News about an archival centre receiving money to expand its facility is good news for genealogists, especially if their ancestors lived in the region.
Lambton County Archives in Wyoming, Ontario, just east of Sarnia, has doubled capacity after receiving $200,000 from the County of Lambton and the Government of Canada’s Cultural Spaces Fund.
The Archives re-opened last week after closing in mid-May for renovation.
Photo: Pixabay.
According to an article in Lambton Shield, “The renovation includes a new mobile shelving unit that reaches ten shelves high — compared to the former eight shelf height — temperature and humidity controls, more over-sized shelves, and a space dedicated to historic maps.”
Genealogical research
On its home page, the Lambton County Archives describes itself as an “archival centre for genealogical and local history research in the County of Lambton. We preserve and make accessible historical and family documents for researchers.”
The Archives works closely with the Lambton County Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society whose members are currently indexing the Petrolia Topic newspaper.
Genealogists visiting the Archives in person can access thousands of family files organized by surname, dozens of local newspapers, including the Sarnia Observer from 1853-present, Petrolia Topic from 1874-present, and Watford Guide-Advocate from 1878-present, land records, transcriptions for cemeteries in Lambton, Kent, Middlesex, and Huron counties, and Lambton directories.
Virtual exhibits
While it does not appear the Archives has digitized any significant part of its collection to make it available online, the associated Lambton Heritage Museum has posted four virtual exhibits on its website about Lambton at war, agriculture, local women, and the oil business.
Now that the renovations are complete, let’s hope the next step in the Archives’ plans is to digitize some of its collection.
Thank you for the wonderful article, Gail! We are thrilled with our new space at the Lambton County Archives.
Kindly note that much of our material has been digitized and is available online through our catalogue, which you can access by clicking on the catalogue link at this page: https://www.lambtonmuseums.ca/collections-catalogue/
Our digitization initiatives have focused on visuals in our collection and include: our extensive local postcard collection; thousands of negatives of pictures that appeared in the Sarnia Observer; and the Paisley Photographic Collection, which is fully indexed and a treasure trove of images of local sights and people.
Additionally, you can find information about the vast majority of books in our reference library through the Lambton County Libraries catalogue here: https://catalogue.lclibrary.ca/iguana/www.main.cls?p=8f1c53f0-41ad-4c28-8d9e-57e8288b0ac6&v=98d2d52e-279c-4f06-a5d8-1a36df59f300
We are pleased that we can make this material available to researchers that are interested in the history of Lambton County, and we look forward to continuing digitization efforts in our collection.