Home is Where the Heart Is

​Some visitors to the Middleville and District Museum are delighted to find a photograph of a structure built and lived in by their ancestors. The Macaulay-Borrowman Photography Collection includes a few old buildings that testify to the existence of early housing in the area. Other photographs of homesteads are tucked into the pages of family histories waiting to be discovered by a young descendent. Some of these buildings are made of stone and have stood the test of time. Others are log and with a little care over the generations have survived. In many cases, what remains are a few corner stones on a site where a family once built a life that sustained them. The Museum's photo collections have representations of all of these cases. 

top row: Watt Homestead, Paul Homestead, middle row: James Homestead, Yuill Homestead, bottom row: Aitken Homestead, Smith Homestead

In the case of the McNichol Homestead, the Museum has the corner stone of the chimney that can be seen in the picture of the cabin. The chimney remained standing tall long after the cabin was taken by time. Descendants of the family brought the corner stone of that chimney to be preserved in the Museum and viewed by generations of the McNichol family. 

McNichol cabin

McNichol cabin stone chimney

showing corner stone of chimney with date engraved

corner stone of McNichol chimney showing engraved date inside the Middleville and District Museum

Be sure to look through the scrapbooks, family histories, albums, photography collections and boxes of photos on your next visit to the Museum.  Maybe you'll find a hidden treasure.