, a group of Preserve WV AmeriCorps members and local contractors met at Old Hemlock Foundation located in Preston County to participate in a historic wooden window restoration workshop with Smiths Family Workshop. Guided by the professional preservationists Jon and Derrick Smith, those in attendance worked on the windows from the house located on the Old Hemlock Foundation property that dates back to the early 1800s. Those in attendance learned how to safely remove the paint and glaze from the windows, how to fit new glass windows panes into the frames, and then how to glaze the panes back into the window. 

            The benefits of work like this for Old Hemlock Foundation and other such historic sites are the increased energy efficiency, and windows can become more secure in the process. In addition to these things, particularly damaged windows can be made like new again, saving money and beautifying the building.
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            The skills learned at the workshop are something I personally will take with me into future projects, as historic preservation is something I am passionate about and would love to pursue a job in. I think this is something that can also be said about the other attendants. As such this workshop was invaluable to those in attendance and also to Old Hemlock.

My time as an AmeriCorps member at the Pocahontas County Opera House has given me the opportunity to flex my social media muscles again. I graduated from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, with a degree in English and minors in communication and history. Within my paths of study, I focused heavily on written communication, whether that was online, like social media, or in print, like journalism.
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I found myself fascinated by how people communicate with one another online. We are all looking to be entertained, to be thought of, and to be involved with the communities that we love. Social media is a great tool to use, but as I began learning about social media, I was overwhelmed with all of the different tips and tricks that were taught to me online, through my professor, through other students, and through internships. Each place had a different answer for what you should be doing online. On top of everyone’s advice, social media best practices are constantly changing because of tweaks to social media algorithms and the whims of the audiences that businesses are trying to reach. After some experimentation throughout my time as an AmeriCorps, through my time at university, and my time in internships, I found some things that made a major difference in how many people saw my organic content (content that I had created myself). Here is what I learned worked to reach a larger audience:

​What do you want your efforts with social media to do for your business or nonprofit? Do you want to bring in more visitors? Do you want to increase sales of merchandise? Think of these goals ahead of time and create your content with this goal in mind.

​Having a plan typed out for your social media use is an important step. It doesn’t have to be too complicated. A plan, even a simple one, will help make guidelines to follow if you have multiple people running social media, and it also will help you create content more easily than if you were working from scratch every time. It doesn’t have to be extensive; for example, at the Opera House, we have a few categories that we can draw from for social media, which include pre-show posts, post-show posts, historical posts, and behind the scenes posts. This allows us to pick a category and draw inspiration from there, rather than starting from ground zero. You can also include measurable goals you want to reach in terms of analytics or sales and this plan will help you measure your social media progress. You can use the questions in the graphic above to get started.

Brand recognition is important for your business or nonprofit. You want people to recognize your logo and your name, so keeping your logo and your handle consistent across all of your social platforms is important. For example, the Opera House’s website, Facebook, and Instagram is all pocahontasoperahouse (.org), and our Twitter is @pcoperahouse because of Twitter’s unique character limit on handles. Our profile pictures are always the same and our name is always Pocahontas County Opera House (see above photo). This comes in handy when someone from one platform searches for the Opera House on a different platform, as they can easily find us and our content.

Be consistent with your posting. Try to post regularly without detracting from the quality. It is better to post higher quality content less frequently than lower quality content more frequently. Keeping up consistent posting of great content should help your page begin to grow. If your posting is less consistent, you will lose momentum on your page growth.

​Across all social media platforms that we use at the Pocahontas County Opera House—Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—posts with a photo always do better than posts without a photo. People tend to engage with the content more, share it more, and overall enjoy it more. 

​Facebook is one of the best platforms for businesses. Facebook is a highly used social media platform and has a significantly diverse demographic on the site compared to others, like Instagram or Pinterest. However, because Facebook makes its money from advertising, links and events typically perform worse than content without links. I have suspicions that this is because Facebook wants businesses to pay for advertising, but I am not sure. I can, however, assure you that every post I have made that includes a link has gotten a fraction of the views and shares that a post with only an image does. This is also true for events.

