The Town of Berne is blessed with perhaps a couple of hundred historic homes (no one knows the number). The Berne Historical Project at www.Bernehistory.org would like to raise the general public’s awareness level of this fact, and develop pride on the part of the community and the homeowners in these historic treasures. We are about to start an inventory of houses that are shown on the 1866 Beers Map of Berne, along with photographs. This will be posted on the Berne Historical Project site.

There is already an index of 1866 Berne homeowners at http://www.bernehistory.org/sectors.htm. We are now in the process of identifying each person on the Index (full name, year of birth and death, and a sentence or two about him and his family). One of our volunteers, Darin Flansburgh, has almost finished a dynamic copy of the Beers map to be posted on the Berne site on the Internet. It will allow a person to click on a family name, land plot, church, cemetery or other landmark and be presented with a history of that selection.

We would like to include on the website a picture of each extant house, church, store or cemetery as it currently looks alongside an old photograph if one can be found. If a building has been destroyed, we still will search for old photograph to remind people of their lost heritage. Perhaps we can include a picture of a newer home that has been built to replace it, both to remind people of where the old house was, and to show the contrast between the historic home and the newer architecture. We will also need to add the current address so that descendants of the families on the 1866 Beers map will be able to find the site of their ancestor's home.

We would like to use Berne Heritage Days 2003 to make people aware of the large number of historic homes in the Town of Berne. To this end we propose we make a copy of Beers Map available to everyone who attends Berne Heritage Days and who goes on the Heritage Homes and Garden Tours. Even if a house is not on the official tour I would like have an cardboard sign in the front yard identifying it as a Pre-1866 House (or Heritage Home) and give the name of the person living there according to the 1866 Map.

Note: This section is our newest addition to the website. It is still in the planning stage. If you are interested in volunteering for this project, contact Hal Miller.