by Amy Zoethout | Nov 28, 2022 | Exhibits
As the Huron County Museum prepares to undergo renovations to its Industry Gallery, Senior Curator Elizabeth French-Gibson shares details about this exciting new project.
When you are visiting the Huron County Museum over the coming months, you will certainly see some changes to our exhibit spaces. We are excited about these changes and we hope you will be too! While we always strive to present a variety of Huron County stories in our temporary exhibit galleries each year, these changes are coming to our permanent exhibit spaces.
Beginning in 2019, the Museum’s Strategic Plan included a strategic direction to create dynamic exhibits that generate interest and attention. Hopefully you have already noticed some additions and changes to text panels, further graphics, updated colours, and display changes.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, staff have been in the process of planning a major redevelopment of one of our exhibition spaces, the Northwest/Industry Gallery, to better reflect the stories of industry from across Huron County. This exhibit space is currently located on the upper floor of the old schoolhouse portion of the Museum. Some of you may remember that this is the exhibit gallery that was focused primarily on salt mining and the Great Storm of 1913. It’s time for new and more diverse stories to be included in the space.
And these changes have started! The Northwest Gallery is currently closed to the public and is in the process of being fully dismantled. Construction work will begin in early December with the walls, ceiling, electrical, and flooring being completely refurbished. This work is expected to be completed in early 2023. Museum staff will then carry out the installation of a full new exhibit focusing on industries from across Huron County.
The “Big Idea” for the exhibit gallery will be “Places and Processes of Transformation!” The exhibit will focus on how the dynamic nature of industry has transformed Huron County and its people in many ways.
The final proposed interpretive plan for the proposed Industry Exhibit Gallery includes the following topics with thematic areas including clusters of 3D and 2D spaces, exhibits and activity sections:
- The Lake and Harbour Industries – depicting human and environmental changes brought on by industry at Lake Huron.
- Salt – depicting impact of Salt Industries in Huron County.
- Natural Resources, Food and Drink – representing different relationships between Huron Industry and the natural environment
- Industrial Diversity – showcasing the number and different types of industry in Huron County.
We have lots of planning left to do but the space design is complete, as shown in the illustration above, and work continues on the details that will go into the overall interpretive plan. So many industries, artifacts and photographs to choose from!
Artifacts and stories that were removed from the Gallery during the first stages of this redevelopment will be on display in the gallery across the hall upstairs to give visitors a final look at these stories over the coming months. During this time, staff will also be working on plans for rehousing these artifacts. They have had their time on display and will be moved to our main storage area for a well-deserved rest. While these stories were enjoyed by many visitors in the past, the new exhibit will provide a more diverse, county-wide story of our industrial history.
If you would like to be part of this exciting redevelopment and diversification, we encourage you to donate to this project. Your support will be allocated to our exhibitions and will enable the Museum to tell these expanded stories through a variety of interpretive methods in this space. Completing this project is an exciting next step for the Museum.
Donations can be made at the Huron County Museum during our regular business hours by cash, cheque or credit card. More information on sponsorship opportunities can be found on the Museum’s website. This Giving Tuesday, Nov. 29, the Museum’s Senior Curator would be happy to show you the work so far and how your donation will help.
by Amy Zoethout | Jun 1, 2022 | Archives, Exhibits
By Robyn Weishar
The Museum’s temporary exhibit, Forgotten: People & Portraits of the County, explores unidentified images of the people and places of Huron County taken by local photographers. On until Sept. 4, 2022, the photographs featured in the exhibit have been compiled from various donations to the Museum’s archival collection and provide the public with the opportunity to help us identify these forgotten faces.
For those who have photographs of their own that they wish to label and/or donate to our archival collection, the following content will provide suggestions on the best ways to identify and label old photographs so that neither you nor your loved ones get forgotten.
It is suggested that any photographs being donated to the Huron County Archives be given a number, which can be labeled on the back of the picture in soft lead pencil. A corresponding sheet of paper should accompany the donation, which would include the number of each photograph and any other pertinent information not already recorded on the back.
Please consider the examples shown below that display information recorded about each photograph. This is the type of information that should be recorded on a corresponding sheet of paper to help future generations know the faces and places captured in time.
For many women of the past, their identity became linked with that of their husband, making it all the more difficult to pinpoint just who these women were outside of their marriages and homes. If any names are known (i.e., first name, maiden name, surname, nicknames etc.), we ask this information to be documented in order to conserve the memory of everyone and everything captured on film.
These suggestions are intended to highlight an ideal circumstance and are strictly recommendations. We hope you come visit us in person or online to check out the Forgotten exhibit and potentially recognize someone from the past.
