Do you have old photographs, documents, paper records relating to the area’s history? Family photos you can’t identify? Don’t throw them out, bring them in for the Historical Society to scan (and return them to you or keep if you don’t want them) for the Society’s Archival Historical Resources. The Historical society is attempting to build a comprehensive record of our area’s families, family trees, businesses, buildings, schools, government workings, and anything having to do with Sister Bay and northern Door County. It is always disappointing to hear after the fact that someone has thrown out a collection of family photos and papers because they thought they had no value, when actually most everything has some historical value, if not to that person, to those trying to preserve the overall picture of this area’s past and those who formed it. Even if you can’t identify persons in the photos, often by comparing them to other known photos the person can sometimes be identified. Sometimes that photo or document you have may be the only copy in existence, and if destroyed, gone forever. When doing the photo scanning project during the Sister Bay Centennial in 2012 Marston Anderson brought in some advertising stickers made by the Sister Bay Chamber of Commerce in the late 40’s-early 50’s, no one even remembered there had been such an organization back then. We then used the sticker’s drawing of Kellstrom’s Dock for the design of the Centennial T-shirt.

So please stop before throwing out those old papers and photos and think of the Historical Society’s Archives. Contact us, or bring them in to the Sister Bay Library Wednesday mornings between 10am and noon from now through Dec. 6. We plan on doing another scanning event at the library during the spring also, but you don’t have to wait till then. If you would like to have something scanned at any time contact Fred Johnson at 854-9247 or sisterbayhistoricalsociety@gmail.com. We also can scan film negatives up to 8×10 inches. If you would like copies of the scans we can make CDs or bring in a USB memory stick and they can be loaded on that right away.

Don’t be the one to throw away that one-of-a-kind photo of somebody’s ancestor or record of historical interest, remember the Sister Bay Historical Society wants to preserve it. And remember, yesterday is already history.