Local History

Taxonomy

Code

Scope note(s)

  • Special Collections & Archives holds a variety of resources related to the local and urban history of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Collections include maps, fire insurance plans, business and city directories, yearbooks from local high schools, government documents outlining local county or village by-laws, and newspapers including restored copies of issues of the Berliner Journal for the years 1859-1889. The department is also home to the Kitchener-Waterloo Photographic Negative Collection, which documents local news events, community activities, regional development, and human-interest stories between 1938-2001. Many of the local history collections contain the institutional archives of local businesses and organizations such as Dare Foods Limited, Electrohome, Fritsch Pharmacy, the Dominion Rubber Company, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, and the Rotary Club of Kitchener. In addition, the department maintains numerous family papers including those for the Breithaupt, Bolender Ball, Ratz, Schantz, Schneider, and Seagram families, among many others. These collections complement several printed genealogies, family histories, and monographs also held by the department.

Source note(s)

Display note(s)

Hierarchical terms

Local History

Local History

Equivalent terms

Local History

Associated terms

Local History

7 Archival description results for Local History

Only results directly related

Ross Hamilton letter to Miss Henstridge, Jan. 16, 1918.

  • SCA202-GA179
  • Collection
  • January 16, 1918

One holograph letter, written from the trenches in France during the First World War. Ross Hamilton is sending Miss Henstridge a book he has found in a ruined house, and is asking for news of his old school, Kitchener Collegiate Institute.

Hamilton, Ross

Concordia Club fonds.

The majority of the archives of the Concordia Club were destroyed either as a result of the ransacking of the club by the 118th Batallion in 1916, or as a result of the fire of Nov. 17, 1971. As a result the earliest records of Concordia have largely been lost forever. A very small number of items can be traced back to the Concordia Male Choir (1873-1914). These take the form of two items of correspondence, programs for the "Sängerfests", clippings, and photographs. A small number of archival records also can be found which belonged to the "Deutscher Club, Kitchener" (1925-1930), and include a set of house rules, letters patent, and photographs. Some records from the 1930s have also been preserved to this day, and include artifacts, clippings, legal documents, a membership list, photographs, and programs of events. However, the majority of the materials date from the 1950s onwards. These materials document the history of the Concordia Club since the 1950s, and include artifacts, audiovisual material, clippings, correspondence, ephemera, financial records, legal documents, membership records, minutes of meetings, photographs, publications, and scrapbooks.

Concordia Club

David Shannon Bowlby fonds.

  • SCA57-GA33
  • Fonds
  • 1892-1921

Fonds consists of 28 items of correspondence between David Shannon Bowlby and his family.

Bowlby, David Shannon

Christian Enslin : Letter to Fredrick Heinitsch, M.D.

  • SCA200-GA177
  • Collection
  • August 27, 1849

File consists of one letter from Christian Enslin, bookseller and bookbinder, Waterloo, Ontario to Fredrick Heinitsch, M.D., Lancaster, Pennsylvania requesting the right to "Mother Drops", a medicine created by Dr. Heinitsch on which he held the patent.
The letter also includes information on bookbinding and printing practices in Upper Canada and makes reference to local figures such as Benjamin Eby, Bishop of the Mennonites.

Enslin, Christian

Sims Family collection.

  • SCA369-GA427
  • Collection
  • 1833-1963

The Sims family collection encompasses records of the Sims and Cook, Davidson and Garden families retained by members of the two family branches that came together when Harvey James Sims and Florence Katherine Roos married in 1902. Their Sims and Davidson forbears were equally significant in the history of the Waterloo-Wellington area and in the growth and development of agriculture, education, business and government. Harvey James Sims and Florence Katherine Roos were deeply involved in their local community of Berlin, (later Kitchener) Ontario and their own records contain significant additions to our knowledge of local personalities and affairs. Harvey was a childhood and lifelong friend of William Lyon Mackenzie King; they wrote and visited each other regularly. King's sister Bella was also a close friend of Florence from school days on.

Sims family

John Galt letter.

  • SCA61-GA35
  • Collection
  • [18--]

Consists of one holograph letter from John Galt addressed to "Croker." The letter requests that Croker publish the enclosed items in his magazine if they are not too late reaching him.

Galt, John