THE COFFEE County Historical Society has long been a steward of local memory in Manchester. For board member and museum curator Bonnie Gamble, the organization’s mission is both practical and personal.
“The Society’s mission today is to collect and preserve the history of Coffee County,” Gamble said. “And we do it both through our museum, through our written resources, our extensive photographic collection, and our research library. We have books that document local history, plus families have produced their own histories.”
The Society publishes The Coffee County Chronicle, which Gamble said has played an essential role in keeping research alive for decades.
“We publish what is called the Coffee County Chronicle, which at one time was a quarterly. Now we do it twice a year, and we do it on topics of interest in Coffee County history. One of the founding members did extensive transcribing of local records and census records back in the day, before they were all on the internet.”
Volunteers are scanning and digitizing these resources so the public can access them from the website cctnhs.org.
“One of the first ones that was done in 1978 was about the Beech Grove area of Coffee County,” Gamble said. “The good thing is that we have an overhead book scanner that can make it into a searchable PDF.”
Even more significant is a massive photographic collection.
“The Society acquired over 100,000 photographic negatives from Hugh Doak, who ran his own private photography studio but was also the editor of the Manchester Times in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and early ‘60s,” Gamble said. “We have photograph negatives from 1939 to 1960 from his collection, and we’re scanning those. Those have been very important. It created our first African American indexing of families through those photographs.”
The impact has been powerful.
Community members can email the Aociety a photograph and have it searched.
“This just happened this summer. A man came in, probably in his mid-’70s, and I pulled up his mother’s picture. The tears were just coming out of his eyes. That’s so impactful, because a lot of them are pictures they have never, ever seen.”
The Doak collection also contains rare glimpses of segregated schools and World War II maneuvers in Middle Tennessee.
“We have them in their cap and gowns because they went to a separate school. There was no yearbook. There was nothing like that. And so they get to see these important events in their relatives’ history,” Gamble said. “We also have an important collection of World War II pictures of the maneuvers in Middle Tennessee, where you see the tanks coming through the little town of Manchester.”
The Society’s work also fills an educational gap.
“Nowadays, for children going through the public school system, history is not something that is tested on their state exams,” Gamble said. “So their history and the history of their community, they get taught that, but it’s not as much of an emphasis. And so we could fill that gap by connecting our young people with ‘here’s your heritage.’”
The Society even brings exhibits directly to students.
“We did a mobile museum exhibit two years ago and took it to the schools so the children could see it,” Gamble said. “It was titled ‘When I Was Your Age,’ and it was about attending school back in the early 1900s when your wagon was your bus. They actually had wagon drivers.”
Another classroom visit is scheduled for second and third graders at Hickerson Station Elementary School this September.
The group also hosts public meetings.
“We have a membership meeting, but it’s open to the public every other month on the second Saturday,” Gamble said. “We have speakers who come and discuss topics about local history. We just had one in July, and our speaker was Mr. John Wright. He is our oldest surviving World War II veteran, and his wife’s family helped start the walking horse industry in Coffee County.”
Future plans include more digitization and museum upgrades.
“We’re getting a digital kiosk so that we can link our photographs and have them be shown digitally as part of a museum exhibit,” Gamble said. “We’ve scanned 18,500 photographs, and they are stored in the cloud, but we’ve only scanned through the letter F. There’s a lot to do.”
They have also planned a major renovation of the courthouse where the museum is housed.
“It’s an 1871 courthouse on the National Register of Historic Places. We got a grant from the Tennessee Historical Commission to renovate the main hallway and return it to an 1871 appearance,” she said.
Challenges remain, particularly in funding and staffing.
“Obviously, volunteers are important because nobody’s getting paid, and sometimes that can be challenging,” Gamble said. “Funding is always a challenge, too. We’re the only free museum in the county, so there is no admission fee. We don’t charge if you want to get a copy of your photograph. So funding is always a challenge. We encourage people to become members, as that is our sustaining revenue stream to support our work.”
For Gamble, the most meaningful part of the work is watching families reconnect with their roots.
“One is being able to connect people with their family history. It’s so moving to see how meaningful it is for them to come in and find out, ‘Oh, this is what my grandmother looked like when she was a child.’ That is probably the most important thing for me,” she said. “The other is, if you are just a curious person, there are so many stories you find out through the research of events that occurred in Coffee County.”
In the end, Gamble believes the Society’s role is simple yet profound.
“I think really the importance is that we are just connecting citizens with their heritage, whether it be their family, or whether it be the community heritage — to understand the sense of place, where they are living, and the lives that shaped their community.” GN
