The Guelph Mercury a Valuable Resource

You may no longer receive your Guelph Mercury at home, but the Mercury is not lost despite its closure earlier this year. It still exists at the Guelph Public Library.

In my experience as an Archivist / Librarian, I see how it serves our customers in a multitude of ways. Customers often use the local paper to look up articles about businesses, individuals and other topics.  For genealogists the Mercury is used to look up obituaries, births, and marriage announcements.  For others the Mercury is useful to research a business for advertisements placed in the local paper.  In one case a local author sought and examined poems submitted to the local paper that he later republished.

We also have many of the original photographic negatives and prints taken by the Guelph Mercury over the years. Our customers can view many of these images online.  The photographs were taken to support newspaper stories and have value for research purposes.  Customers make use of our “Search the Archives” feature to locate old photographs.  It may be a photo of themselves at a hockey event, a wedding or of a relative celebrating an important anniversary.  We might even have a picture of the house you or a relative grew up in.  By request, the library will provide high resolution copies for a few dollars.

This photograph shows a group of farmers on a tour of the Guelph Mercury. This photograph was taken 1961. Photograph appears courtesy of the Guelph Public Library Reference code F45-0-5-0-0-22.

 

The Guelph Mercury has closed, but the paper is still a valuable resource and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. In fact, I can guarantee that tomorrow or may be the next day we will receive a reference question by email or phone where the Mercury just might be the resource that provides the answer.

Genealogy and Photographs

This photograph shows an apple barrel with my uncle sitting on top of it. In the background is my great aunt.

I have written in previous blog posts about the library’s vast collection of photographs, but not so much about how photographs can help you in the context of your genealogical research.

Photographs are quite useful for research purposes and are often sought by libraries and archives for that very reason. They can complement details from textual sources and can act as a kind of spring board to learning more. An example from my own family’s history can illustrate this point.

When I first started researching my family’s history I learned that my great- grandfather and grandfather were coopers. This I discovered by asking my grandmother questions about this photograph. As it turned out my grandfather and grandmother met each other while he was searching for hoops to make his barrels. The hoops are the parts that go around the barrel and help hold it together which can be seen in the above photograph. The barrels were used to store and ship apples, and at the time, helped supplement their income. Making an apple barrel can still be seen today at Ross Farm Museum in Nova Scotia.

These are just some of the things I discovered just by asking a few questions about one photograph. What have you discovered in your own research? Perhaps you would share it with us.

Some photographs are just attractive

Guelph Mercury photograph

My favorite time of the year is spring and summer. However, winter is not so bad. If anything snow and ice can make for some interesting photographs. Take the Guelph Mercury. Over the years the Mercury has taken thousands of photographs and not all of them were used for news related purposes. Some reporters and or photographers liked to take some interesting images of the landscape because something caught their attention.

I believe this to be the case with the photograph shown on the left taken January 1975 somewhere in Puslinch Township. It shows a river or body of water and trees along the edge during what was a mild winter. If you look at the water you can see a mirror like image of some of the objects in the photograph.

You might wonder what is the historical value of such a photograph? Sometimes a photograph may not hold a lot of what archivists call evidential or informational value. In this case you might argue that the photograph above has what is referred to as artifactual value. This type of value looks at the visual quality and or subject rarity of the image being appraised. Such photographs are often kept because they are attractive as opposed to documenting the activities or functions of the creating organization or person.

Perhaps you have these kinds of photographs among portraits of your aunts, uncles, and grandparents. If you do, they might be worth keeping.

King Kong in Guelph

King Kong on the loose in Guelph

The things I like about photographs is how they can tell a story, reveal important details, be visually appealing or even a little on the funny side. This summer as two of our students worked on digitizing the Guelph Mercury Collection one photograph caught my attention. This photograph was not of a famous person visiting Guelph such as a well known movie or pop star. Instead it was of the well known character King Kong. Apparently he visited Guelph one December day in 1976 to promote a more modern version of his film.

You might think that historians and or archivists just work with boring materials including photographs. I can tell you with some degree of authority that this is more fiction than truth. I suppose we can be thankful for one thing. He was here to promote a movie and not to cause any amount of damage.

Scanning family photographs

Real Spirit of Christmas Knows No Age

This summer the library, with the help of two students employed through Young Canada Works, has been busy digitizing photographs from the Guelph Mercury.  The photograph on the left entitled Real Spirit of Christmas Knows no Age is one such example.  You might be thinking about scanning your own family photographs.  Here are some tips to get you started.

First, think about where all your photographs are.  Some may be in photo albums while others in boxes or in frames.  If you have a lot of photographs you might consider selecting only those you want to scan.  Scan at a high-resolution.  We typically scan our prints at 300 dpi.  If you are wondering about scanners we have employed the Canon 9950F  among some others.

Secondly, think about naming conventions for your scanned images.  Generally speaking use lower case alphanumeric characters and avoid the use of spaces, tabs or slashes.  End file names with established character extensions such as jpg or tif.  Most of our images are scanned as tif’s.  We create Lower resolution copies from the tif and save them as a jpg formatted record.

Lastly, make a plan to back up your digital reproductions.  You might wish to use online storage or an external hard drive.  You might remember that I mentioned SkyDrive in a previous blog, but other options exist.  For example, you can buy discs that are designed for long-term storage.  Regardless of where you store them I would still check your images at least once a year and always have a back up copy.

