Crawford County Historical Society

The Crawford County Historical Society was founded in 1880. Our purpose is to collect, preserve, and interpret the history of Crawford County. The Society archives contains one of the oldest and most comprehensive repositories for genealogical resources in northwestern Pennsylvania, an extensive library of regional and state histoy and local authors, a large manuscript and photo collection and a massive collection of records of the Erie Railroad.

The Crawford County Historical Society has a substantial collection of records of the Erie and Erie-Lackawanna Railroads. Contained in some 1500 linear feet of storage boxes, this collection includes blueprints, maps, locomotive cards, passenger car cards, freight car cards, accident reports and a wealth of other information about the Erie and Erie-Lackawanna Railroads. Currently, the French Creek Valley Railroad Historical Society is working on several areas connected with the railroad collection including organizing the collection, locating, organizing and creating a museum and creating a scale model display of the Meadville yards.

At the current time, most of this large railroad collection is not available for public use. The CCHS is currently working to make the older employment records available for public use. In addition, the society has, in its archives in the Helene Barco-Duratz Cultural Center, an extensive collection of railroad related items including photographs and maps.

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