Where local history lives on
Trent Valley Archives maintains close to 200 years of photographs, documents and more
Readers often ask for information about the Trent Valley Archives, where I have been a longtime archivist, research consultant and historian.
The Trent Valley Archives has occupied one of Selwyn’s most notable heritage buildings since 1998, and so is now marking its twentieth year at the corner of Carnegie and Woodland. It is also a vibrant organization.
The main building began as the Fairview School, sometimes called Hall’s School. This was a wellbuilt one-room school house that seems to have been the fourth of five Fairview Schools within short distances of this intersection.
The earliest teacher was John Ford teaching here in 1851. By 1948, there were two teachers every year until 1960. Then when the new school opened there were about six teachers at least each year.
The three Mann sisters walked up the two hills on the Centre Line of Smith (now called Carnegie Avenue to the intersection of the fourth line of Smith, now called Woodland) between 1944 and 1959, and three generations of Garbutts and Manns attended that school. In 1944, the school won a prize for the best improvement of the yard. Baseball and Red Rover were two popular games played in the school yard during recess or after school. On rainy days they played in the basement.
The local school was often used as a community centre, and one of Smith Township’s two bands in the 1880s was the 4th Line Band. After the 1930s, student teachers came to the school as part of the Normal School training. Music and woodworking were taught at the school; there was a rhythm band in 1937. Indoor plumbing reached the school in 1936.
In1960,SmithTownshipacquired the property, and added a council chamber wing in 1974. Trent Valley Archives, with assistance from three supporters, acquired the property in 1998. A former school portable was added in 2009; it took about $50,000 to move it to the site, build a firm foundation, add stairs and ramp and, with support from the Trillium foundation, install a system for controlling heat and humidity.
The Trent Valley Archives has developed gradually and cautiously over the years.
In 1989, the Trent Valley Archives promoted the idea of a regional archives that included or catered to every archive in the five counties of the former Newcastle District: Durham, Northumberland, Peterborough, Victoria and Haliburton. We also hoped that the region would develop one state-of-the-art archives within the region.
The principle of regional archives had been bruited about in both Canada and Ontario during the 1980s, and it formed the basis for a decentralized archival system in Quebec and in Saskatchewan. The promotion of regional archives took many forms. We had hoped that it would develop from the cooperation of the five counties; or perhaps by the co-operation of townships within one county. For awhile, developments in Victoria County looked promising as the new City of Kawartha Lakes had an explicit archives mandate.
Since the mid-1990s, the promise of archives in Ontario has shifted to the county and city level. Elgin, Grey, Dufferin, Wellington and Ottawa showed what was possible. Lennox and Addington has set the standard for eastern Ontario, but there are other encouraging signs in Port Hope, Belleville and Glengarry. Simcoe County Archives, the gold standard of Ontario county archives, was founded fifty years ago.
The Trent Valley Archives operates in some ways as a county archives would, but its independence has permitted it to highlight the importance of letting researchers successfully access records, historical documents, photographs, newspapers and books with some degree of ease. We pursue sound archival principles of appraisal, organization and preservation. We stress the importance of historical research and genealogical research. We accept donations from people who have significant things to share and offer fair market value appraisals supported by receipts for income tax purposes.
Our reading room has comfortable seating and tables for examining documents. We have up-todate computers and software as well as modern microfilm readers and copy machines that accommodate scanning. We have an excellent website that is always improving, as well as our quarterly magazine and volunteers on social media. We publish books on a wide range of topics mainly reflecting on some of the riches of our collections. We have in-house finding aids, searchable mainly on our internal computer.
We have an army of volunteers, led by an archivist and assistant archivist, to process and organize the archives. We have when possible hired talented people to work on particular collections or projects. Many are adept at scanning photographs and newspapers on our two main scanners. Some have been adding descriptions to the computer, and others have been doing hands on projects with the archival documents.
