Arnold and Mary Ann Westover Photos Added

We’re excited to announce the addition of the Sam Westover Collection to our photo archives. Sam is Arnold‘s grandson (Gordon is his father). This is the bulk of photos taken by Arnold and Mary Ann Westover during their lives.

Mary Ann was an avid family historian who did a LOT of work. In fact, much of the history we have on the Westover and Smith lines comes from her or is confirmed through her archives. These images are well organized, mostly identified, and well cared for. It is an exciting collection to have.

Almost all images have been uploaded although I’m still grappling with a few huge files that I have to resize. They will be added as soon as possible.

If you’re new to our photo galleries you should know that as you click through the pages to see each “album” as Mary Ann organized them you can click on any particular image. That will open a “filmstrip” that will give you a larger size of the image against a dark background. If there is data embedded that provides identifying information of people, places and dates that information is shown at the bottom of the screen. You can right click to “save as” on any image.

You can also add comments to any photo and we encourage you to do so. We are hoping folks who see and recognize some of these images will share new information that maybe we don’t know about a person or a situation in the image. Any kind of memory should be added, if possible.

While we put these images behind a security screen we DO encourage you to copy and keep these images as part of your private collections. The more people who archive these images the longer they will survive.

I did get that question the other day: How are we “saving” this information on the website? I keep a backup of all files. But I am counting on people copying text, video, pictures and files for their own records. As before, the more people who do this the longer this information lasts. Hard copy duplication of these records are also being worked on and will be part of the efforts ongoing just so that we can access information in the days ahead if we no longer have access to digital venues.

As for the image at the top of this post — I just love it. I’m too young to have a living memory of Grandpa Arnold Westover but in discussing him recently with my father he told me of a time he spent working with Grandpa Westover when he was in his teens. I thought Dad would appreciate this image — I think it just tells his story well based on all I’ve read and learned about him. Here is the full image: