Two of her three children live away. Her one son who lives in Baton Rouge had some interest in collecting family items but not enough to go through boxes and boxes of photos, clips and scrapbooks.
Frenzel couldn’t bear to throw the items away, but she knew that in a generation or two, there would probably be no family member who would want the materials. Even a large family scrapbook would deteriorate over time.
“I had pages and pages of newsprint, things that had been in newspapers and magazines about my family,” she said. “People had begun sending me things, and I didn’t know what to do with them.”
Frenzel’s sister, Juliette Hynes, heard from Ann Smith, a library associate with the Louisiana State University Libraries, that Faye Phillips, then head of special collections at the LSU Libraries, was working on a pictorial history of Baton Rouge.
Hynes and Frenzel met with Phillips, now associate dean of libraries, and Elaine Smyth, now head of special collections, and decided to give their family papers to the library.
“It’s a hard decision for a family to let go of these things. We understand that they mean so much to families,” said Tara Laver, curator of manuscripts for special collections. “But by putting them here, they are in one place, protected from humidity and deterioration. Everyone can know that they are here and use them and see them. The family has peace of mind knowing that they are taken care of.”
The result is the Gebelin-Walsh-Hynes-Frenzel Family Papers – 2.5 cubic feet of approximately 490 physical items and 500 digital files carefully secured in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections at the LSU Libraries.
Frenzel’s family collection begins around 1860 and continues through the 1980s with portraits and informal photographs documenting the lives of family members and friends in the connected families.
“Juliette calls this collection ‘off the wall’ because all of the Hyneses took their pictures off their walls,” Frenzel said.
Laver says family papers tell the story of the area’s social life and customs – what it was like to live in Baton Rouge in the context of the lives of the people and cultural organizations.
“It is important to document the experiences of families in historical events and movements that occurred in their lifetime – civil rights, the Great Depression, Huey Long. As Baton Rouge changed, how people changed,” Laver said.
The collection tracks the ancestors and descendants of Joseph Gebelin and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Walsh, who were married Oct. 31, 1900, at St. Joseph Church (now St. Joseph Cathedral).
Joseph Gebelin served as assistant secretary of state, police jury president, city councilman, banker, St. Joseph Church trustee and a founding member of the Baton Rouge Country Club.
Photos record family debutante presentations, weddings, graduations, birthdays and events that were all a part of the social fiber of Baton Rouge.
Laver says that people come from all over the world to find information in LSU’s Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections.
“Whenever I’m talking to students, I tell them that events occur naturally as people live their lives. It’s not all about the person. It’s not all about a single thing that’s happening like World War II. Different researchers can come to a collection and find different things that we are not even focusing on,” she said.
When people approach the library about donating family papers, members of the staff go through the materials to see what is there and to get a sense of how to organize it.
“In terms of family papers, we look for correspondence, identified photographs, tapes or video, family history, ephemera, diaries, memoirs or reminiscences, family business records and scrapbooks,” Laver said. “In keeping with our collection’s focus on Louisiana and the Lower Mississippi Valley, we look for materials that document social life, culture, customs, family life and family businesses in our region.”
Families frequently bring their donated materials in “piles of stuff.” Librarians at Hill Memorial go through the materials and put them in archival boxes. “If something needs preservation work, we’ll do that,” Laver said.
As the librarians work through materials, they take notes. They make an inventory, which they put on the Internet. “Then people can see what kind of information is there,” Laver said.
When people type in a name on a search engine, they often find links to collections at Hill. “People come from all over the world and just down the street to do research,” Laver said.
She urges people to contact the library if they have items of local interest. One of the favorite parts of her job is seeing what people have.
“It’s not just the important people whose histories we want to study,” she said. “Whether or not family members are ‘prominent’ or ‘famous,’ through their lives we can document a certain place and time.”
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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.2theadvocate.com
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AP-WS-01-23-10 0000EST
