Special Collections Library
The Waters House History Center
12535 Milestone Manor Lane
Germantown, MD 20876
301-515-2887
The library collections at the Waters House History Center include Montgomery County census transcripts for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 and 1900. Books on Maryland genealogy include: Brumbaugh's Maryland Record's, Barnes' Maryland Marriages and Baldwin's Calendar of Wills. The library has most of Bill Hurley's original manuscripts from his Our Maryland Heritage Series. Special collections include author Rachel Carson, Gail Greco (cookbooks), Roy Hoopes & others.
On June 30, 2003, MCHS took possession of the William Mills/Montgomery County Public Schools Photography Collection. This extensive collection comprises approximately 350,000 images primarily dating from 1968 to 1999. Most are black & white, but there are also forty boxes of color slides. Fortunately, all but 1 1/2 file drawers have been fully catalogued. Because the collection is so well organized and indexed, it should be immediately useful to anyone researching schools, teachers, school architecture & curriculum studies for the period covered. MCHS is grateful to William Mills and the Montgomery County Public Schools for thinking of MCHS before the dumpster, and to Rob Jensen, library volunteer, who had no idea what he was getting himself into when he volunteered to help move the collection.
In addition to the new photo collection, the Thomas O'Reilly Architectural Collection, consisting of 800 of Mr. O'Reilly's architectural drawings from a 40 year career in Montgomery County; as well as his architectural library, were moved. The new collection of county land surveyor plants, with over 750 documents, also came. These two resources have not yet been processed and catalogued, but as soon as they are, they will be accessible to researchers. These collections should prove valuable to anyone doing research into land use and suburbanization. The library also has bound back issues of the Express Newspapers dating from 1986 to 1990.