Thanks for the memories - Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster

His name was Herodotus (484 - c. 420 BCE) and he went down in history as the first historian. He lived in the Greek city of Halicarnassus and wrote The Histories, a methodical record of the Greco-Persian Wars. In China, the first historian there, Zuo Qiuming (556-451 BCE), penned an account of the spring and autumn periods.

 

These men, and legions afterwards, are the ones who initiated the practice of recording events for posterity. The histories that they wrote have served to inform the human race about its heritage. 

 

There are many types of histories, other than scholarly endeavours, such as diaries, autobiographies, family trees as well as local histories, the ones that are about the communities in which you and I live.

 

In recalling early Huron County settlement times, the Lizars sisters, Kathleen and Robina, wrote In the Days of the Canada Company - 1825-1850. Although the book was not published until 1896, it gives a peek into the social life in the 1850s and 1860s in Colborne and Goderich.

 

One interesting raconteur was Gavin Green, a notable Goderich resident who ran Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. Born in 1862 and almost reaching the century mark, he lived through the early days of local settlement. He set down his copious remembrances of family life, school days, and community activities on the backs of old calendar pages in his later years, producing The Old Log School and The Old Log House. Through his stories, the reader is transported to an earlier time.

 

Not to be forgotten are the Tweedsmuir books. Women’s Institute groups have undertaken to collect and preserve the history of their area. Many researchers find these scrapbooks to be a valuable resource when compiling community history books.
Huron County has been fortunate to have an active historical society ever since its current iteration in 1964. Its purpose is “to discover, collect, preserve and perpetuate historical information related to the discovery and settlement of Huron County”. Each year, this group publishes its Notes, a valuable resource for those interested in local history. The new kid on the block is the Wingham and Area Historical Society. Though it is just a few years old, it is an active group with ambitious plans for the future.
One type of history that involves a multitude of subjects is that of a local history book. Most, but not all, local townships, towns and villages have produced books of memories. In most cases, these local history books are the work of a committee of dedicated volunteers. Many times there are those who take the leadership role in the creation of these leaves of history. 

 

Locally, Jeanne Perrie Kirkby authored Morris Township, Past to Present in 1981. In her forward, she states that, “through the study and classification of facts, we are ever led to a fresh understanding of the present situation.” Three decades later, another history of the area was published under the name of A Harvest of Memories which encompassed both Morris and Turnberry Townships.

 

Another name of a dedicated historian is that of Marian Zinn, who was born in Kinloss in 1927 and later lived in Huron County. In her lifetime as a farmer’s wife, school board trustee and enthusiastic community volunteer, she collected newspaper clippings, funeral cards and family histories that became the nucleus of several local history books. She piloted Frontier Ways to Modern Days (1976) and From Bush Trails to Modern Tales (1980), both books about parts of Ashfield and West Wawanosh Townships. Eventually, she worked with committees to publish Reflections of West Wawanosh (1996), A History of West Ashfield (1996), Kith and Kin of Kinloss (2003), and East Ashfield 1842- 2017 (2017).
 

When East Wawanosh published Wilderness to Wawanosh in 1992, Citizen newspaper founder and publisher Keith Roulston observed that, “the lights have been burning late in many East Wawanosh homes in the last week.… The book is the kind of permanent record descendants will seek a hundred years from now.” This history was followed up in 2017 with A Snippet in Time, a beautiful pictorial celebration published at the time of the 150th anniversary of the township.

 

Among other historic tomes that have been produced locally are Goderich Township’s two-volume set (1984), Tuckersmith’s Memories (1985), Colborne Connections (1986), a volume enriched with the storied photographs of R.R. Sallows, Our Story - from Ainleyville to Brussels (1997), and Lucknow’s The Place we call Home (2008). 
 

In Blyth, the 100th anniversary of the village was commemorated in A Village Portrait. Susan Street, along with her brothers Philip and David, as well as Sharon Ives, combed through newspapers and sought out folks with a long history of the village in order to produce a scrapbook type of memento. As Blyth approaches its sesquicentennial in 2027, its history from 1977 through to 2027 is being collected by a committee of interested citizens who meet regularly to compile the many chapters. Much work is yet to be done and now is the time for local residents to submit their contributions. Watch for announcements soon on how to add to this venture.

 

When Canada celebrated its centenary in 1967, there was a push in western Canada to set down on paper the memories of the pioneers. Because the prairie provinces were settled mostly in the latter half of the 19th century, many of the original pioneers and their offspring were available in the 1960s to help record the stories of the early days. These books are available online under the heading “ourroots” a collection maintained by the University of Alberta.

 

Whether it is a community history book, personal biography, scrapbook, diary or a family tree, all of these endeavours help give us more than just a glimpse of the past.