I hope this is useful advice. Have fun and remember to handle your originals carefully.

Rita MacNeil

This picture shows Rita MacNeil at Chapters. The photograph was taken by the Guelph Tribune in 1999.

Recently Rita MacNeil passed away and I could not help but feel sad with her passing.  May be it’s because of my maritime heritage and the fact that she, like me, was born in Nova Scotia.  I cannot sing like she could and nor would I try.  Nonetheless, I know many of the words to one of her biggest hits Flying On Your Own.  It’s like when I think of her my mind starts playing this song.  Of course there was more to her life than just this one song.

You might be wondering how this relates to Guelph.  Recently I have been working on the Guelph Tribune photograph collection.  Basically I have been trying to separate the negatives from the prints as they were housed together when the library acquired the material.  During this process I chanced upon a photograph of Rita MacNeil.  I immediately recognized her.  She was photographed at Chapters signing her book On a Personal Note.  What a great way to remember her with her visit to the Royal City.  She will be missed.

The Holly and the Ivy Guelph Mercury Photographs

This picture shows a rehearsal for The Holly and The Ivy at the Guelph Little Theatre.

Christmas is just around the corner and I could not help but think of all the photographs in the library’s holdings relating to Christmas.  Some of our photographs depict Santa Claus visiting children, people decorating homes and business or Christmas lights on the old city hall building. Many of these photographs were taken by the Guelph Mercury for stories and were published like the photograph seen on the right.  This image appeared in December 1960.

Set of The Holly and the Ivy produced by the Guelph Little Theatre.

Other photographs taken by the Mercury never made it to publication such as the one shown on the left.  This particular photograph was one of about ten filed in an envelope entitled Guelph Little Theatre – prepare for a production of The Holly and the Ivy.  It shows the set for the show.  Another photograph from that same envelope contains an image that depicts cast members getting their makeup and/or hair done.  This photograph can be seen below.

Guelph Little Theatre cast members preparing for The Holly and the Ivy.

These photographs were likely taken at the same time as the one published above.  Although the library works hard to provide access to many of our photographs, some remain hidden.  Please speak with the archivist to learn how you might search for additional Mercury photographs that never made it to publication.  It will be worth it.

Your Library Remembers: Veterans of the First World War

Canadian Veterans from the First World War are no longer with us, but they have not been forgotten.  A look back at history through photographs and unique textual records gives us pause to remember.

Veterans of the First World War

This picture, taken by the Guelph Mercury in 1975, shows a group of First World War Veterans at a legion banquet. Standing in the second row from left: Wilfred Campbell, Fred Pearse, Jack Milligan Sr., Campbell Richardson, Simmeon Holman, Ted Harrington, and Ernest Larter. Seated in the front row from right: Harry Hamilton, Jimmy James, Alec Lawrence, Alec Peattie and John Small.

As I saw it

In addition to photographs, the library holds original textual records written by those who served in the First World War.  As I saw it : incidents of World War One on the Western Front as seen by Leonard Little, is one such unique item.  Leonard Little enlisted in January 1916 in Guelph’s 29th Battery.  He was a signaller with the 29th and 35th batteries of the Canadian Field Artillery. This anthology includes pictures of the author and his cousin, Raymond Ure.

If you would like to learn more about our First World War veterans, you are invited to come view the display at the Main Library for the month of November,  As We Remember.

Researching your home in Guelph

Are you interested in learning some history about your home?  Researching a home’s history is of particular interest to many of our customers. The Guelph Public Library has some resources to help you.  I will mention four of these resources in this blog post.

One useful resource are the city directories for Guelph.  The directories can help you trace the approximate date of construction of a home by tracing the address back through time to when it first appeared.  You may even discover that a business once operated out of your home. City directories are typically arranged into two parts: an alphabetic listing of people’s names, and an alphabetic listing by street name.

A second useful resource are the City of Guelph assessment rolls.  Created to record property values, changes in value over time may indicate that construction took place in the home.  Early assessment rolls included information about the property owner often useful to genealogists.  The assessment rolls are arranged by year and then ward.  It’s helpful to know the ward the property is located on before you start your search.

A third resource is the Couling Inventory.  This inventory was created by Gordon Couling who inventoried a number of homes in Guelph built before 1927.  He provided brief details about the original owner, use, construction date, and building materials used. A picture was often provided with his descriptions.

Lastly, the library holds a large collection of photographs from the Guelph Tribune and Guelph Mercury.  Although these photographs were used to support newspaper stories, they can have other uses.  For example, a photograph can be useful if you are looking to restore certain aspects of your home that have since changed when it was first constructed.

These are just four resources available at your local library to research your home.  To learn more about these resources feel free to contact me for further information or assistance.  I can be reached at dhiltz@library.guelph.on.ca.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog Historically Guelph of the Guelph Public Library’s website.

Guelph’s Public Library local history collection is a treasure trove of historical research material for anyone interested in Guelph’s history. We have an amazing collection of photographs, unique textual records, including municipal records, and a family history collection.

We are excited to launch a blog about Guelph’s history as a means to share historical items that make Guelph a special place to live, work, and play. We hope that you will join us, learn with us, and provide comments and feedback to make the blog more successful.

We hope to hear from you soon.