Pieces of Antrim history were nearly lost to time multiple times, but have ended up in the hands of the Antrim Historical Society.

On Sunday, June 7, at 10:30 a.m., AHS will present “A Saturday Armchair Tour of Old Time Antrim,” a display of historic glass-plate photographs of Antrim which have been scanned, printed and framed for display. The presentation will be at James A. Tuttle Library, 45 Main St., and the library will host the display through June.

In 2019, Suzanne Capizzano donated thousands of glass-plate photographs by 19th-century Antrim photographer Fred Nay to the Antrim Historical Society.

“Fred Nay was probably the most well-known photographer in Antrim in the 1800s and into the 1900s,” said Bill Nichols, president of the Antrim Historical Society. “He took up photography and became a professional. In 1902, he sold his business to Erwin Putnam, another photographer, who moved up from Peterborough.”

According to historic accounts, after buying Nay’s business, Putnam advertised Nay’s body of work,  the “Nay Plates,” for sale in local newspapers, but there were no takers.

“The plates take up a lot of room, and I guess no one wanted them,” Nichols said. 

By coincidence, Putnam had moved into the house that Nay had vacated. In the 1950s, Nichols’ great-uncle and aunt, Ben and Ida Butterfield,  moved into the same house.

“My great-aunt and uncle decided to renovate the kitchen, and when they opened up the walls, they found all these glass plates,” Nichols said. “And then they just sealed them right back up in the wall, and finished their kitchen.” 

About 40 years later, the next owner, Scott Baker, renovated the house and discovered the plates again. Baker, realizing the plates represented a significant piece of Antrim history, allowed AHS to scan and copy the photos to create a photographic history of Antrim. While Baker did offer to sell the plates to AHS, the two parties could not agree on a price, and Baker kept the plates.

“Then, out of the blue, after Scott died, we got a call from his sister, Suzanne Capizzano, and she asked if we wanted the plates,” Nichols said. “And we said, ‘Oh my gosh, we definitely want them!’ We were just thrilled.”

AHS made arrangements for Capizzano to come up from Connecticut to donate the plates.

“We really wanted to celebrate this and make her an honorary member, and thank her for her generosity,” Nichols said.

On the day of the ceremony with Capizzano,  Nichols got an email from a man in Hebron, who said he had a box of glass plates from Eugene Woodard, another Antrim photographer, and wanted to donate them to AHS. 

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? On the same day?’” Nichols said. “I wrote back immediately and said, ‘Yes, of course we will take the plates!’”

Nichols learned that Woodard was an amateur photographer who worked in Antrim in the 1900s.

“I had never heard of him,” Nichols said. “Woodard worked at Goodell Mills, and at some point he moved to Milford, and the glass plates ended up with his neighbor, who kept the whole crate of glass plates for 53 years.” 

The photographs by Nay, Woodward and Putnam range from the post-Civil War area, when photography started to become popular, through the early part of the 20th century. Nay and Putnam died in the 193os, and Woodard lived until 1966. 

“The amazing thing, looking at the photographs by all three photographers, Nay, Putnam, and Woodward, you can start to tell who did what. You can tell their style,” Nichols said.

Nichols, Priscilla Shook and Stephen Burkhardt spent over a year sorting through the glass plates.

“There are a lot houses we have never seen. We know they used to exist, but many of them burned down, and this is the first time we have gotten to see photos,” Nichols said.

Each plate needed to be cleaned, viewed on a light board, scanned, printed and framed. 

“We scanned photos every Sunday morning for a year,” Burkhardt said. 

Nichols, Shook, and Burkhardt also spent hundreds of hours “going down the Google rabbit hole” trying to identify houses, locations around town and people in the photos, most of which are unlabeled.

“We’ve been able to identify quite a few houses using other landmarks – the Antrim skyline, historic buildings, houses that still exist,” Nichols said. 

In 1904, the Town of Antrim officially moved the town’s center from the old Antrim Center on Clinton Road to the business district along what is now Route 202, adjacent to the mills. Burkhardt said the group has identified only one photo, of Bass Farm, taken in historic Antrim Center. 

“In the background of the photo of Bass Farm, you can see the steeple of the old Antrim Center church, which was taken down,” Burkhardt said. “We know it has to be before 1896, when the church was destroyed. It may be one of the only photos of that church."