CAPTURING WAYNE TOWNSHIP TRUSTEES’ PORTRAITS – Voice Of The Township

As I write this it is May 1, 2015, and the Public Library is holding “A Day In Allen County” when everyone is invited to take pictures anywhere in the county and send them in. “We want to capture what is going on throughout the entire community, so pictures can be of people at work, children at play, sporting events, weather and blooming flowers, homes and buildings, traffic scenes, hikers and bikers and people just hanging out.” The library will keep these pictures on file, as they have done in years past, making a kind of time capsule that we can all look back upon and ‘remember when.’

I like to study history. I think it is good to remember the past and to see how things change and how they remain the same. Here at the township we have begun a collection of portraits of Wayne Township Trustees going all the way back to Samuel Hanna who was trustee in the late 1830s. There are over forty past trustees, and finding pictures of them is not always easy. Sometimes we can find a picture attached to an obituary in old newspapers that are on microfilm at the library. Sometimes a family member has pictures in their genealogy collection.

Maybe you have a picture of one of the gentlemen who held the office of Wayne Township Trustee—yes, they have all been men. Here is a partial list of names of deceased trustees that you may know or even have in your family picture collection: William J. Cooper, Marion A. Shroyer, Oberlin A. McMahan, Walter H. Summers Jr., George Bond, Walter Hayes, Elmer J. Fox, Albert A. Ringwalt, Albert C. Fox, Eli Slussman, Allen Hamilton, Henry P. Scherer, Henry E. Branning, Cornelius Gearin, Louis Schirmeyer, M. F. Schmetzer, George W. Brackenridge, Henry Hilbrecht, William Gaffney, John Lingard, John Hamilton, John E. Hill, John G. Maier, Isaac W. Campbell, Clemens A. Reker, Hugh McCulloch, Charles Case, William Stewart, Joseph P. Edsall, John W. Dawson, John Clinton, Thomas W. Swinney, and Samuel Lillie.

We have some pictures of these men, but you may have one that would be even better for framing. Some of the pictures we have from old newspapers are not of good enough quality to be framed. As part of this project we may need to find volunteer artists who can sketch a portrait from an old photograph. And of course some of these gentlemen lived before photographs were taken, so old drawings are the only way we have of knowing what they looked like.

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My plan is to frame the pictures we gather and hang the collection in a place of honor here at the township office. It will be informative and a privilege to display these pictures of historical significance to our community.