Williamson County Historical Society Museum and Library is used to having a variety of visitors from all over the United States and abroad. They come for many reasons, to research ancestors from the area, gather information to write books on the coal mines and unions, the railroads, Charlie Birger and other notorious people, unsolved murders, etc.. Others come to see the old jail built in 1913, coal mine exhibit, country store and many other items exhibited in the museum.
We also, are used to SI Visit coming to take photographs of items to use in travel and informational brochures. However, on Tuesday, October 7th, 2019 we had a special visitor. Her name is Carol M. Highsmith a Visual Documentarian of America for the Library of Congress and she came to photograph the museum to be part of her permanent collection at the Library of Congress.
Carol M. Highsmith is in her 40th year of photography and has a collection of 42 thousand images at the national library. She uses the highest resolution camera on the market, PhaseOne, 150 megapixels to document her many images. (Just a note, I photographed her with a 12 mp I-Phone.) Carol and her husband, who takes care of her schedule and entering the metadata for the images are currently traveling the United States for a project called Carol Highsmith’s America. Her mission is to document America, for future generation to be able to see how life was in small town America. As a museum, we understand that our history, people and way of life is disappearing daily. With her America project it is her hopes to at least document what is and will become the past, in images.
While Carol was photographing in the pioneer kitchen at our museum, she called her husband to see how much more time she had and told him “this place is a treasure trove!” For someone that has seen so much to say that about our museum, made me even more proud of what we have achieved. As a non-for profit, all volunteer staff, with one paid employee we appreciate the continued support from our society members, the City of Marion and our visitors to be able to be open 6 days a week for anyone to come and learn about Williamson County, IL.
It will be at least 4 months before the images will be accessible at the Library of Congress for everyone to see Williamson County Historical Society Museum.
If you would be interested in checking out Carol and her work you can go to CarolHighsmithAmerica.com and Library of Congress-Collections-Highsmith
Story by Sharon Vansaghi, WCHS Museum Curator/Coordinator