House on Chester Hill
House on Chester Hill Granville Public Library

Too many people think history is as dry as dust.  All dates and wars and people in funny clothes with funnier hats.  Show them their street 100 years ago or a 50-year-old yearbook for their high school and you have their attention. Ask them if they can identify a house on their street or its former owner and you have a Watson and the game’s afoot.

With the Granville Public Library’s collection digitized, Dick Rowley took advantage of other services offered by Digital Commonwealth.  He took an Omeka workshop on creating online exhibits.   The Granville Historic Image Library is the result.  The images are the main attraction, but there’s also an ongoing project to upload the Catalog of Historic Document Collections and Books from the Granville Public Library’s Historical Room with links to already-digitized versions of the Historical Room collection on websites like Internet Archive.

Dick also started posting Mystery Monday and Flashback Friday photos to the Granville Forum on Facebook.  He encouraged Forum members to contribute information and photos.  He got both.  Posters identified one old house as the original Baptist church that was moved across the street, so the new church could be built.  Even better, this wonderful wedding photo shows multiple generations of Granville residents at the wedding of Helen Alvina Hansen and Charles Louis Drolett, Jr. Dick reports the photo owner had no idea who the people in the photo were.  By posting it, Granville’s “village elders” were consulted and able to identify everyone.  Amongst the “elders”?  One of the little girls in the photo.

Find A Grave is one of the most popular websites for genealogists and local history buffs.  Dick has used the website to spread the wealth of resources in the Granville collection.  A distant relation will be thrilled to find a photo of Nathan Fenn on his Find A Grave page.  Although, my favorite has to be the Weekly Report on the Conduct of… Melissa Phelps.  What a delight for any descendant of Melissa Phelps Gaines to discover this gem.

Some of the stories are more poignant.  In trying to locate the oldest house in Granville, Dick was sent a photo of a 1934 copy of the Granville Center News.  The News is a story in itself.  It was published by Newton kids who summered in Granville.  They report on a resident of the purported oldest building, Chapin Brown, who was “slightly crazy”.  A little research uncovered the man had served in the Civil War.  Post-traumatic stress disorder?  Perhaps.  We don’t always get the full story, but a lot more of Chapin Brown’s has been restored because someone asked about the oldest house in town.

Susan A. Phelon Barber, AEF, Army Nurse Corp
Susan A. Phelon Barber, AEF, Army Nurse Corp Granville Public Library

A more inspirational story comes as a result of Dick’s collaboration with the Woodlands Cemetery Association (WCA).  This is my favorite.  The Granville Historic Image Library, Historical Room, Granville Public Library provides the images and the WCA provides the profiles of the interred in their newsletter.  Susan A. Phelon Barber was born and raised in Granville.  She was educated in Westfield and became a teacher.  She moved to Maine to study nursing and joined the U.S. Army nursing corps during World War I.  She served in Europe until 1919.  She then moved to Los Angeles to serve as a private nurse. Eventually, she returned to live in Granville and work as a nurse in Westfield.  She married a high school classmate in 1930 at the age of 45.

These remarkable people lived in a small town, but hardly had small lives.  If they were lost for a while, they have now been restored.  You can do the same for your small Massachusetts town and Digital Commonwealth can help.  Give us a call.  Let’s restore some more stories.

1881 Lawrence High School football team
1881 Lawrence High School football team from Lawrence Public Library

 

April was a dark and gloomy month weather-wise.  Maybe that accounts for there only being three contributors this month.  The Boston Public Library added 1873 items to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee collection, bringing that collection up to over 5,000 items.  Boston College re-harvested over 80 items.  Lawrence Public Library contributed many small collections and one large one.  The latter is the Lawrence High School Athletic Department collection of over 130 team photographs.  You can see a very solemn 1881 football team on the left.  Maybe it’s because they appear to have been forced to pose in their long underwear and watch caps.  And that football looks more like a basketball.  How things have changed…

 

 

 

 

Boston College

1 new collection; 84 new items re-harvested

Boston Public Library

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Prints and Drawings – 9 items added to existing collection
Press Photography from the Brearley Collection – 753 items added to existing collection
Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee – 1873 items added to existing collection

Lawrence Public Library

A.W. Stearns – 1 item
Americanization Poster – 1 item
Antebellum Citations – 5 items
Civil War Women, Summer Institute 2008 – 3 items
Donovan Park – 1 item
Franklin Associates – 22 items
Lawrence High School Athletic Department – 132 items
Lawrence High School Classes – 2 items
Lawrence State Armory – 1 item
Lawrence, Mass. Board of Health, Records – 10 items
Lawrence, Mass. Engineering Department – 7 items
Lawrence, Mass. Flood of 1936 – 76 items
Lawrence, Mass. Glass Plate Negatives – 14 items
Lawrence, Mass. Textile Strike of 1912 – 13 items
Leonard Bernstein Poster – 2 items
Massachusetts Mayors’ Club – 1 item
New Deal Seminar, April 2008 – 3 items
Religion in Massachusetts Seminar, May 2008 – 12 items
Revolutionary War, Summer Institute 2008 – 1 item
Schenk Family – 1 item
Southern Slavery Seminar, November 2008 – 7 items

We’re very excited to present our newest promotion effort: Bookmarks!
We have two styles of bookmark designed to raise awareness about our wonderfully rich online resources. The Digital Commonwealth exists to advance the dissemination of collections from Massachusetts to a wider audience through shared resources and a single website. These bookmarks are a fun way to let libraries and other cultural institutions raise awareness about this resource with users.

Bookmark Design 1
Bookmark Design 1, front and back
Bookmark Design 2
Bookmark Design 2, front and back

If you’d like to share these with your users, we will send you stacks of bookmarks in either or both of the two designs. Please contact the Outreach Committee at outreach@digitalcommonwealth.org  with your preferences.