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We had a great time meeting new friends and seeing old ones at our open house on April 6. More than 50 people stopped by to check out the Trudeau Building before renovations begin to convert the historic building as part of the expansion of our museum! Thanks for stopping by everyone, and stay tuned for news of progress with the project!
We want to hear from you! Please fill out this short survey and let us know your ideas for the new space. This #MuseumMonday, we're sharing a peek at the exciting digitization work happening behind the scenes at the museum! We purchased this overhead camera mount setup with support from the Northern New York Library Network. It allows us to photograph items that are difficult to place on a flatbed scanner, such as photo albums and scrapbooks. The foam cradle supports the spines of bound materials to keep from damaging them while we work.
Have you checked out our online catalog yet? We're adding new items every day! This Tuberculosis Thursday, we have an exciting new group of digitized materials on our online catalog! The Tarsilla and William J. Schuster Collection documents the couple's experiences as patients at the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook (AKA Ray Brook Sanatorium).
William first arrived as a patient at Ray Brook in 1908 while he and Tarsilla were engaged to be married. He returned home to Schenectady after a year, and they married. They had welcomed two children by the time he was readmitted as a patient in 1913, and he did not return home until 1916. Tarsilla was admitted as a patient for a short period in 1914 as well. William documented life at Ray Brook with his Brownie camera, and often sold his photographs as postcards to make some pocket money. These photographs, postcards, and letters document their relationship, their experiences, and the connections they made with fellow patients during these years. We are grateful to the Cromie family for loaning us this rich collection to scan and make available to the public. Browse the collection on our PastPerfect Online database. [Tarsilla and William Schuster in Ray Brook, c. 1914. Historic Saranac Lake Collection, 2021.1.93. Courtesy of John Cromie.] It's National Library Week, so we're celebrating our favorite one, the Saranac Lake Free Library! This c. 1914 photograph of the Library shows it as it looked in its early days before the addition. We love the SLFL in all of its states!
We're so thankful for libraries and library workers, this week and always! Happy National Library Week! Historic Saranac Lake Collection, 2020.2.79.] This #MuseumMonday is a not-so-glamorous behind the scenes, but we want to share a big THANK YOU! Last week, we started the day with sewage backing up into our basement at the Saranac Laboratory Museum. The Saranac Lake Village DPW came right out and cleared the drain, and then Snickles Plumbing & Heating modified our pipes to keep it from happening again! THANK YOU again to the DPW crew and the folks at Snickles for working hard to save the day AND our basement!
Did you know that the 1950 census is now available to the public and searchable online?! Census records are one of the tools we use to help locate tuberculosis patients and important local residents throughout history, so we're very excited and grateful to explore this awesome resource! Check out the National Archives' website for the census for tips on how to search for your family members. We've already found some matches for research requests! This page shows patients at the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook, for example. Find an exciting match, or need some help looking for someone who lived or cured in Saranac Lake? Drop us a line!
In honor of World TB Day and Tuberculosis Thursday, we are proud to share the news about an important collection now available to browse in our online collections database. The Florence Wright Tuberculosis Postcard Collection provides an intimate look at the lives of the TB patients who came to Saranac Lake in search of a cure between the 1880s and 1950s. The first half of this 130+ card collection has been cataloged, transcribed, and digitized, and is now available to browse for free on our PastPerfect Online Collections Database.
Patients were often only allowed to write a single postcard a day in order to maintain their strength, so these cards contain intensely personal news about their physical and mental health. These cards report on accommodations, weight gain, activities, relationships, and even deaths. They contain messages of hope, excitement, sadness, and of course, loneliness, like this 1906 card with the simple message, "Rather lonesome." The Florence Wright Tuberculosis Postcard Collection is a passion project assembled by Florence Wright over more than 20 years, and donated to Historic Saranac Lake in 2021! Florence became an avid stamp and Christmas Seal collector in retirement, and started to notice these missives from TB patients and their families at stamp shows. She began collecting cards that showed TB sanatoria and cure cottages, especially ones with messages relating to TB treatment. We are so grateful to Florence for her thoughtful donation to our organization, and hope that you learn as much as we have by exploring them. The second half of the collection should be completed and up online by the end of next week! Have a question about our collections or our online database? Send us a message on social media or email us! [Front side of postcard showing village of Saranac Lake with message, "Rather lonesome" written at bottom, 1906. Historic Saranac Lake Collection, 2021.3.24. Courtesy of the Florence Wright Tuberculosis Postcard Collection.] Last week we had a great visit with Jodi DeBruyne and Mallory Howard, who are both members of the curatorial staff at the The Mark Twain House & Museum in Connecticut. Jodi and Mallory visited to research the Clemens family’s visit to Saranac Lake in 1901 as part of planning for a 2023 exhibit on the family’s summer vacations. Our Archivist / Curator Chessie Monks-Kelly spent the day with them talking tuberculosis and Twain.
This and several other research trips were funded by a planning grant from CT Humanities. We learned a lot about the Clemens family during their visit, and look forward to seeing the exhibit and continuing the relationship between our two organizations! Thanks for getting excited about history with us! |
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