Some of our most precious moments get captured in photographs. Before digital cameras came along, many people kept photos in picture frames or albums. Throughout many living rooms in homes across the country, you can still find displays like these. The problem now is that these photos are deteriorating. There could come a time, in […]
Browsing Posts in Photographs
– By Mary Alt After the Civil War, Ottawa County officials found they had veterans who needed a home. In May, a documentary film on The Ottawa County Poor Farm will have its premiere in Holland and Grand Haven. When the Ottawa County Poor Farm received its first resident in 1866, no one could have […]
It is springtime on “The Ridge” and the orchards are in bloom. The Ridge is an agricultural area northwest of Grand Rapids. This time of the year is the most beautiful as the orchards are in bloom with apple, peach, pear and plum trees setting their crop for the year. The agricultural area northwest of Grand […]
The Grand Rapids History & Special Collection Department was established in 1904 as the Ryerson Library-was being completed. When planning this “new” library, board members ensured that a “Michigan Room” be set aside in which to preserve collections. Currently, the archives contain over 450 processed collections, accessed with a request slip. My favorite is the […]
The fourth floor of the downtown Grand Rapids Ryerson Library is a genealogist’s dream. It is filled with a variety of family history resources from all states, eastern Canada and Europe. The very best thing anyone can do before going to any library is to research resources. Search grpl.org/history before going to the Grand Rapids’ […]
Through day-to-day accounts in Loren M. Page’s journal, kept from 1847 to 1852, get a peek at life at the “north-end” of early Grand Rapids, now the Creston neighborhood. Accounts in the diary provide a detailed and personal look at upper and lower class life in the young city, and will be supplemented by photographs and […]
I have been wanting to visit Woodville, and Pemberville, Ohio for several years. My grandparents lived in the area for several years and my father was born in Woodville and attended school there.
We all wonder, from time to time, what will become of all our genealogical charts and stories and books and mementoes. What will happen to your stuff?
For Christmas this year (2016), my sister sent me an old recipe box stuffed with letters to my father in the 1940’s and 1950’s. One of the first ones I pulled out, on December 25, described my grandmother’s Christmas in 1954. She lived in Niagara Falls Ontario, the community where she, and later my father, […]
I was cleaning out stuff in the attic. I had a thousand black and white negatives with contact prints from fifty years ago. I kept the ones I wanted, about twenty, and the rest I threw away into a box. Since it was the season, I wrapped the box up in Christmas paper and gave […]
