Do you recognise either of these youngsters in the photograph?
Do you recognise either of these youngsters in the photograph?
Do you recognise anyone in this photo?
A group of dedicated volunteers putting names to old photographs in Levin have already successfully identified thousands of people in boxes of old photographs at Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-pō Levin Library.
But they want to spread the net as wide as they can to help identify more.
Levin woman Gloy Deadman, 87, started work on the photographs late last year. After opening the first box at home and placing some photos on the kitchen table, she realised the enormity of the task at hand and was appreciative of all the help.
Gloy Deadman in the archive room at Te Takaretanga o Kura-hau-po.
Each week she is joined by more people willing to help. One week 20 people were involved, but a core group of about 14 turn up each week.
“I would estimate we have about 7000 photographs, and I believe we may have identified people in about 2000 of those,” she said.
It has become a social occasion for the group every Friday morning at the library and an enriching experience for all involved, especially those who had grown up in Levin.
Noeline Lyons and Shirley Isaacs help to identify old photographs at Te Takerertanga o Kura-hau-po Levin Library.
During the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s,wedding pictures appeared in the local Horowhenua Chronicle newspaper.
Volunteer Chris McLennan took on that task. Of the 350 wedding photographs found in a box, only eight with no names attached remain.
Local knowledge and facial recognition helped. Noeline Lyons had lived in Levin for 75 years. She was handed a box of photos and was able to identify more than half of them.
It was a hugely satisfying job. If there is a date on the back they correspond that with an edition of Horowhenua Chronicle in hope that particular photograph made it to print.
Do you recognise anyone in this photograph?
The volunteers all realise that while it might look like just an old photograph, it could be invaluable to a family member who might be researching their family history or family tree.
They had displays of the photographs in malls and at the library, and were also digitising them so they might be shared more widely.
The boxes of old black-and-white photos were found in a garage in Levin at the home of one of New Zealand’s longest-serving daily newspaper columnists, the late Bob Malcomson.
Malcolmson died in 2002, aged 80. He began working for the Horowhenua Chronicle in Levin in 1946, and even in retirement continued submitting articles each week.
The late Bob Malcolmson took thousands of photographs in a life-long career at Horowhenua Chronicle.
More recently the photos have been stored in the archive room at Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-po Levin Library. Very few had names attached and many never made it to print.
The photographs are being indexed in the hope they may one day be digitised.
