Historical Archives

Back in 2010, I wrote about all of the photos from The Fincastle Herald that were stored in plastic tubs.

At the time I was sifting through them, I and another history lover were contemplating a book together. However, I went back to college to finish up my masters degree, and she is pursuing a book on her own now, something different from what we had contemplated.

So the tubs of photos went into my barn, because I had no place else to store them. The newspaper office had no place to store them, either, and in fact the former newspaper owners had instructed the editor to throw the photos out.

But he had saved them, and until they were in my barn, they were in his.

Last spring, I was at a Botetourt Farm Bureau Women's Committee meeting when they mentioned they were eager to locate old photos of agriculture in the county. So I told them what was in the barn.

A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from Gwen Ikenberry, co-president of the Women's Committee. They were ready to deal with these pictures.

So we hauled them over to the Farm Bureau office.
 

There were nine tubs of photos. About half were loose and the other half were in folders with dates on them.

We set up apple boxes, courtesy of Ikenberry's Orchards, and created 21 different categories for the photos.

This is Elizabeth, who greatly enjoyed the work of sorting the pictures.

It was rather fun, for there was no way to not run across pictures of places and people you knew.

It was like a party all week, with various people in and out, putting pictures in boxes.

This is Gwen, who arranged everything and even took time off from work to deal with the pictures.

This is Toni, who also helped a lot.

I spent about eight hours over there helping to sort photos, but felt that was all the time I could give to the project. This was mostly because the old photos have a smell to them and were causing problems with my asthma, which I could ill afford. People don't realize how sick that makes me or how long it takes me to recover. 

In any event, the photos were sorted out, and some of the boxes went out to various historic groups, towns, or other civic organizations interested in preserving the pictures. The Farm Bureau Women's Committee kept all of the agriculture-related photos for their various projects.

Those with photos have been instructed to scan them and return them to the newspaper editor, where they will join the other unused photos.

Those unused photos went back into the newspaper editor's barn, where perhaps some day they will again see the light, and other folks with history on their minds will oo and ahh over the visuals.