​Hashtags are one of those social media discussions that always seems to be changing. No one seems to know quite how many to use, what hashtags are helpful, and when to use them. I recommend using them every post on Instagram, and also on Twitter when you can within your character limit. Hashtags are critical for reaching new audiences on Instagram and can help drive engagement with your page. Try out hashtags on every post, and see which hashtags are the most effective. I always recommend having a branded hashtag, one that matches your branding, so that people can use it when discussing your business or nonprofit. 

I know this sounds cheesy, but you will come up with better content if you find someone who genuinely enjoys creating the content for your page. This will make having more consistent content easier, and the enjoyment will hopefully spill over to your audience in the long run as your page has more and more genuine content.
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Overall, social media is a great tool to use when you want to reach your current audience and potential audiences. Businesses and nonprofits can share genuine content that helps their audiences stay connected, and overall, build fonder feelings towards the business. This is great for community building, and for helping people come back over and over throughout the years.

On May 21, 2019, the Harrison County Historical Society hosted a group of 17 students from St. Mary’s Catholic School for a tour of the Historic Stealey-Goff-Vance House Museum in Clarksburg.
The tour included an interactive game in which the students were shown artifacts and asked if they could identify them. The artifacts included a boot scraper, a watch fob, a canteen, leather embossing tools and a tabletop butter churn.

Harrison County Historical Society Executive Director, Crystal Wimer led the tour group. AmeriCorps members Susan Cook and Sarah Insalaco assisted with the tour and games.

Michael Spatafore, sixth grade teacher at St. Mary’s Catholic School, said the students enjoyed the tour and learned a lot about history. “The students loved their entire day touring historic downtown Clarksburg. The Stealey-Goff-Vance House was enjoyed because of the age of the structure and the history of the various families that have lived in the house. The children learned about life long ago, what a tanner was, and how the many artifacts in the house each told a story about famous people, places and events in Clarksburg’s history.”

The Harrison County Historical Society owns and maintains the Stealey-Goff-Vance House, located at 123 West Main Street in Clarksburg. The House was built in 1807 for Jacob Stealey, an early settler of Clarksburg who was a tanner by trade.

The Stealey-Goff-Vance House is the oldest known brick structure still standing in Harrison County. The architectural style is a mixture of Georgian and Victorian. It was constructed with locally-sourced hardwood, heavy stone and molded brick.

In 1881, the house was sold to Nathan Goff Sr. The house was used as a doctor’s office and boarding home for about 25 years before it was purchased by Amy Roberts Vance in 1933. After the passing of Mrs. Vance in 1967, the Harrison County Historical Society purchased the house from Mrs. Vance’s sons, Cyrus and John.
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The Stealey-Goff-Vance House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Tours can be arranged by calling the Harrison County Historical Society at (304) 709-4902.

​In April 2019, Main Street Martinsburg coordinated a tour of the Martinsburg Roundhouse and the Arts Centre building (located at 300 W. King Street) for a group of historic preservation students from Shepherd University. During the tour the class not only learned about the history of the properties but the lengthy process of preserving and restoring them as well.

Shepherd University students who enroll in historic preservation courses spend their days in the classroom learning about what historic preservation is and how it is used as a way to both preserve historic resources and educate the public about those resources. Dr. Keith Alexander, Assistant Professor of History and co-director of the Historic Preservation and Public History program says that, “getting out into the field is absolutely essential for my historic preservation students to see how the things we talk about in class apply in the real world.” Throughout the tour students remarked on how, even though they knew some of these sites existed, they were less aware of the vast amount of history and recent preservation work that has gone into them.

Main Street Martinsburg is a collaboration of dedicated volunteers, business and property owners, concerned citizens, and local governments working together to promote and enhance the economic strength of historic downtown Martinsburg. With ongoing preservation projects like those at the Martinsburg Roundhouse and Shenandoah Hotel, Martinsburg provides the ideal setting for students to observe how historic preservation remains vital to economic development in West Virginia.

Main Street Martinsburg plans to continue inviting students to tour and discuss historic preservation efforts in the area in order to foster a sense of collaboration and education within the community.