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“The Edson Smith Collection Project” Historic Photos of Santa Barbara
April 20, 2019 @ 10:30 am PDT
John Woodward and Jace Turner will present “The Edson Smith Collection project” at the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society’s monthly meeting, Saturday, April 20th at the First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. Constance at State Street, 9:30 am to 12:00 pm.
The Santa Barbara Public Library has among its holdings an extraordinary collection of almost 3,000 original photographs illustrating much of Santa Barbara’s rich history, all donated by local citizens since the late 1800s. As one of its Centennial Celebration projects, the Library has been conducting a three-year project to scan, identify and catalog the images with the goal of making them more accessible to the public by putting them online.
Jace Turner, native Santa Barbaran and Community Relations Librarian at the Santa Barbara Public Library, is overseeing the Edson Smith Collection project. Jace will tell us how the heart of the collection came to the Library through the generosity of Edson Smith, and how the current project to make the images more accessible came about.
John Woodward, who has been supporting and assisting with the project from its inception will share some of these fascinating historic photographs with us – many of these have rarely been seen before. A long-time member of the Society’s Board of Directors, John has presented several programs at our meetings over the years and has written or edited many books and articles on Santa Barbara history. He has practiced law here for the past 48 years and has served on the boards of many historical organizations in town, including the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, both the City and County Historic Landmarks Commissions (which he chaired), the Pearl Chase Society and the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library.
Special Interest Groups meet at 9:30 am for New Member & Beginning Genealogy, Civil War Genealogy, Writers’ Support Group, German Ancestry, Italian Genealogy, Jewish Genealogy, French Canadian Genealogy, Scandinavian Genealogy, Computer Genealogy, and DNA. The Society Monthly meeting starts at 10:30 and the featured speaker starts at 11:00am.
Come join us. You do not need to be a member to enjoy this wonderful free presentation.
A calendar of genealogical events can be found at the Society web site (http://sbgen.org/eventListings.php?nm=216).
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Media contact: Glenn Avolio, PR Chair, glennavolio@gmail.com (805) 886-5438