Those interested in local history are invited to attend the annual community open house at the Tri-County Heritage Library (TCHL), 4979 Twin Valley Road, Elverson, on Saturday, April 27, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free, and light refreshments will be served.

Featured during this year's open house will be collections from two area families - the Plank Collection and the McCord/Bard Collection. The Planks were a prominent family in Morgantown, and their collection spans from the 1920s to the 1980s. Tom McCord was a local photographer and a history buff.

"The Plank house, (which has since been torn down), stood at Route 10 and Route 23 in the center of Morgantown," noted Mark Zerr, executive director of the Hay Creek Valley Historical Association (HCVHA), which acquired the library from the Tri-County Heritage Society (TCHS) in 2021. "Tom McCord had a photography business in Elverson in the 1890s."

McCord's wife, Hazel, was the daughter of one of the Bard brothers, who was part of an acrobatic troupe during the early 20th century. "The Bard family were acrobats. They were part of a circus and (performed) internationally," noted Zerr. "We have some really great pictures of the Bards and some ads and programs from where they were performing."

He added that John Bard, one of the three brothers who performed in the circus, later ran a chicken farm near Joanna after his retirement. One of the photos in the collection features John doing a handstand on the roof of his Joanna farmhouse.

Both the Plank and McCord collections were recognized by the Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories, a project of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that aims to highlight collections held by private nonprofit organizations in the five-county region of Philadelphia.

Also at the open house will be a display about local businesses that have had the same owners or the same location for more than 40 years, as well as a collection of Native American artifacts found at a farm near Morgantown.

Offered for sale will be a book titled "The Morgantown Quilt," which tells the story of the one-of-a-kind Morgantown quilt, with 32 squares, that was created by volunteers from the former Morgantown-Caernarvon Historical Society, which later became the TCHS. The quilt, which took 18 months to embroider and quilt, was completed in 1974.

The book, which was researched, written and assembled by volunteers from TCHS and HCVHA, features color photos that show each embroidered square depicting local historical sites; photos, drawings or paintings of those sites; and information on each site depicted. The book also contains as biographies of the embroiderers, who were all women who lived in the vicinity of Morgantown in the early 1970s.

The TCHL houses records from Berks, Chester and Lancaster counties. It is open on Tuesdays from 1 to 5 p.m. or by appointment. Visitors may search through various history books, magazines, journals, maps and photographs of local historical interest. These records include church, cemetery and tax records and published genealogies.

"(During the open house), people can get into the library and check things out. You can't do research during the open house, but you can come in and ask questions and ask what our library features," said Zerr.

For further information about the library, visit http://www.facebook.com/TriCountyHeritageLibrary. Those with questions or people who would like to donate items to the library may email info@haycreek.org or call 610-286-7477.