We hope this information is of value to you and that you take it into consideration so that one day your face is not among those who have been forgotten.
by Amy Zoethout | Mar 4, 2022 | Exhibits, Media Releases/Announcements, Special Events
The Huron County Museum is very pleased to host The Ribbon Skirt Project: Creating & Gifting a Cultural Connection, a collection of more than 215 ribbon skirts which will be on display throughout the Museum from March 12-April 10, 2022.
The Ribbon Skirt Project was started by Miss Kettle and Stony Point Jr., Jaylynn Wolfe, in July 2021. Knowing that owning a ribbon skirt was important, but difficult for many, Jaylynn, along with her mother, set out to make hundreds of ribbon skirt kits and invited volunteer sewers to help. The goal of the project was to create 215 skirts to represent the first number of unmarked graves identified in British Columbia at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. They quickly exceeded that goal, with more than 215 Ribbon Skirts being gifted to the project from all over North America. Each skirt will be gifted to a youth on Jaylynn’s First Nation of Kettle and Stony Point.
“The hope of the project is that a child will take hold of their ribbon skirt so close to their heart that their connection to their culture will start their journey,” said Jaylynn. “This project gives an opportunity for this cultural connection to happen and allows for all youth to participate.”
Before the Ribbon Skirts journey to the youth of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, they will be on display at the Huron County Museum where the public is invited to see this beautiful collection of work. The skirts will be displayed throughout the Museum in groupings that showcase the Seven Grandfather Teachings, the Clans of Kettle and Stony Point, Water is Life, Spirit Horses, The Creation Story, The Three Sisters, The Medicine Wheel, and Floral imagery, as well as a display to bring awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The exhibit is open to the public during regular Museum hours of operation. The public is also invited to meet Jaylynn, who will be available to answer questions about the Ribbon Skirt Project. She will be onsite at the Museum on Saturday, March 12, Sunday, March 20 and 27, and Sunday, April 3 and 10 from 1-4 p.m.
To celebrate the project, we will also be hosting a screening of the Indigenous film, Beans, on March 27. The film explores the 1990 Oka Crisis at Kanesatake, through the eyes of Tekehentahkhwa (nicknamed “Beans”), a young Mohawk girl whose perspective on life is radically changed by these events.
by Sinead Cox | Jan 25, 2022 | Archives, Exhibits, Image highlights
The Huron County Museum’s temporary exhibit Forgotten: People and Portraits of the County features unidentified portraits captured by Huron County photographers. In addition to the onsite exhibit, photos are shared in an online exhibit and Facebook group in hopes that some of these ‘Forgotten’ faces will remembered and named. Curator of Engagement & Dialogue Sinead Cox shares highlights of the exhibit’s remembering efforts so far.
Semi-Weekly Signal, (Goderich) 07-27-1869 pg 2
The Huron County Museum has an incredible collection of photographs in its Archives – especially studio portraits from commercial photographers within Huron County (spanning the county from Senior Studio in Exeter, Zurbrigg in Wingham, and everywhere in between). Not all of these photographs came with identifying information for their subjects, or even known donors or photographers. The Forgotten exhibit has provided an opportunity to delve deeper into the clues that can be present in everything from associated family trees to fashion styles, photographer’s marks, and photography methods that can provide more context, narrow timelines, or even lead to the re-discovery of names. I am especially grateful for the enthusiastic participation we have already had from photo detectives from the public who have contributed to remembering Huron County’s ‘Forgotten’ faces. Hopefully this is just the beginning of adding value to our collection.
Professional studio photographs were often (and still are!) sent as gifts to family and friends. Local photographers saved negatives to sell reprints at a later date, and these negatives were also sometimes inherited when a studio changed hands. It’s very possible your own family photo collection contains the duplicate of a photo that exists in the possession of an archive or a distant relation somewhere else in the world. Finding matches between the faces in those photos is one way to solve photographic mysteries, and why a shared space to upload and comment on photos, like the Forgotten Facebook group, has the potential to put names to faces even after more than a century has passed since the camera flash!
2011.0013.020. Photograph
2017.0013.011. Glass negative
During preparation for the exhibit, staff recognized that a photograph and a glass negative from unrelated donations depicted the same image of a pair of children (their nervous expressions at having their photo taken were difficult to miss). The photo and negative came to the museum from different donors, six years apart. Information provided with the donation of the photograph indicates that these children may be related to the McCarthy and Hussey families of Ashfield Twp and Goderich area; the studio mark for Thos. H. Brophey is also visible on its cardboard mount, dating the image approximately between 1896 and 1904. The matching negative came from a collection related to Edward Norman Lewis, barrister, judge and MP from Goderich. The shared connection between the donations provides one more clue to help identify the unnamed children, and gives the negative meaning and value (through a place, time and potential family connection) it didn’t previously have without the photograph’s added context. You can see both the photograph and the negative on display in the temporary Forgotten exhibit, which is on at the Museum until fall 2022.
