Jefferson County Historical Society
2007 Officers, Board Members, and Committees

Officers

President: Carmen Weber Creamer. Carmen holds a B.A. and M.A. in Anthropology, with a specialization in Archaeology from Ohio State University. In addition, she has graduate training in Historical Archaeology from the College of William and Mary and in Public History from Temple University. After a 20+ year career in historic archaeology, most notably as the City Archaeologist for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she and her husband John moved to Jefferson County to raise their son Philip on their farm, Locust Grove, which has been in John’s family since the 1840's. Since arriving in the county, Carmen has worked at the Jefferson County Museum and served on the Jefferson County Landmarks Commission. She has served the Society for a number of years, first as the Recording Secretary and up until recently as the Journal Editor.

Vice President: Dr. James Gregg Gibson. Jim is a 10th generation native of Jefferson County and the son of Urath C. Gibson (herself a former board member) and the late Newton M. Gibson. Jim was born in Jefferson County (in the old Yellow Hospital in Charles Town), attended primary and secondary school at Harpers Ferry and graduated from the Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, PA and WVU School of Dentistry. He is a direct line descendant of the Buckles, Engle, Darke, Moore, Swearingen, and Hollingsworth families. The Captain James Gibson 1812 Society was named for his great, great, great, grandfather. He is married to Barbara Phillips Gibson and has maintained a restorative and esthetic dental practice in Martinsburg since 1971. The Gibsons have restored and placed on the National Register of Historical Places a 5 unit section of Baltimore Row in Berkeley County and the 1790’s Allstadt House and 1820’s Allstadt Ordinary in Jefferson County. Jim served as Chairman of the committee that produced the Jefferson County Historical Society’s video/DVD – “The Land Between the Rivers” released in 2001. Jim is a member and past president of the Eastern Panhandle Dental Society, a member of the Stuart-Mosby Society, the Martinsburg Rotary Club, Harpers Ferry Men’s Cooking Club, and the Eastern Panhandle Experimental Aircraft Association. His personal interests are travel, historic restoration, and flying. Jim lives at Needwood Farm (a 7th generation family farm) on the Shepherdstown Pike between Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown and has three grown children, all dentists.

Treasurer: Barbara Gibson.(bio pending)

Recording Secretary: Doug Perks. Doug teaches JCS community ed class on Jefferson County History; lectures to community on local history; former board member/director of Historic Shepherdstown Commission, Harpers Ferry Historical Association (board president), and Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission; director of Jefferson County Historical Society; designed the Parks As Classrooms Educator's Guide and the Niagara Movement Educator's Guide for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park; coordinated the J. R. Clifford Youth Discovery Tent during the August 2006 Niagara Movement Centennial Commemoration at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park; county coordinator of the School House Ridge Elementary Program - a hands-on education experience in Civil War History for all Jefferson County 5th grade students; developed and coordinated Burr Farm Days (for all Jefferson County 4th grade students) and Prepared For Success (for Jefferson & Berkeley County 8th grade students) while education coordinator for the Harpers Ferry Historical Association. Doug was recently elected to the Board of Directors of Friends of Happy Retreat..

Corresponding Secretary: Betsy Wells is a direct descendant of John Augustine Washington (1736-1787) brother of George Washington. Bushrod Corbin Washington of Claymont Court is her great, great, great grandfather She has a degree in accounting from George Mason University and is one of Charles Town’s leading Realtors. Betsy is the granddaughter of William Fontaine Alexander who joined Washington, Alexander and Cook, general insurance, after twelve years as County Clerk of Jefferson County. W. F. Alexander was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates 1939-1941. Since moving to Charles Town in 1996, Betsy has been active in community activities. She is on the Board of Friends of Happy Retreat and is a member of the Washington Heritage Trail Board of Trustees. She is secretary/treasurer of the Charles Town Tree Board and a former Charles Town Historic Landmarks Commissioner. Betsy enjoys renovating old houses, gardening and reading. She is a member of the Dolley Madison Garden Club and secretary/treasurer of the Friday Book Club. She started the Charles Town Christmas Parade of Horses in 1996 and chaired Christmas in Historic Charles Town in 1998.

Curator: Hugh Voress. Hugh is a native of Charleston, WV. He holds a BA degree from WV University and a Masters in Bacteriology/Biochemistry from Kansas State University. He is a veteran of World War II, serving three years in the Army Air Corps medics. He served 30 years as a Technical Information Officer with the Atomic Energy Commission and one of its successor agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He has been the Membership Chairman for the Jefferson Co. Hist. Society for over 20 years. He has been very interested in the history of Jefferson Co., WV and served on the Bicentennial Committee of Charles Town in 1986 and the Bicentennial Committee of Jefferson Co. WV in 2001. He is an avid genealogist and has prepared numerous family histories. He is a treasurer of the General Adam Stephen Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution as well as the WV State Registrar of the West Virginia Society, Sons of the American Revolution. He is a member of the Charles Town Library Board and has been active with the Meals on Wheels program, having driven for them for the past 25 years..

