At the Board of Trustees meeting on July 14, 1981, Elizabeth R. Pillsbury officially announced and thanked the Henderson Lincoln Funeral Home for the donation of thirty-two volumes of scrapbooks containing the obituaries of the people for whom end-of-life arrangements had been performed.
The many family history researchers who have taken advantage of this wonderful resource can attest that it is a unique and priceless treasure. The Funeral Home first appears in the 1899-1900 Jamestown City Directory with Charles P. Henderson and David Lincoln listed as undertaking and picture framing at 107 East Second Street. The first scrapbook was kept by the family, and Vol. 2 begins with obituaries from 1915 and the last volume is Vol. 33 ending in December 1967. We haven’t discovered the significance of the 1967 date, as Henderson Lincoln Funeral Home continued on after 1967. Daniel Lincoln was Director through 1977, and then Philip Henderson was Director through 1984. Eugene Diamond was Director in 1985 but there was no listing for the Funeral Home or Eugene Diamond from 1986 forward.
Over the years, the Research Library volunteers and staff have been painfully aware that these great volumes were deteriorating from use. Since we couldn’t just have them and not use them, we have tried to be as careful as possible. A couple of years ago, the Research Committee got serious and began making plans, having decided that scans were far better than copies, as a way of preserving over 50 years of information about Jamestown area people. Jack Ericson, whose many years of archival experience comes in handy, helped the Committee with the best plan forward and in November 2022, donated funds for archival boxes where the originals would reside after scanning.
The best plan forward also included a person to do the scanning, volunteers to prepare the volumes for scanning, and notebooks for the scanned pages to be housed in. The biggest part of the plan was the need to find a way to fund the project. Fortunately, Jack Ericson and Loretta Smith, both Research Center volunteers, are also members of the Thule Lodge, a nationwide Swedish organization which began in Jamestown in 1907.
Jamestown was heavily populated with Swedish immigrants, as they were attracted to the many furniture and cabinet making industries which abounded here. Henderson Lincoln Funeral Home became the usual choice for Jamestown families, including many Swedish families. This collection is very useful for tracing and documenting Jamestown’s Swedes, and so, Thule Lodge came to our rescue and chipped in $2,000 for the project in March 2023, saving the information from being lost over time.
Rick Roll was tapped to head up the scanning and the work involved, and has listed the stats for this project:
4,500 separate scans, 35 archival boxes, 35 high quality 3 ring binders, 10 reams of paper, 2,000 page protectors, 35 data discs, many volunteer hours, a lot of printer ink, and volunteer helpers – Jack Ericson, Tim Nobles, and Janice Kelley-Van Ord, and 2 years to complete!!
Now that we have a fully functioning scan lab, we are excited to have the capacity to move on to other large and priceless collections that also desperately need to be scanned and digitized.
