Historical society and library team up to digitize city’s past

by John Benson

A treasure trove of Twinsburg’s history is coming to life in the digital world.

Currently the Twinsburg Historical Society and Twinsburg Public Library have joined forces to digitize the former’s family photos and artifacts. Already scanned and getting ready for display are such important keys to the city’s past as the 1839 will from Aaron and Moses Wilcox deeding the land that became Twinsburg.

There’s also an invitation to Rev. Samuel Bissell’s 89th birthday party and hundreds of 19th century tintype photos from the Lane Family.

“Once this project is up and running smoothly, we will have one fantastic site for all of the world to gather their data about the history of Twinsburg, including old documents, bibles, wills, meeting documents, legislation and so on,” Twinsburg Historical Society President Andy Tomko said.

“Everything about Twinsburg. You can even view an original John Brown letter that we have on display at the museum.”

Twinsburg Historical Society’s mission is to collect, preserve and exhibit artifacts from the city’s past with the idea to foster connections to people and ideas for generations to come. That mission is taking a giant step forward with the massive digitizing archive project.

“The library and the historical society have been collaborating on this endeavor for only roughly two months now,” Tomko said. “We started out with just genealogy records that we both have about Twinsburg families, but decided to add any old documents or pictures to the new website. This is just in its infancy.”

The effort came about when the Twinsburg Public Library approached the Twinsburg Historical Society with the notion of helping out. Out of that came a need to tackle what amounts to a gigantic pile of photos and documents from the community’s past.

“One of the things they talked about was digitizing things,” Twinsburg Public Library librarian Maggie Rose said. “Here at the Library, we have scanners and we’re pretty good at digitizing things and getting them in order. It’s kind of our job. So they have files and files of family history files.

“They’re literally just hanging file folders labeled by the family’s last name and materials relating to that family’s history in Twinsburg. These materials are un-cataloged and no one really knows what’s in there. It’s absolutely thrilling to have hands-on history of some big names in Twinsburg history.”

Rose said the project, which will soon appear on the Historical Society’s website (twinsburghistoricalsociety.org), as well as at the Twinsburg 200 webpage (twinsburg200.com), has just begun with a seemingly bottomless vault of files.

“There’s endless material,” Rose said. “This is a partnership that is not going to be over soon.”

Tomko said the Historical Society actually started digitizing is collection two years ago but lacked the manpower. Now he’s asking for volunteers to come forward to help the project.

“The main advantage is to share all of the history of Twinsburg that both the library and the society have in their possession,” Tomko said. “What’s nice about the historical society is that all we gather is history about Twinsburg. Most of our major artifacts have stories about the donor or their families, and all are unique to Twinsburg.”

Rose stressed the importance of the Twinsburg Historical Society’s digitizing archive project.

“It’s vitally important to maintain your community’s history,” Rose said. “Without knowing where you’ve been or how you started, it’s tough to decide in which direction you want to go.”

 

Featured image photo caption: Vintage family photos, like this late 1800s photo of (l-r) Ermina Jane Hanks Lane, Harriet Lane and Sherman Lane will be digitized and cataloged through a new partnership between the Twinsburg Historical Society and Twinsburg Public Library.