Members

Bill Drennen. A native West Virginian, Bill earned a BA in architecture at Yale in 1964, was ordained a minister of Universal Life Church in 1969, and earned an MA in humanities at Marshall University in 1993. He served in the U.S. Navy in Panama and Vietnam and then was employed in various capacities as founding Vice-President of Communications Corps, Inc. in Washington DC, helping to create over 100 films. He later served as President of the Briar Mountain Coal and Coke Company in Charleston, WV. In 1989 he joined the State Historic Preservation Office staff and was later appointed Commissioner of Culture and History for West Virginia until 1997. Between 1997 and 2002 he served as a history instructor at West Virginia State College. Having just retired as a minister in the Universal Life Church, he now devotes his time to writing and meditating on human evolution and is currently employed by Home Hill Corporation, C&D Enterprises, Ltd., and Greg Didden Associates, Inc.--Realtors. He is also a consultant with Drennen & Jones: “Integration in America, and inter-racial communications. Bill is a former president of the Jefferson County Historical Society and a member of several local organizations, including the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Charleston Milling, Faces of Appalachia Advisory Board, Rotary Club of Shepherdstown, Cress Creek Country Club, and Gateway New Economy Council.

Curt Mason, also editor, The Guardian Newsletter. Curt is a native of Pasadena, California and earned a BS from Oregon State University and an MS in Physical Oceanography from Texas A&M. He retired from the federal government with thirty-six years service as a coastal oceanographer. During his career he served in various research and managerial positions planning and directing major programs for the Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. He received the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 1998 for his work coordinating National Disaster Reduction budget initiatives within NOAA and the Department. Curt's interests in historic preservation led him to restore three historic properties, two of which are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. One of them, White House Farm in Summit Point, WV, is his current home and dates to 1742. Another was his family home in Pasadena, California; the oldest structure in the city. He worked with an historic architect and the California Historic Preservation Office to list it in the National Register and managed its restoration after it was damaged by the Northridge earthquake. He is currently President of Friends of Happy Retreat, a non-profit corporation established to acquire, preserve, and manage the ancestral home of Charles Washington; a member of the South Jefferson Public Library Board; and a member of the Shenandoah Region Chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America and the BMW Club of America..

Susannah Buckles Flanagan.

James (Jim) L Glymph Jr. JCHS Magazine Editor. Jim Glymph came to Jefferson County with his Father in 1964 to develop Riverside and later Avon Bend, both Shenandoah River communities. In 1994, Jim moved to Avon Bend to live. He retired from the Federal government in 1998 after 33 years as a data/database administrator. Jim was also an adjunct assistant professor in Information Technology at the Northern Virginia Community College for over 20 years. As the great grandson of a Confederate veteran, his real passion is the War For Southern Independence. He is a relic hunter, collector and historian of the period. A portion of his collection is in the Jefferson County Museum. Jim is a member of the Henry Kyd Douglas Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, the General Adam Stephen Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution and is vice-president of the Old Charles Town Library board.

Bob O’Connor has a bachelor's degree from Northern Illinois University. He has 25 years experience working in Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in tourism and public relations. He currently works for both the City of Charles Town and the Jefferson County Convention and Visitors Bureau. He serves as Chairman of the City of Charles Town Heritage Festival, and the City of Charles Town Grants Committee, and is a certified grant writer. He is on the Board of Directors for the Jefferson County Historical Society and a Board Member of the Washington Heritage Trail. Bob is a former Board member and National Awards Chairman for the Travel Industry Association of America. He is responsible for founding the Independence Day Patriotic Symphony Concert and Fireworks and the Memorial Illumination, both at Antietam Battlefield. He is also the author of "The Perfect Steel Trap Harpers Ferry 1859", a historical novel about the John Brown raid, trial, and execution. He is also the author of the historical novel "The Virginian Who Might Have Saved Lincoln", the story of Ward Hill Lamon, who was born in Summit Point, grew up in Mill Creek (Bunker Hill) and was Abraham Lincoln's personal bodyguard.

Evelyn M .E. Taylor. Evelyn is an author of African American church history and an administrator at the Brookings Institution in Wash., D.C. She is also a third-generation missionary, as her mother and paternal grandmother were missionaries before her. She has served on short-term missions to Kenya, South Africa, India, Jamaica and Canada. Since the late 1980's, she has worked with local and regional prison ministry initiatives, coordinated women’s ministry conferences and retreats, and frequently conducted seminars mainly in women’s ministry both regionally and internationally. Since 1997, Evelyn has chaired the Charles Town Historic Landmarks Commission. She serves as a member of the board of directors of the Middle Atlantic Regional Gospel Ministries, Inc, is a member of the Jefferson County Board of Education’s Diversity Committee, and the N.A.A.C.P. Trained as an educator, she holds degrees from Shepherd College (B.A.) and the University of the District of Columbia (M.A.), and has studied at Washington Bible College, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School, and the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. She has published several articles and books concerning the history of African Americans in West Virginia and was honored by the West Virginia State Women’s Commission as one of 31 women included in American Sampler: West Virginia’s African American Women of Distinction.

Walter Washington is a direct descendent of Samuel Washington (1734-1781), brother of President George Washington and Charles Washington. He has a law degree from American University and is a practicing attorney in Charles Town. He is currently the President of the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission and is on the Board of the Jefferson County Historical Society. He is also a Board member of West Virginia University Hospitals and is Secretary of West Virginia University Hospitals East. Walter is the owner of Harewood, Samuel Washington's home built in 1770 near Charles Town..

Committees.

The standing committees of the Society called for in the by-laws are the Executive Committee, chaired by the President, Carmen Creamer; the Nominating Committee, chaired by the Vice-President, Jim Gibson; and the Publications Committee, chaired by Hugh Voress;. The others are established and maintained as needed by the President and at present include the following committees and chairs: Finance, Barbara Gibson; Programs, Betsy Wells; Marketing/Communications, Curt Mason; Education and Tourism, Doug Perks; Historic Preservation, Walter Washington; Editorial (The Magazine), Jim Glymph; Membership, Hugh Voress; and Archives and History, Hugh Voress.