Digital imaging shares decades of County history

Demorestville WI tagging for the hospital in 1920. -From the digital files at the Federation Womens Institutes of Ontario website

Decades of history have been re-formatted to be available to the public thanks to Women’s Institute members.

Members from Hastings and Prince Edward counties Women’s Institute hosted an Archival Tea last week in the Ameliasburgh Hall to celebrate the completion of the digitizing of more than 23,000 pages of its local Tweedsmuir Histories scrapbooks from the Prince Edward District and Hastings District. The women also honoured the Parrott Foundation for a $30,000 grant to complete the project.

The Tweedsmuir community history books were on display and a virtual tour of the FWIO website of what is now available was demonstrated by guest Irene Robillard, Digitizing Coordinator with Evelyn Peck.

The books vary in form from a simple scrapbook to an elaborate series of volumes bound in leather, wood or a more formal blue-and-gold cover. They include histories of the WI branches, settlers, agricultural, economic and social information, along with local personalities. The books are named after the former Governor General of Canada whose wife was a WI member in England.

The digitized versions will be stored at local libraries to be used by those researching family and community history. View work so far at http://collections.fwio.on.ca/search

Committee members who worked on digitizing the Tweedsmuir history books include Cecilia Maines, of Hastings, Evelyn Peck, of PEC, Brenda De Castris, PEC Tweedsmuir Curator, Linda Gray, Parrott Foundation (back) Judy Kupecz, Hastings, Eleanor Wilson, Hastings, Barb Foster, PEC and Nancy Wood, PEC.