OC Historical Society: Community Scanning Day to Preserve OC History

Photo Credit: Licensed Stock Image

Tucked away in boxes and albums in attics and basements from Gordonsville to Old Verdiersville, from Orange Springs to Barboursville, and from Wilderness to Madison Run, there are numerous old family documents, photographs, journals, ancestor diaries, defunct business records and the like in danger of damage or loss.

The Orange County Historical Society is offering a free community scanning day Oct. 21 for the public to come to have these fragile historic documents scanned into digital files. Conversion of these items to a digital format will provide a permanent digital version of the documents for their owners and will help to augment the archives of the historical society with important papers that we do not normally have access to. This will help us to continue to be the county's historic archive into the future.

You might be asking, why would the historical society be interested in my old documents? Our mission is to discover, preserve and disseminate the history of Orange County, its people and the surrounding area. Items supplied by Orange Countians help us to meet this mission. Once a part of our archival collection, these items can be combined with other documents to shed important light on the lives of families and people in bygone days.  

By participating in the Orange County Historical Society’s community scanning day, you will be helping to ensure that our mission is met now and into the future. Who knows, you may even have an item that is of great historic significance. 

This event is free and open to anyone to attend. Any documents are welcome for you to have scanned, but we are especially interested in documents and photos of people and places around Orange County prior to WWII. The community scanning day is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at our office at 130 Caroline St. in Orange.

- Ray Ezell, President, Orange County Historical Society

To learn more about the Orange County Historical Society, visit www.orangecovahist.org. Further details about the Oct. 21 community scanning day can be found on the event’s Facebook page here.