100 Year Old Thacker Autograph Album

I thought that it would be fun to look back at what some of our relatives were doing 100 years ago! On July 18th, 1999 (at the Thacker reunion in Corbett Ontario) Leonard Thacker brought along an autograph book that had been his father's (John Thacker b.1887) and was used between 1897 - 1915. It was a wonderful opportunity to see the comments from our ancestors going through the turn of the century 100 years ago! Fortunately I had brought a computer (thanks to Mark & Shelly Meinhardt) and a scanner (thanks to my dad Robert Thacker) to capture some of the one-of-a-kind photos that always turn up at such events. I found the album pages & comments fascinating and wanted to share them. What better way than a WWW page! It is amazing to think that this book, which was passed around at family events (especially at Christmas & New Years) probably did not travel too far from the farms in Teeswater, Ontario but can now be seen around the globe.

Below are the results, presented in order, from this wonderful time capsule. I did my best to clean-up the scans and minimize the file size but these are large files and may take a wee bit of time to load. I broke the album into 4 sections so you do not need to load everything all at once.

Just like today - some folks wrote with beautiful & legible penmanship and some comments are almost illegible. I tried to clean up & adjust the contrast as much as possible to make things readable. Also, depending on the screen resolution you are using, you may see side-to-side scroll bars (a sin in WWW page design!). Hopefully you will find these images worth the wait & work!

I hope you enjoy this glimpse into our past and wish you the very best in 2003!