Not all Valley history has been tossed away
BVHS to display exhibits Sunday
LINCOLN — Danny Bethel is a connoisseur of ephemera, written items meant to have a short lifespan and then be thrown away.
But much ephemera can come to have meaningful historical value — or be worth a lot of money — decades later. A poster for a Beatles concert that was once affixed to a telephone pole may not have been worth anything in 1970, but it sure is now, Bethel noted.
Bethel doesn't specialize in ephemera for its monetary value but for the information it gives about the past of local places. He has milk bottle caps from Lincoln Woods Dairy. He has early fire muster ribbons from the Albion Fire Department. He has political broadsides, such as one from the Smithfield Republicans dating to the 1920s.
Bethel will have a few hundred items of historical ephemera — still only a fraction of his collection — on display at the Blackstone Valley Historical Society, 1873 Old Louisquisset Pike, from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday. He has done four or five shows at BVHS in the past, but this one, which includes a lot of things he's acquired more recently, will be the last for awhile.
“In my mind, it's like a one-day museum,” he said. “It's been a lot of work over the winter to get it ready. Part of it is organization, where I've had to organize stuff that I have all over the place. I pull stuff out of my filing drawers and stuff and go, 'I forgot I even had that; this is so awesome.'”
Bethel, who has lived in Lincoln for most of his 58 years, started collecting ephemera about 15 years ago. A lot of his items come from eBay, though he feels that may be the way of the past.
“I almost think its golden era is gone, and I was able to take advantage from some of that time,” he said. “I actually wish I'd gotten in earlier.”
Bethel collects items not only from Lincoln, but also from Cumberland, Central Falls, Pascoag, Smithfield, Canaan, Conn.; and Sheffield, Mass. They are mostly from 1900 through the 1960s.
Bethel is a member of the Rhode Island Postcard Club, which, like the Blackstone Valley Historical Society, was founded in 1958.
His show on Sunday will largely be organized by place or event, with boards dedicated to the Lincoln Downs race track, Mount Moriah Lodge #8 in Lime Rock and the 1934 Saylesville Bleachery strike.
He also has early fire department badges, advertisements for a circus at Lincoln Downs and carnival at St. James Church in Manville, coasters, signs, maps and more. He is also into old newspaper photos.
“People go into newspapers that go out of business; they buy the photos and then they sell them,” he explained, “so a lot of these are actual black-and-white photos of like the mill strike and Lincoln Downs.”
For Bethel, curating the show has been a balance between showcasing the historical facets he values and the visual aspects to which others are most drawn.
“People like pictures but when I put historical stuff on they're not as much enamored to it,” he said. Bethel made a similar comment two months ago, when he was preparing for a photography show at Blackstone Valley Historical Society.
His photos of farms, animals and sunsets are popular on Lincoln- centric Facebook pages like “You know you're from Lincoln, RI if...”