Saving pictures of the past for the future
Pair of dedicated historians devote hours to digitizing thousands of old photos
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| Almost every Wednesday, Pat Gorman (left) and Rick Munson work at the computers in the basement of the Loveland Museum in Dixon, digitizing thousands of donated photos. Their goal is to create a database that allow anyone searching their genealogy to have the corresponding photos pop up and be printed. (Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@saukvalley.com) |
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DIXON – Three women stand in a row, each holding a shotgun and focused on the target in front of them.
One readies her shot and fires a bullet – or at least, Pat Gorman and Rick Munson speculate that she did.
The women in the black-and-white photo had stood on what might be the bank of the Rock River for target practice more than 100 years ago.
The photo – found in a box of glass negatives and digitized – is now the background on one of the computers sitting in the basement at the Loveland Museum, 513 W. Second St. in Dixon.
Just about every Wednesday morning, Gorman and Munson lose themselves in photos, guessing who the people are and following some of the more frequent characters from frame to frame.
“Look how nice they’re dressed and they’re sitting in trees,” Munson said, hitting a key to bring up new photos.
The three women are back, still in their 1890s dresses with a man, who Munson and Gorman think might have been working a moving target by pulling a string.
“There out there in the boat in the swamp water wherever that’s at. Look at that: sitting in the jungle in Sunday hats.”
Gorman cuts in: “That’s all they had to wear.”
When the two are together, that’s how it goes. One stories triggers another story, a story reminds them of a photo, and hours pass in the small basement room.
“You get lost down here doing this,” Munson said.
“If we hadn’t stopped to look at the pictures, we would have been done with this a long time ago,” Gorman added.
The glass negatives belonged to the Howell family, as in the family the Dixon Park District strip along the Rock River is named after, as in the hardware store and the pipe organs.
The box isn’t just full of family photos of days at the park. Resting on top is a little hammer with the words Coffee Dan’s on it. They don’t know what it was for or why it was there.
There also are early X-rays of hands and animals.
“You can see his ring there,” Munson said with a laugh.
X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a Nobel prize winner, in 1895.
But often the photos lead to more questions.
Gorman wonders whether the X-ray of a cat is one of the same cats pictured in many of the photos, identified as Deer Empty and Shoebutton.
On another computer, he flipped through portrait after portrait, none of them with names.
“It drives you nuts,” Munson said.
Some of the Howell photos are dated, and sometimes there even are names.
“We’re lucky,” Munson said. “The ones in the sleeves there, there’s a little information of what’s in them. It gets you, and you can tell they’re all about the same timeframe.”
Anytime there’s information to go with it, Gorman and Munson add it to the photo’s description.
Their goal is to create a database so that anyone hunting down their genealogy can search an ancestor and have the digitized photo pop up and printed. Then, if they like, the Loveland staff can pull out the original for them.
They’ve digitized more than 5,000 photos over 4 years, he said.
But they’re not waiting for ancestors – or even sometimes the person pictured themselves – to come find them.
In one photo, a young girl holds a war bond she purchased during World War II.
“Here’s a young lady who is really helping Uncle Sam,” the caption says.
“Instead of buying candy, gum and all those other goodies, she saves her pennies and buys war bonds and is pictured above with the second bond she has purchased with her own money. This heartbreaker is Sandra K. Carenen, 3 years old.”
They found her out in California.
“She was crying on the phone,” Gorman said.
The photo had turned up as part of the Green River Ordinance Plant exhibit at the Dixon Historic Center.
The plant, open for only 3 1/2 years, had been contracted to build munitions during WWII.
“When you work on the same project for months and months and months, – I must sound crazy but – you know these people,” Gorman said. “You just put yourself there.”
It’s not the only project the two are working on.
The Lee County Genealogical Society and volunteers around the country are indexing old issues of local newspapers, both those that still exist and ones that went out of business, including the Dixon Telegraph, the Dixon Daily Star, the Amboy News and the Ashton Gazette.
The genealogical society, which has its office at 111 S. Hennepin Ave. in Dixon, had 293 members in 2011.
“We go through the paper page through page, and anytime there’s a page we put it in a database, obituaries, articles, and when your ancestors come in, it’ll have Jan. 17, page 5, column 2,” Gorman said.
There’s a complete database of all gravestones in the county, and they’re working to add photos.
“These tombstones, the older ones are hard to read,” Gorman said. “They fade from weathering.”
Some of the photos, too, have aged. Some look as though the edges started to dissolve.
“That’s the emulsion from the water,” Gorman said. “They got rained on. We just barely saved these.”
There were old glass plates, too, found when a tree fell on a garage. Someone found them when they went into fix the garage and brought them to Munson.
To visit
The Loveland Museum, 513 W. Second St., is open 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. For more information, call 815-284-2741.
The Lee County Genealogical Society’s office at 111 S. Hennepin Ave. in Dixon is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; and 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays. For more information, call 815-288-6702.
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