- ON00009 F 4592
- Collection
- ca. 1822-2010
Collection consists of photographs and other records, chiefly documenting the Ingersoll, Muskoka, Aylmer and St. Marys areas, collected by or given to amateur historian David L. Gibson. It includes photographs in several formats including cartes de visite, cabinet cards, tintypes, contemporary prints, and glass plate negatives and is comprised of two studio collections: the Hugill studios and the H.F. Robinson Studio. It also includes photographs and other records related to the Gibson and the Foulds families as well as records concerning David's personal research and family history.
As a child in the late 1920s, Gibson first befriended Edgar H. ("Ed") Hugill on Keewaydin Island in Muskoka where Hugill worked as the summer postmaster. Hugill operated a photo studio in Ingersoll, Ontario, initially in conjunction with his father, John, and later on his own. After Ed Hugill's death in 1955, the collection of negatives and photographs from the studio came into Gibson's possession. Gibson used the photos in writing books about Keewaydin Island and the Hugill studio.
Photographs in this collection consist of negatives and prints of family members and studio customers as well as interiors and exteriors of homes and businesses in the Ingersoll area, boats and cottages on Keewaydin and surrounding islands, and events in the Ingersoll and Muskoka areas.
Gibson also obtained the collection of another photographer, Harold Franklin ("Frank") Robinson, possibly through the estate of a Wilford Smith. The photographs included in this collection consist of individual and group portraits often taken at weddings, reunions, social events, and YWCA camps in Aylmer and St. Marys, Ontario.
Gibson was an avid genealogist. He gathered photographs documenting the Gibson as well as the Foulds families. The Foulds, David's maternal grandparents, were early settlers in the Brantford area and contemporaries and neighbours of Alexander Graham Bell. The photographs in this collection consist of family portraits, some of which were used to illustrate David L. Gibson's book on the Foulds family.
For a more detailed description, use this link to the Archives of Ontario's descriptive database: http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/PROV/PROV/REFD+F+4592?SESSIONSEARCH