This exhibit began in the minds of our volunteers and staff as we worked our way through our archives of photos, diaries, newspaper clippings, and oral interviews. Often, we would look at an old photo and ask ourselves questions like:
"Is that building still there?"
"What does that location look like now?"
"Can we still see hints of the past in the present?"
So we asked several amateur photographers among our OHC family to go out into the community and take some pictures in the present to compare to our historical, archived photos.
This exhibit is made up of some of our choices. You no doubt have your own. We encourage you to go out and visit some of these places and perhaps reflect on the issues that we all face in our ever-changing community: What to preserve? What to repurpose? What to remodel? What to take down and what to replace it with?
This exhibit features a collection of historic photographs from our archives. Meet some of the women of 19th and 20th century Oswego and the myriad of ways they presented themselves. From pulling up their boots to farming to needlework to running a house, these women represent a range of lived experiences from the settled town. Note their clothing, their expressions, and the lives that existed beyond the photography.
The left side of the collage features Elizabeth Puymbroeck (1899-1987), and the right side features Lea Puymbroeck (1898-1979). The middle of the collage features the twins Cora and Clara Wilmot, both when they were young and when they were older.