Brittany Zenge landed in Petersburg on October's first Sunday, carting her worldly possessions off the ferry through the dark of night. A few days later, she was starting her new job, settling in as the new director of the borough's Clausen Museum and happily chasing new threads of history.

"I love knowing everything about our past and how it relates to our future," she said. "That really set the tone for what I want to do as a career."

Zenge said she recently had graduated from Monmith College in Illinois with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and classical studies, continuing her studi...