The Minden Hills Museum is the proud owner of the late Lydia Coulter's collection of scrapbooks.
A February 1977 feature article in the Minden Recorder by Susan McLaughlin told the story of Lydia Coulter and her scrapbooks. An excerpt of that article reads:
"Lydia Coulter of Minden who has for many years kept newspaper clippings of events in the Minden area, comes from a large family that grew up on the Reynolds homestead on Horseshoe Lake.
In 1919, she married Angus Coulter and moved to a farm on the west side of Boshkung Lake. They raised a family of two girls and four boys, moving back to Minden in 1945.
The Coulters lived for many years across from the registry office until relocating about five years ago to their present home just south of Minden. They will soon have been married 60 years and have ties to a large family, numbering 15 grandchildren in all.
For most, keeping track of a family that size would be enough, but Mrs. Coulter's scrapbooks of news clippings keep track of many other Minden families as well.
Many people have attempted histories of Minden and the Minden area, doing what they can to chronicle the lives of the people and families who made and still make the community what it is. All the writers need sources, however, and have come to one of the most faithful recorders of area history, Lydia Coulter of Minden, for the necessary information.
Mrs. Coulter has kept scrapbooks of news clippings concerning the people and events in and around the town for many years.....
During 2008 and 2009, students and volunteers at the Minden Hills Museum created an every name index of most of the scrapbooks and scanned and printed a copy of each book.
These copies of the scrapbooks are available for perusal at the Haliburton Highlands Genealogy Group resource room in the Minden Hills branch of the Haliburton County Public Library.
In this exhibit we feature the indices for each scrapbook, and a sampling of their pages..