2021.0053.006. The “Garniss sisters”: Sarah Ann, Elizabeth, Eliza Maria Ida, Jemima, Mary Lillian. Can you help us identify which sister is which?
Sometimes photographs arrive to the collection with partial identifications or known connections to a certain family, even when individual names are missing. In those cases, knowledge of family histories can help pinpoint who’s who. Members of the Facebook group were recently able to name all five Morris Township women identified as only the “Garniss sisters” on the back of a photo from Brockenshire Studio, Wingham.
A996.001.095
Patterns tend to emerge with access to larger collections from the same location or time period. Although studio photographers later in the 19th century prided themselves on offering a large selection of backdrops, photos from local studios in the 1860s and 1870s often show a more simple set-up. In posting the ‘Forgotten’ photos online, I noticed that the studio space of Goderich photographer D. Campbell can be recognized by the consistent presence of a striped curtain in the background (and more often than not the same tassel-adorned chair) and a distinctive pattern on the floor, as seen in both the photos above and below. This helped identify additional photographs as Campbell’s work, and therefore place them in Goderich circa 1866-1870 , even when a photographer’s mark or name was absent from they physical photo.
A996.001.071. This photograph is labelled as “the Miss Henrys.” Do you have any information that might reveal their first names?
Crowdsourcing information through the online exhibit and group has allowed fresh pairs of eyes to notice detail previously missed in some of the museum’s photos, even when the evidence was captured by the staff doing the scanning and cataloguing work. In November, the Facebook group spotlighted unidentified soldiers, and one of the members pointed out a photographer’s mark embossed on the bottom right corner of a group photo. Staff were able to look at the original photo to get a clearer look to confirm the studio was identified as “G. West & Sons, Godalming.” Godalming is a town in Surrey, England near Witley Commons, which hosted many Canadian soldiers during the First and Second World Wars.
2004.0044.005. Photographer: G. West & Sons, Godalming, Surrey, U.K.
A950.1740.001
The Signal 08-27-1903 pg 8.
Comparing photographs with other readily available local historical resources like Huron’s digitized newspapers can also help provide new insight. Partial identifications on a group photo of young women in theatrical costumes without a location allowed a group member to link it to a 1903 Goderich production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado. Further research in the newspapers provided a full list of the names of the participating cast and more information about the production, which toured Huron County. This information is now attached to the photograph’s catalogue record to benefit future researchers.
Although many historical photos may be ‘Forgotten’, if they are preserved and housed they are not lost. They still retain the potential for remembering , and to be re-connected to descendants and communities through extant clues and the growing possibilities of digitization and online sharing. For more highlights from the exhibit and tips for identifying mystery subjects photos or caring for your own collections, join is Feb. 9, 2022 for the second webinar in our exhibit series: Forgotten in the Archives.
If you can help identify a ‘Forgotten’ face, email us at museum@huroncounty.ca!
For more on the Forgotten: People & Portraits of the County exhibit and related coming events:
by Sinead Cox | Oct 11, 2021 | Blog, Collection highlights, Exhibits, For Teachers and Students
If you are a teacher or student looking for local stories from Huron County for your Remembrance Day lessons or assignments, you can access the Huron County Museum’s collection from home and your classroom through our virtual offerings! These resources speak both to Huron County’s military history and to the home front during the First and Second World Wars.
Videos
Our War: Home Front
Our War: Nursing Sisters
Young Canuckstorians: The Maud Stirling Story
Jack McLaren: A Soldier of Song features a presentation and performance from author and musician Jason Wilson, based on the original works of the Dumbells, a Canadian concert party that entertained the troops on the front lines in World War I and featured Jack McLaren (later a resident of Benmiller).
The History of Drag Makeup Tutorial with Lita explains how drag performers improvised wigs, makeup and clothing at the front lines.
A reading of a WWII letter from R.C.A.F Pilot Officer Alan H. Durnin to Mrs. C. Blake of RR 1 Dungannon
On the Front Lines: Word War One virtual exhibit.
Virtual Exhibits
Part of the museum’s collection of photographs by local photographer J. Gordon Henderson have been digitized. During World War II, he travelled to air training schools in Goderich, Port Albert, and Clinton taking pictures of classes and other base activities. Many airmen came to his studio in Goderich to have their portraits taken to send home to family and friends. The Henderson Collection also includes wedding portraits, candid shots, correspondence and interviews with airmen related to WWII air training in Huron County. Access the virtual Henderson collection by clicking here!
