Written by Jacob Smith, Digitization Coordinator for the Huron County Museum. Photo: Robert Watson diary, pages 8-9.

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The Museum’s digitization collection has grown to include scanned and uploaded eight historical diaries.  They were written by Douglas McTavish, Mary Longmore Green, Robert Watson, and Thomas Rowe between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, and detail rural life across Huron County, such as farming activities, the weather, and local news. These historical diaries were chosen for digitization due to their deterioration, as bits of paper on some of the diaries peel off when handled.

Photo: Mary Longmore Green Diary 1, pages 83-84 have clear examples of deterioration.

Out of the eight digitized diaries, three were written by Mary Longmore Green. Mary was born in 1870 to Andrew Green and Mary McHardy Green, and grew up on a farm in Dunlop, Colborne Township.  Throughout her three diaries in the Museum’s collection, which were written between 1899 and 1901, she documents her rural Huron County life, visits with friends and family, and her time at school.  She discusses her time studying at the Ontario Agricultural College (O.A.C.) in Guelph in the early 1900s, which you can read in Diary 3.  In her studies, she focused on dairy: how to make milk, cream, butter, and cheese, and the science behind it. Mary goes into detail about her friends and instructors at the institution, and her travels between Dunlop and Guelph. In later years, she married Robert Dures. Mary passed away in 1946, and is buried in Colborne Township.

Photo: Mary Longmore Green writes about travelling to Guelph to attend school. 2023.70.3, pages 5-6.

Transcriptions of the historical diaries are available upon request.  Please contact the Huron County Archives for more information.

This project is funded (in part) in part by the Government of Canada

Ce projet est financé (en partie) par le gouvernement du Canada.

Written by Jacob Smith, Digitization Coordinator for the Huron County Museum.

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A series of short films to the Huron County Museum’s YouTube channel that were filmed by local media company CKNX in the 1960s and 1970s. The clips range from news clips, commercials, and local events throughout southwestern Ontario. These videos were donated to the Museum by a former CKNX employee in 2009. In 2022, a portion of the film reels, selected based on relevance to the area, were sent to a third-party company in Toronto to be digitized. In late 2023 and early 2024, staff uploaded the videos to YouTube.

The first video published to YouTube is a tour inside the Huron County Museum in the early 1960s.  The brief video features Museum founder, Joseph Herbert Neill, as well as visitors touring the building.  You may notice that the present-day History Hall looks different.  That is because the video was filmed prior to the extensive renovations that occurred in the late 1980s.

This project is funded (in part) in part by the Government of Canada

Ce projet est financé (en partie) par le gouvernement du Canada.

Written by Jacob Smith, Digitization Coordinator for the Huron County Museum. The photo above is a portrait of World War II serviceman Leon Prosser. A992.1040c 

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500 additional photographs of World War II servicemen have been catalogued, scanned, and uploaded to the Henderson Digitization Project’s virtual exhibit.  You can access these photographs through the Museum’s website or by clicking here.  These photographs were taken by Mr. J. Gordon Henderson (1913-1989), a Goderich-based photographer for over 40 years. During World War II, Mr. Henderson travelled to air training schools in Clinton, Goderich, and Port Albert, taking class pictures and photographing other activities on the bases.  During the war, military personnel would visit his studio in Goderich to have their portraits taken.  After the war, Mr. Henderson continued his professional photography business until his retirement in 1980.  In 1992, his family donated his professional work and equipment to the Huron County Museum.  

To increase awareness of Mr. Henderson, and Huron County’s role in World War II, the Henderson Digitization Project was created.  The project was a one-year, grant-funded project in 2013 to digitize his photographs of World War II air training in Huron County.  In 2021 and 2023, the project was revisited. During that time period, digitization staff catalogued and scanned the remaining photographs, and added the object information into the Museum’s database, PastPerfect. Then, staff uploaded the scanned images to the Henderson Digitization Project’s virtual exhibition page.  At the same time, the virtual exhibition was reorganized to ensure that multiple portraits of the same airmen were linked together. The project was completed in October 2023. 

This project is funded (in part) in part by the Government of Canada

Ce projet est financé (en partie) par le gouvernement du Canada.