William Mccoy History Internship

This week I took a lot of the general information I had compiled over the last week and focused it down. Despite Winter Garden being a somewhat small town there is still quite a wealth of knowledge about the people and places that I'm researching. For my movie theater project I have begun to write up captions that will appear with the objects and photos in the exhibit. While researching the theater project I have encountered a few conflicting sources and it has been interesting and rewarding to attempt to solve these incongruities through further research. For the other exhibit I have been working on, Winter Garden at Work, my supervisor and I decided that we would dedicate around half of the exhibit to citrus packing and growing since that was a very large industry in and around Winter Garden for much of its history. I began looking into the history of citrus around Lake Apopka and have gathered a lot of information about the first citrus farmers and how that industry has evolved,...

I am William McCoy an undergraduate student of history at UCF. This summer I am interning at the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation. This is my first experience with archive or museum work and I was really excited to begin working. This work seems perfect for me because I love history of all kinds. I would find almost anything old to be interesting, from a family photo to tax records. All items no matter how mundane they may seem have historical value. Although to some they may seem boring, I find them exciting because of what you can learn about our past through them.  My internship projects are to help put together some exhibits for the museum. Including one about the history of Winter Garden's movie theaters, and one about the various professions the people of Winter Garden have practiced in the past and today. In addition, I will accession items into the archive, write social media posts and other various tasks to help the foundation. Through my work I plan to gain knowledge of ...