The best source of general information about our collection is the publication of the Huron County Historical Society titled "Huron Historical Notes 2007: Repository of Blyth History" 47 pp.
The Society has reprinted this publication and copies are available from The Citizen weekly newspaper office in Blyth as well as the Huron County Museum in Goderich. They cost $8.00.
Our repository began as a simple act of listing the names of the Blyth people we knew or knew about. Then we began adding information about them. Then came some pictures. Then people began contributing items and more information. We tried to put some time boundaries on the collection: "We'll focus on 1850 to 1900!" we declared. But then we received a whole box of school information which came close to the present time.
Finally, we dropped all the boundaries and opened the collection process to "everything about Blyth". As we have said many times, one persons comment to us told us that we were onto something very important. This lady told us that her family had been in the Blyth area from the beginning, had contributed to the growth and development of the village in a low key way, and yet they were never mentioned in any of the histories or the stories about the village.
This changed our focus to something like "NO BLYTH FAMILY LEFT BEHIND!"
Our goal now is to be able to respond to the request of any descendant of persons who ever lived in or around Blyth with a significant amount of information. We are getting very closer to achieving that goal, but there is more information needed. We appeal to local residents, former residents, and others who know something about Blyth to come forward with "stuff". We accept donations, we scan or copy items that you want to keep, handwritten family stories also welcome.
Recent discoveries of old Blyth Standards, (back to 1894) when we get a chance to analyze all of them, will provide us with an enormous amount of "new" old information which we assumed would never be found. (Many of these papers are off being microfilmed and digitized.)
We receive contacts from far and wide requesting family and other information about the old days of Blyth. We have visitors, too, who come to see the collection, to seek specific information, and to bring their information to us to fill in the gaps we have. These people have come from across Ontario and Canada, and some from USA are planning to visit us.
The size and scope of the collection is surpising to us as well as to visitors when we consider the small population of the place. It consists of many three-ring binders (about 150), many file cards (approx. 10,000), a collection of maps of Blyth showing the entire village and separate maps of the surveys of various parts of the village, close to 15 GB of computer information, along with a few artifacts, the largest of which is an antique portable typewriter which belonged to the publisher of the Blyth Standard in 1894 to 1906.
The question is constantly in our minds as to where we are going to put this collection when we are no longer able to work at it. We want it to be in a safe place where it will be looked after well, where it will (ideally) continue to grow, and where it is accessible to people doing research on the village or its families, and in a way that makes it easy to find the information being sought.
There are such places, but the best of them are full and do not have the space. Some places have the space, but do not instill confidence that material will be looked after properly. There are places which could contain this collection along with other Blyth material, but there is no plan for staffing it and maintaining that kind of facility.
In the meantime, we carry on collecting, recording, filing, researching, answering questions, asking more questions, and most of the time enjoying it all to the full.
We think every community should have such a collection. It provides services that no history book, no museum, and no county archive could (or should) provide.
Perhaps what we need is a facility to accommodate all of our community collections.
Please leave comments or write to hbvodden@ezlink.on.ca
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