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Blog: Randolph Historical Society Makes Local History Accessible

Posted April 03, 2025 by Jessamyn West

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history photography

The  Randolph Historical Society won an award from the Vermont Historical Society for their digitization project which put over six hundred photos by Randolph photographers or about Randolph topics. The Award of Merit is from the VHS's League of Local Historical Societies & Museums Achievement Awards in their Access/Digitzation category.

See all of their images on the Randolph Historical Society's Flickr account.

old photograph of downtown randolph with a LOT pf people hanging around.

As RHS explains in their application, "This project is a digitization and online access project for historical photos of Randolph and by Randolph photographers. It provides extra points of access to a set of newly-created digital archives. It is also a model for shoestring digitization projects for other tiny historical societies."

scene of downtown randolph showing the railroad crossing

This project involved the work of

  • Forrest Macgregor - project manager, image selection, image correction
  • Devon Blomquist - handwriting deciphering, name identification
  • Sophie Miller - digitization
  • Jessamyn West - uploading, transcribing, metadata


an old garage in Randolph with a car on an inclined ramp leading in to the garage

Items scanned included sets of images such as


postcard view of randolpg showing mostly curch spires. It's framed by a birch border, peeled back to reveal the image of the town

The project has uploaded 677 photos since May 2024. They are grouped into sixteen different albums, four of which we've embedded on the Randolph Historical Society's website and been able to share on Facebook which has allowed us to get feedback on some unknown buildings and people, though some of them remain unknown.

The Randolph Historical Society has other exciting projects in the works, helping bring more of their archives out into the open. Stay tuned!

A woman dressed in a fairy outfit holding a wand with a star on it.

Making Randolph a better place to live, work, and play.