A Year in Review: 2021 at the Oxford County Archives

By Megan Lockhart, Archives Technician

We’ve reached the end of another year at the Oxford County Archives. We find ourselves still in the midst of a pandemic, but we have experienced some return to normalcy this year. We thought we would provide an overview of what we accomplished at the archives this year, including exciting news and updates.

After being closed to the public for over a year, we were thrilled to be able to reopen in August of this past year. We are currently open by appointment only Monday to Wednesday, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (but will temporarily be closed for the holidays from December 24 to January 2). If you would like to book a research appointment at the archives please contact us at least 48 hours in advance. Despite being closed for a year, we received a steady stream of archival record donations from the community, and our staff has been busy processing our backlog of donations. Thank you to the Oxford County community and beyond for continuing to support our goals of preserving and making accessible Oxford County’s archival heritage for future generations.

This past spring we started an exciting new venture by creating “Pioneer Kits” for spring break. The kits included crafts, educational resources, recipes, and activities for children, youth, and families to purchase and enjoy for the week off school. The kits provided interactive lessons on pioneer life in Oxford County and Ontario while also providing some much-needed entertainment! We also encouraged families to check out our online game “Pioneer Life in Oxford County”. Stay tuned for similar educational programs for 2022.

In April, the archives took part in the Oxford County Library’s virtual “Local History Day” and provided a video that examined the history of photography, including tips and guidelines for dating your historical family photographs. Our staff also provided information on preserving photographs at home. The video is available on the OCL’s YouTube channel.

Throughout the year, we added more resources to our printable activities page. This page contains educational colouring pages, activity sheets, word games, craft instructions, recipes, and more related to local history and holidays. We recently added a variety of “retro Christmas” activity pages to our “Christmas in the County” webpage focusing on the historical traditions, songs, recipes, and pop culture of the holiday season from the 1930s to 1980s. We have also added a large amount of research and archival resources to our website, which has increased the accessibility of some of our records. These resources and records include vital stats, military records, school records, voters’ lists, House of Refuge and County Gaol (jail) records, municipal records, and more. Check out our “online resources” page online for more information.

During the pandemic, our staff began the digitization of our immense collection of Woodstock Sentinel-Review negatives. The images that have been digitized thus far have all dated from circa 1930s to 1950s and feature local events, residents, and locations, many of which currently remain unidentified. Identifying the content of these images will be an important future project as the collection contains a wealth of important social history information. Over 2,000 negatives from this collection have been digitized to date.

A photograph from the archives' collection of Woodstock Sentinel-Review negatives. Unidentified triplets are holding stockings out for Santa Claus. COA123 3-133

A significant, ongoing project at the archives is the collection of archival material related to COVID-19. We want to capture this event as we live through it, so these materials will be available for future generations as one day it will be considered historically significant. If you would like to contribute stories, photos, videos, documents, artwork, and more related to your pandemic experience please contact us.

We look forward to the exciting new projects that next year brings. Have a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season!