BRYAN MAIN-LOCAL HISTORY CENTER
In 2024, the Local History and Genealogy Center at Bryan Main continued to serve as a valuable resource for preserving and sharing Williams County’ s past. Staff assisted with hundreds of patron inquiries related to genealogy and local history, completed 369 research requests, and responded to 395 obituary requests. They also added 1,437 obituaries to the library’ s index and entered 1,261 photographs into the Huffman Photographic Archive.
Monthly programs throughout the year included sessions on gravestone cleaning and preservation, ghost towns of Williams County, Native American history, and the annual Fountain Grove and Riverside Cemetery tours. These programs created opportunities to explore local heritage and gain hands-on experience with historical topics.
The department played a key role in supporting the 200th anniversary of Williams County’ s founding. Staff contributed historical research and photographs to the county’ s bicentennial opening ceremony, assisted with a countywide scavenger hunt, and provided materials for The Village Reporter’ s special commemorative publication.
Monthly showcases of local business, hobby, and history collections were organized by LHC staff and the collections were housed in our display cases. The public was able to view these collections during open hours.
Efforts to improve access to historical materials continued with the expansion of the library’ s digitized newspaper collection on Newspapers. com. In 2024, three additional newspapers— the Tri-State Alliance( 1891 – 1974), the Leader Enterprise( 1880 – 2019), and the Edgerton Earth( 1909 – 2022)— were added to the platform. With this addition, the total number of digitized local newspaper pages available through WCPL’ s partnership stands at 670,000, accessible to anyone using the library’ s Wi-Fi or public computers.
The Local History Center also joined the statewide Ohio Obituary Index project through a new partnership with the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums. By contributing over 120,000 WCPL-indexed obituaries to the project, these records are now searchable online and available through Ancestry. com, providing greater reach and visibility for researchers across Ohio and beyond.