Chris Barbuschak grew up in Burke, now works as an archivist in the Virginia Room of the City of Fairfax Library and is participating in a new Burke Historical Society program to learn new research skills. Photo by Tim Peterson.
When Col. Blake Meyers’ (U.S. Army, ret.) mother and grandmother died, he inherited boxes of family records that no one had ever taken the time to archive, much less even go through and organize.
“Nobody else wanted it,” Meyers said. The Burke resident took the boxes on and endeavored to get their contents straight, becoming a family historian in the highly methodical process. As a Civil War history buff, he was particularly interested in finding out more about his three great-great-grandfathers, who Meyers said all served in the Confederate Army.
“Just putting together the stories of their service,” Meyers said, “Two were from the Shenandoah Valley and served in 11th Virginia Cavalry, another was down in Lynchburg in the 11th Virginia infantry.
“It’s so interesting to understand what happened to your family,” Meyers continued, “all these connections, marriages, births, properties, movements. I’ve got tax returns from the early 1900s.”
Meyers has already tried his hand at accessing clerk’s offices and the national archives to fill in gaps in his research, but he is learning there is much more information out there available to him, if he knows how to look.
The retired colonel is also a member of the Burke Historical Society, which held the first meeting of a new research seminar series the evening of Tuesday, March 1, at the Burke Centre Library.
SOCIETY PROGRAMS CHAIR and Burke resident Brian Slawski gave the program’s first presentation about how to access intellectual property records -- patents and trademarks, his wheelhouse -- for researching family members and local history.
“Personally, when I go to research at a library for the first time, I don’t really know where to begin,” Slawski said. “That can be intimidating.”
This new series for society members (and open to the public) is geared to help reduce that intimidation factor.
“It’s part of the mission of the Burke Historical Society,” said Slawski, “to get people interested in history. We want to share the particular skills, experiences that we’ve had.”
Meyers had no idea patents and trademark records might be useful to him before attending the first lecture.
“I thought it was great, a lot of good information,” Meyers said. “I was like a sponge, just soaking it all up.”
Even professional archivist Chris Barbuschak of Burke picked up a few new moves at the meeting.
“I like learning new things,” said Barbuschak, who looks after rare and unusual tomes and records in the Virginia reference room of the City of Fairfax Library, “especially when I can then offer that to library patrons who come in and say, ‘Where else can I search?’”
Barbuschak’s charges in the reference floor’s climate-controlled inner sanctum include 300 collections of manuscripts he is processing to make more accessible to patrons, as well as thousands of rare photos, newspapers and local records like old receipts from the former Davis Store on the outskirts of Clifton.
“There’s a goldmine of information in here,” Barbuschak said.
FOR THE APRIL MEETING of the Burke Historical Society’s monthly series, Barbuschak will give the society a tour of the rare books room and talk about how to better access library reference materials in house and through databases like The Washington Post, Evening Star and Library of Virginia.
Barbuschak is passionate about getting others to be as interested in researching as he is, how he’s been all his life.
“Most people my age are really not into that,” said Barbuschak, a 2011 graduate of Loyola in Chicago. But doing local or family research yourself, he said, is motivating regardless of age.
“There’s a sense of accomplishment and you learn along the way, you learn about your past,” he said. “It’s really exciting, like being Indiana Jones yourself.”
The Burke Historical Society “Year of Research” seminars are scheduled to take place every first Tuesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. at the Burke Centre Library, located at 5935 Freds Oak Road in Burke. For more information, visit www.burkehistoricalsociety.org.