Delaware Historical Society documenting quarantine experiences

The Delaware Historical Society has launched a public history project to collect memories from Delawareans of all ages documenting their experiences dealing with the pandemic and quarantine.

COVID Chronicles – Delaware is a community journal designed to record this unprecedented event. State residents can write firsthand accounts and be a primary source for future generations of historians. Selected submissions will be posted on the website for others to see, and all submissions will be kept in the Delaware Historical Society archives. To add experiences to the journal, go to www.dehistory.org/covid-chronicles-delaware and follow #CovidChroniclesDE to see more.

While people live though this pandemic, journaling can be a therapeutic way to process how their lives have changed. Journals are also excellent primary sources which historians have relied on for hundreds of years. Chronicling experiences of daily life provides a source for record keeping and validates other accounts documented elsewhere in photographs, and television and news stories.

The Delaware Historical Society staff has provided prompts for participants to consider, such as, “When do you remember first hearing about the coronavirus or COVID-19? What were your original thoughts? When did you realize it was serious news that you could not ignore?”  

Organizers look forward to reading the wide range of firsthand accounts of daily activities including homeschooling, making masks, attending Zoom meetings and working directly in hospitals with friends and family struggling to recover from COVID-19.

For more information, go to www.dehistory.org.