We had some 40 volunteers helping to make the Peterborough Examiner archives accessible. We have control over significant parts of its rich collection of clippings, negatives, photographs and reports. The 1,002 microfilms had to be checked, rewound and boxed.
Working with partnerships, the Trent Valley Archives has expanded access to records of broad general importance such as censuses, street directories, and indexed land registry records.
We have some significant industrial archives (DeLaval, Alfa Laval, Raybestos Manhattan, Montgomery Brothers, Trent Glass, for example). Our photographic collections include the Osborne Studio, and photos from every generation since 1860 that have been part of dozens of collections from families, individuals, and local historians. Elmir Brown and his family papers have proved very helpful. We recently acquired the literary archives of Cathleen McCarthy, a career journalist chiefly with the Peterborough Examiner.
John and Mary Young donated one of our largest family collections that cover literally coast to coast. In some respects, this is the collection that defines our mandate. An archival fonds includes everything that comes from one archival creator; it could be as little as one document or it could stretch for miles. Archives are organized around the principle of respect des fonds which recognizes that fonds should be organized as the creator intended.
The Young fonds contains distinct collections within the whole, what archives call sous-fonds. John Young’s papers include the history of his home town in British Columbia (Creston), as well as courting letters, his World War II military experience on the home front, his education, his more than 40 patents while working at General Electric, as well as family records for at least a dozen families with roots in different parts of Ontario, Nova Scotia, Utah and British Columbia, and the genealogical records of those families.
The leading truth about the history of Peterborough is that the population was always highly mobile. People left in significant numbers, but others arrived also in significant numbers, and mostly arrivals outnumbered departures. The Burritts left here in the 1860s and four or five generations later the Youngs arrived. Such a pattern has recurred in other families. This underlines that Peterborough was a place of coming and going as individuals and families pursued opportunities and hopes.
The genealogical holdings of the Trent Valley Archives are likewise impressive. We have the papers of genealogists such as the Youngs, Miller, Walter Dunford, Rosemary and Peter McConkey. These are supplemented by countless research files and by our partnership with Ancestry.com.
The Trent Valley Archives holds more than 660 archival fonds, totaling over 1,200 cubic feet, some 1 million photographic images, 1,500 reels of microfilm, 100 maps as well as atlases, and a browsing reference library of probably 5,000 volumes.
The Trent Valley Archives has received occasional funding from the county, the city, Ontario and federal grants. A large part of our funding comes from the membership fees and donations by nearly 300 members. Our members are also our main source for volunteers around the Fairview Heritage Centre, and also for volunteers to help in our ever-changing menu of outreach activities.
We work with local taverns to mount our Pub Crawls. Little Lake Cemetery, Lang Pioneer Village and the Peterborough Theatre Guild have been partners, especially with our very successful Cemetery Pageants. Over the years, we have offered ghost tours, both downtown and in Ashburnham, heritage walks in the downtown, in the new West End and in the Avenues. We have experimented with street theatre in these and walks such as the Murder on Rue George events. Our signature bus tours have explored the local roots of Catharine Parr Traill, Robertson Davies and Peterborough’s industrial past.
Trent Valley Archives has also had a profitable publication programme. The Heritage Gazette of the Trent Valley usually has 44 pages in each quarterly issue which goes to each member and to others. Some of the cost is covered by memberships and subscriptions, and some by paid advertising from community businesses. The Gazette also advertises other Trent Valley Archives publications, the tours and other activities in addition to its informative features on history, archives and biographies.
For about 12 years, the Trent Valley Archives has published some of the most interesting and important books related to our local history. Our earliest books were on mills in Peterborough county and on the Burleigh Road. The most recent has been the award-winning Postcards from Peterborough and the Kawarthas. Our major campaigns for Champlain 400 and for the legacy of J.J. Duffus were great local successes. Currently, it is presenting a lecture series to mark Canada 150.
The Trent Valley Archives promotes the preservation of local archives, and supports efforts to create a county archives. With its wide network of friends and partners, and over twenty years of experience, it has also promoted local history, heritage and genealogy.