Our Collections

 

Photographs and slides

 

The Society has thousands of photographs in its collection. They include images from all aspects of life in Plainfield. There are photos of farms, businesses, trains, autos, buildings, portraits, animals, disasters and more. Photographs give us insight into how the town evolved over the years. They show us how people lived, worked and played. They are truly links to our past.

Each year, we select a group of photos that we feel reflect the breadth of Plainfield history and reproduce them in our annual calendar.

Time will deteriorate any photograph. To preserve the images, many of our photographs have been scanned and digitized. And, we continue to scan the photos in our collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artifacts

The Plainfield Historical Society has acquired many artifacts related to Plainfield history. The collection is currently stored in Plainfield's first fire station on route 2 in Plainfield.

Our collection includes a broad assortment of items from Plainfield's history.

We have family related items such as clothing, personal items, hand crafted items, furniture, diaries, farming equipment and toys.

There are business related items including ledgers, signs and advertising items. We even have a telephone switchboard and a wall of post office boxes.

We are in the process of cataloging the collection in a computer database.

The photo to the right is a portion of our recent exhibit displaying some of our collection.

 

 

 

 

 

Nellie Gill Players Memorabilia

The Nellie Gill Players were an amateur theater group in Plainfield in the early 20th century. Nellie herself had been a professional actress and was the manager of the group.

Recently the Society was fortunate to be able to acquire and large collection of Nellie Gill Players memorabilia. The collection includes many photographs of the Players, playbills, reviews, tickets and many of Nellie's personal items.

The Society is examining the collection to determine how best to share it with the public.