Sarah Brown
The Sweet Home Genealogy Society needs help from the community to identify people in its collection of photographs.
The SHGS Library, at 1223 Kalmia St., between the city library and the Hope Center, provides resources for people who want to research their family history, and its library includes family files, history books, microfilms and old photographs from the area.
“Basically, the goal of our society is the preservation of the past for the future,” said Angela Thoma, vice president.
Among the resources at SHGS are donated family photos that include images of people and places. The society has also acquired hundreds of photos from the John Eggen family after he passed away in 2010.
Eggen was a photographer who owned a studio in Lebanon, chronicling residents and the Lebanon, Sweet Home and surrounding areas for three decades.
SHGS volunteers in the past had indexed all the Eggen photos, but now Teresa Riper, president, wants to index it even more in-depth, she said.
“We’re finding there might be more pictures or negatives that we have no idea who they are,” Riper said.
As an example, Thoma pulled a box off the shelf and removed a photo from the Holley School file. The photo showed a portrait of several students in formal attire.
They know the students are from Holley school, Riper said, but they don’t know who the students are.
When the names of unidentified people are determined, the SHGS will be able to cross-reference the photos to family files, which will make genealogy research easier, Riper said.
Terri Lanini, treasurer, added that doing this kind of work is important to the preservation of history.
“You preserve Linn County, you preserve Sweet Home, because there’s lots of pictures of old buildings and old businesses that used to be in town,” Lanini said.
Riper shared several experiences she had with stumbling upon old photographs of her family. Recently, she had selected a random photo and discovered it was taken at East Side Garage, her grandfather’s garage, and in the background was her grandmother.
The SHGS will have a book full of photos available for the public to thumb through and label if identifications can be made.
The library is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays.