Are the collections of the East Granby Public Library’s Historical Room unusual? No. Unique? Yes. As is typical of many of the small towns in Connecticut, East Granby has a local history collection housed in the town’s public library. And though this town’s history is not so unusual for a rural New England community, it is unique to East Granby. As such, the library’s history room provides an important example of what is possible and valuable in having a local history collection in the local public library.
The East Granby Historical Room has been a part of the Public Library since 1983 when the town first published a local history book. Betty Guinan, the co-author of the history, just happened to be the Director of the library and she wished to make the source material from the project available to the public. The history room began at that time, thanks to private donations and the continuous work of Mrs. Guinan who, now retired as librarian, still works on the history collection. She is assisted by Anne Borg, former assistant director of the Kent Memorial Library in Suffield where she, similarly, still works on Suffield’s local history collection.
When the town of East Granby built a new library building, the town chose to build a bigger and better room for the history collection. Guinan and Borg provided input for the eventual design of this space and the town listened to their advice. This is not a stuffy, disorganized room with a static collection, but a room with a growing collection of materials donated by town residents and researchers. And unlike the plight of some history rooms, care is taken to properly house, catalog, and index new materials as they come in. In particular, the photograph collection is well organized and safely preserved.
This sort of care costs money and few small public libraries have this in abundance. Luckily, private donations help cover much of the Historical Room’s ongoing costs, but the town library has a line item specifically for history room expenses and no matter how small the amount of money, this establishes an important commitment by the town to support this project in the future.
As is typical of many local collections, East Granby’s includes maps, genealogies, local, regional, and state histories, family files, church documents, cemetery records, street directories, account books, slides, and photographs. One of the more unique items include title searches for the town’s historic homes. These searches are indexed by owner, so researchers can find out who owned what and when. Real estate agents have found this resource especially useful for finding out the previous ownership of historic houses. Also valuable and somewhat rare in small-town collections is an oral history collection. These tapes, with transcripts, were part of the material generated during the research for the recent town history project. Another unusual holding is the original Civil War letters of Sidney Hayden, a volunteer in Connecticut’s 16th infantry regiment and an unfortunate veteran of battlefield defeats and of Andersonville Prison. He returned from the war only to die a week later from the diseases contracted while a prisoner.
Every town has at least one or two unique historic places and East Granby is no exception. Old Newgate Prison and Copper Mine, owned and operated by the State of Connecticut as a tourist site, lies in the northwest part of town. Researchers use the public library’s history collections for source material on the prison and the history room’s documents have helped establish some new and fascinating historic finds. First, with the help of old photos, documents, and oral testimony, historians recently rediscovered the small prisoner’s graveyard. This search provided the New York Times with a great story. For those interested, the article is available via an iCONN for “New-Gate Prison”. Similarly, through various documents, Guinan and others believe they have found the true location of the Copper Mine’s stamping mill where men processed the mine’s ore in the 1700’s. Though originally believed the be in Simsbury, maps indicate that the site is probably in East Granby.
As is so often true of the history collections in small towns, much of true value of the collections is to be found in the people that work or volunteer their time there. Guinan, for example, is the official Town Historian and is always ready to assist researchers and genealogists no matter where they are from. Guinan and Borg answer mail, phone, and e-mail reference questions and will assist in searching for specific information. In return they only ask that researchers provide them with copies of any material written or published that the researchers eventually produce.
There are bigger local history collections (Suffield’s is a good example), and there are collections with more primary materials, more photographs, and more resources on general Connecticut history. But what you won’t find in any other local history collection is so much useful local history and local genealogy material about East Granby and it environs. This is what makes these collections so valuable. Nowhere will you find as much materials and expertise on the history of a specific area than in a local history collection. And nowhere will this valuable information be more available for use than in the local public library. A collection locked away in a building not open or accessible to the public is of no value to a community’s citizens. In most cases, the public library is the best place a local history collection can be.
The East Granby Historical Room is open by appointment. See the East Granby Public Library’s website http://www.egpl.org/ for more details.
An edited version of this article appeared previously in
Connecticut Libraries.
No comments:
Post a Comment