You can also browse more photographs via our Flickr page!
See archival documents from the Huron County Museum’s collection in our Military Gallery virtual exhibits:
On the Front Lines: Word War One
The Home Front: World War One
Prominent artist and Benmiller resident J. W. (Jack) McLaren fought with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry in WWI, and entertained troops at Ypres Salient, Vimy Ridge and many other locations on the Western Front with the PPCLI Comedy Company and the 3rd Division Dumbells Comedy Troupe. Find out more about Jack and entertaining at the front through the virtual version of our 2020 Reflections exhibit, which was presented in partnership with the Huron Historical Society.
Clipping from Huron County’s digitized newspapers. This ad appeared in the Clinton News-Record in 1942 and 1943.
Articles & Short Posts
A Closer Look: The M4A2E8 Sherman Tank
The Huron Jail & the Second World War Part 2: A STRANGE MUTINY ON THE GREAT LAKES
The Huron Jail & the Second World War Part I: THE ‘DEFENCE OF CANADA’ IN HURON COUNTY
Newspaper Man Enlists: Huron County and the First World War in Black & White
Collection Highlights from Remembrance Day 2014
The Mystery of the 4th Toe on the Left Foot
Local Girl Leaves for the Front
Love is in the Air
Dogs of Air Training (Part 2)
Dogs of Air Training (Part 1)
Education Programs
The Huron County Museum’s ‘Huron County and the World Wars’ program is recommended for grades 5-10, and is offered as both an in-person and virtual field trip. There is also public outreach available by request with our Huron County home front reminiscence kits. Click here to find out more about our Education Programs.
Email museum@huroncounty.ca to inquire about booking an in-person or virtual program.
Research Resources
Click to search more than a century of history via Huron County’s digitized newspapers: free, online and keyword searchable. The newspapers provide a wealth of information on local soldiers and nursing sisters, including casualty reports and letters from the front. You’ll also find detailed information about life and work on the home front, including wartime advertising.
Or Click here to search a selection of the museum’s archives and artifacts via our online collection. Relevant artifacts include uniforms, photographs, medals and memorabilia from British Commonwealth Air Training bases in Huron.
Book List Check out this reading list related to local WW1 and WW2 history, available through the Huron County Library.
Nursing Sister Maud Stirling’s uniform in the Huron County Museum’s searchable online collection.
by Amy Zoethout | Sep 24, 2021 | Exhibits, Media Releases/Announcements, Uncategorized
Unidentified portrait from Brussels. 20150064026
Those with ancestors who lived in Huron County in the 19th and 20th centuries might be able to help the Huron County Museum solve hundreds of mysteries by identifying some of the ‘forgotten’ faces in its new temporary exhibit Forgotten: People and Portraits of the County.
Opening to the public on Monday, Sept. 27, Forgotten features photographs from the Museum Archives that were taken in Huron County by local photographers, but the identity of the people pictured are unknown. The Museum hopes that through sharing these unidentified photos, the public will have the opportunity to help match some of these anonymous faces with names.
Unidentified portrait from Wingham – A0010012006
In addition to the exhibit at the Huron County Museum in Goderich, the public can further access this collection of forgotten portraits from home, both online through the Museum’s website and through a Forgotten exhibit Facebook group where members are invited to comment or share their own ‘forgotten’ Huron County faces from their own collections. Those who are able to help identify any of the individuals in the images are encouraged to contact the Museum at museum@huroncounty.ca Please be sure to include the object number for the photo.
Forgotten will also go behind the camera and focus on the commercial photographers who captured these striking moments of history. The images featured in the exhibit date from the 1860s to the 1920s and are a testament to the talents of studio photographers from towns and villages across Huron County, including: Wingham, Brussels, Blyth, Goderich, Clinton, Seaforth, Hensall, and Exeter. The Museum has recreated a photo studio from the time period as part of the exhibit, and visitors will be invited to step inside the studio to create their own portrait. To ensure these portraits do not get forgotten, participants are encouraged to share their images online by tagging the Museum @HuronCountyMuseum using the hashtag #ForgottenExhibit. When shared and tagged online, photos will be entered into a contest to win a portrait session with a local photographer.
Forgotten is open to the public during the Museum’s regular hours of operation and is included with regular admission, which is free for Museum members and Huron County Library card holders. For more information about Museum hours, please visit www.HuronCountyMuseum.ca.
Unidentified portrait from Goderich – 20140004010
