It’s always a treat for anyone who loves local history to find a new artifact.
And that’s just what happened during an engagement of a member of our Speakers’ Bureau this last spring.
A member of the host club came up and said “My mother painted
a picture of The Oaks, Bertha Palmer’s estate, sometime in the 1950s. Would you like to see it?” Would we ever! Lois S. sent us this snap of the painting that is lovingly framed, gracing her home, and says, “Maybe someday I’ll donate it.”
Lois wasn’t sure of the time frame of this painting, but we know The Oaks was demolished in the early 1960s, having been abandoned as a home for decades before that. And trying to remember how old she was when she saw the building she and I estimated that it would have been in the early 1950s when it was in this weather-worn condition. Thank you Lois for speaking up and sharing!
Now, you don’t have to be an artist, or have a family heirloom, to help HSoSC collect donated ephemera for the History Center, which is the Historical Resources division of the library system. If you have anything as seemingly inconsequential as a restaurant menu, a church bulletin, or the like, read what we are gathering up in this blog post.
The Historical Society of Sarasota County 