Preserving Family History

Although this post is not exclusively about Fayette County, I think it could be of interest to anyone thinking about how to preserve family history.


In the past four years I've had to make a lot of decisions.  From heirlooms to trinkets:  what do I do with all the family items I've inherited?

Some choices are easy and obvious.  I've donated many out-of-print research books to the genealogy department at the Carnegie Library.  Other more personal items have a natural new 'home' with another family member.  I still have hundreds of such decisions ahead of me.

In the fall of 2009 I decided to tour the newly renovated Thompson Library on the Ohio State University campus. I’d read about it in the Dispatch and decided to explore. It’s an amazing building.

I didn’t go there thinking I would find a place to donate some family history. But that’s exactly what happened.

One of the library’s features is an exhibit space on the 2nd floor where artifacts from the university’s various collections can be showcased. As I walked around I saw boots and a suit John Glenn wore on one of his space missions next to couture dresses; an elaborately decorated kimono and ancient manuscripts.

I also saw an item or two from the Starling Medical College. Next to the items was a note indicating that these were from the Medical Heritage Center collection at OSU. I’d never heard of it before but I was intrigued.

As I stood there, those items brought back to mind the tragic story of my great grandfather, William St. Patrick Kellough.

Starling Medical College* (which was located in downtown Columbus where Grant Medical Center is now) was the precursor to the Ohio State University Medical Center. William St. Patrick Kellough (Willie as his family and friends called him) was an almost-28-year-old junior at Starling Medical College in 1897 when he contracted typhoid fever. His wife, Bertha (Nancy Bertha Morain Kellough), had recently recovered from it, but his illness was more severe and progressed rapidly. He was treated at St. Francis Hospital by the doctors who were also his professors. He died there on March 12, 1897, the day before my maternal grandmother, Senath (his only child) turned one.

200 of the faculty and his fellow classmates at Starling/St. Francis accompanied his coffin to Union Depot in Columbus and some stayed with him to his home in Mount Sterling for the funeral and interment at Bethel Cemetery outside of Mount Sterling where his parents, Asenath and John Kellough, are also buried.

The exhibit had intrigued me so when I got home I checked out the Medical Heritage Center Web site:
http://mhc.med.ohio-state.edu

The Medical Heritage Center recognizes and celebrates historical health and medical personalities and events; collects, displays and archives artifacts; provides a venue for historical medical research; and supports medical history education.

Occupying the 5th floor of the Prior Health Sciences Library at The Ohio State University, the Center also serves as the repository of data, artifacts, and historical information relating to the health and medical education and the medical profession in central Ohio.

I e-mailed the curator. I wondered if my great grandfather’s artifacts would be something they would accept: a framed portrait of him (above), three of his medical texts (one a lab workbook which he was in the middle of when he died!), his obituary from the newspaper, and a funeral program.

Even though my grandmother Senath lovingly kept these items about the father she never knew, I can’t keep everything. That’s a hard reality.

The curator answered my inquiry and they are accepting these items into their collection.  It's a good feeling to know they will be properly maintained and that future generations will be able to learn about my great grandfather.  I hope my grandmother would approve.

Over the past four years I've been trying to think about the best places to preserve family history.  Maybe you are facing similar decisions. What do I do with all the things my family has kept over the years or even generations? Personal history is more fragile than you think and can easily be lost.

Maybe there's a new and unexpected way for you to preserve your family's history, too?

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* Starling Medical College/St. Francis Hospital was significant as it was the first institution in the United States, designed to combine patient care and clinical teaching in the same building.

Also, see this Web site for an historical marker: http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=12926

I also located a photo of St. Francis Hospital/Starling Medical College at: http://www.hellocolumbus.com/Photos_Buildings.Cfm