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Couple keeps local history accessible for area enthusiasts

Wendy Bish first entered the Guthrie Memorial Library around 1984 looking for the Pennsylvania Room. She was determined to find information on her great-grandmother and had heard rumors about a locked room somewhere in the library that housed local history books and documents.

Once she was granted access to this mysterious room, she rarely left, preferring to spend her time paging through Hanover historical information. It took a little more than a year to discover that her great-grandmother had died of tuberculosis shortly after giving birth to a daughter.

"It was fascinating," the now Bish-McGrew said. "My mother had never known what happened to her grandmother and now I could tell her. There's nothing like holding in your hand a document that was linked to your ancestors."

Even once her search was over, however, she continued spending most of her time in the Pennsylvania Room, expanding her area of interest.

"I managed to track down what had happened, and I became so addicted to doing research like that, that I started doing more research about my family," Bish-McGrew said. "I started going to the Pennsylvania Room so much, that one of the ladies asked me to become a volunteer."

So in 1985, she joined the small group of volunteers that ran the room. It was only a matter of months before a man named John McGrew came to the library looking for information on a soda bottle stamped from Hanover.

Though he found no answers about the bottle, he didn't mind, — he found Wendy instead. And they were married in 1996.

Together, they have expanded the Pennsylvania Room's collection by four times its original size, recruited more than 30 volunteers, published books on local interests and organized the entire collection for easier access.

John McGrew and Wendy Bish-McGrew pose for a portrait at the Pennsylvania Room in the Guthrie Memorial Library on Friday.
John McGrew and Wendy Bish-McGrew pose for a portrait at the Pennsylvania Room in the Guthrie Memorial Library on Friday. (Shane Dunlap - The Evening Sun)

"I would never consider anything heroic, what John or I am doing, but I think it's important because the history of the area is important," said Bish-McGrew, who celebrated 25 years as a Pennsylvania Room volunteer last March. "We are making it available for people to come in free of charge and use it."

The Pennsylvania Room now features documented county histories, Hanover-area collectables, church histories, cemetery records, ships' passenger lists, broadsides, concert programs, family histories, yearbooks, Hanover directories, marriage indices, obituaries, historical deeds, newspaper microfilms and more than 2,000 photographs.

The collection includes McGrew's two editions of Hanover Bottlers and Brewers, his record of all area taverns from 1749 to prohibition and a full index of tax records from 1779 to present day. Currently, he's working on a full record of original land deeds, traced back to the first sales when Hanover was founded in 1763.

"I learned how to do research when I was a graduate student, and I guess I'm adept at it," McGrew said. "If I happen to think of something, I can generally ferret it out."

They run the Pennsylvania Room together every Friday to help any visitors or to fulfill research requests for those who don't live in the area.

The McGrews have volunteered more than 300 hours each to improving and operating the Pennsylvania Room, said Connie McInturff, library volunteer coordinator. Without them, it would still be that locked room that no one knows about, she said.

"They have contributed so much in so many ways," McInturff said. "They know everything about that room. People are always contacting them for research guidance, even at home. Without them, we wouldn't have the staff to keep the Pennsylvania Room operating."
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