A photo of Colonel John Cullmann, founder of Cullman County, is displayed showing Cullmann and his friends enjoying a wine picnic.
HANCEVILLE – Wallace State Community College’s Genealogy online collection features photographs from Cullman County's past for the public's use. Wallace State's Library has collected many other photographs over the years including an entire defunct newspaper's archives. Those images will join the other collections on the Wallace State website at www.wallacestate.edu/library/genealogy.
Philip Viverito, a retired staff photographer and manager of Niagara Mohawk Power Company Western Division Photographic Department Archive, and other volunteers conduct the scanning and the descriptions of the photographs. Individuals not interested in donating their photographs, but just scanning can do so. To arrange to scan photographs, contact Tanya Shearer at 256-352-8263 or email her at tanya.shearer@wallacestate.edu.
A number of items on genealogy and Cullman local history are already on the site. The latest addition is thousands of pages of free information on methods and material for researching family history. The program is also working with the Cullman County Government and the Cullman County Public Library to digitize the historical newspapers.
Wallace State’s Genealogy collection at the Wallace State Library helps family and history researchers across the country, but it has especially strong resources on Cullman County families. Among the many requests that it has helped with recently include an upcoming book of historical sketches of Cullman County, research into the area's African American history and The Colony, and obtaining a federal service marker for the grave of a veteran of the Spanish American War.
The staff has also recently assisted in a variety of requests, including helping a novelist research the real history of a stolen Confederate gold train in Georgia and another author on the controversial Alabama surgeon John Marion Sims for an upcoming book. Years ago, the program borrowed and microfilmed the Kollock Family Papers, the most significant historical collection of the South still in private hands. The son of the owner of the collection asked for and received a copy of an interview and photographs of his late mother when she loaned the papers for copying.
For more information about Wallace State, visit www.wallacestate.edu.
