A Grant Brings New Life to Old Negatives

Recently, thanks to a grant from the Ohio Local History Alliance, we have been able to buy a scanner to be able to scan glass negatives and other photograph negatives that then can produce images to be placed on the Ohio Memory site at https://www.ohiomemory.org/ under the collection of Waterville Historical Society. At present there are 13 of the negatives on the site from the Lester Lyon Glass Negatives that we own. Lester Lyon was one our early amateur photographers when light sensitive glass plates were the only “film” available. These images are of the Waterville area in the early 1900s. We will soon be adding more of these images. You can view these by going to Ohio Memory and under the donating society search for the Waterville Historical Society. Or you can just search for the word “Lyon, Lester” to see them. By using the WHS name in the search you will also see items photographed when the Ohio History Connection came out to the Robbins House several years ago and took pictures of the World War I Veterans and the Albert Graf Collection of World War I clothing, letters to the family from the war, etc. There are also the Welcome Pray’s (early Waterville doctor) son’s letters home from the Civil War. For those you have to search for “Pray” as these items were scanned by the Toledo Library and are listed under their organization but in the location as to where the original items are located they state Waterville Historical Society. There are 34 items. These originals are carefully preserved at the Wakeman Archives.

We also have items on the PastPerfectOnline Collection. At present we have over 320 items on there. You can find these by going to our website at www.watervillehistory.org and to the tab called “Online Collection” and click on this. In the statement about the program there is a link that takes you to our collection. At this time you can do a random search or search by Archives, Photograph or Object to see the items. We are constantly adding to each of our multimedia platforms.

Also on the website we have video collection under “WHS Video” which tells about the Robbins House and Sargent House museums, walking tours, Waterville School, Wakeman Archives, Interurban Bridge, etc. We are open every Wednesday for 10-2 weather permitting and the last Saturday of May, June, July, August and September from 10-2 for those that would like to  view original material, research their family, learn more about the area, military information, maps and atlases or just come up to see what we have.  Our staff is there to welcome and assist visitors.