Here at the museum, we get lots of requests for information related to area houses. People have gotten increasingly interested in the histories of their homes due to programs on cable channels and the do-it-yourself remodeling movement. We’d love to be able to help people with their requests, but we have a problem. House history has never been collected in any systematic way. While our collections contain some photos of houses and a dribble of house history, there is nowhere near what we should have given the number of homes in the county.
So, we’re asking for your help in expanding this part of our collections. We’d like to start by collecting photos of county homes. Any and all homes, not just the big, fancy ones. Ideally, we’d like to have one shot per side, but we’ll be happy with one clear photo of a house, either past or present. While we prefer originals, we’ll also accept high-quality color photocopies in case you don’t want to give up the original.
If we start now, within 50 years the material we collect will be of great use to future researchers. (It will likely be useful long before that, too.) If you have house photos you’d like to share, contact us at 320-632-4007.