The Tippah County Historical & Genealogical Society is inviting residents to help with its Tippah County Archives historic photos collection. On Thursday, the society shared a batch of digitized black-and-white pictures from towns across the county, some of them taken in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and asked the public to help with two jobs: identifying more recent photos that are still unlabeled, and taking pictures of the same places as they look today.
The Throwback Thursday post, published on the society’s Facebook page, included 16 images. The society said the pictures have been digitized and are available to view at the Tippah County Archives in Ripley.
What the Tippah County Archives Historic Photos Show
Several of the photos carry handwritten labels with the place and year, which gives a rare look at rural Tippah County nearly 90 years ago. Among the images in the set:
Blue Mountain, 1938: a two-story brick commercial block with painted signs advertising dry goods, caskets, paints and oils. Storefronts along the covered sidewalk include J.B. Guyton’s dry goods and grocery, a dry cleaner and the Bank of Blue Mountain, with two cars of the era parked out front.
Ruckersville, 1936: the Tucker place, a two-story house with a wide front porch.
Near Falkner, 1941: the Davis place, shown in a wooded setting.
A two-story house that, according to its label, is now known as the Booker house.
The rest of the set shows homes, landscapes and other scenes from around the county. Old images like these often show buildings, farmsteads and crossroads communities that have since changed a great deal or disappeared entirely.
How Residents Can Help
The society said it has many more pictures from more recent decades that it has not yet been able to identify. It is asking people with some free time to:
Visit the archives and look through the unidentified photos. Longtime residents may recognize a building, a street or a family home that staff and volunteers cannot place.
Take present-day photos of the places shown in the historic pictures and post them on social media, so others can compare then and now.
“Can you post pictures of these areas as they look today?” the society asked in its post.
Then-and-now comparisons are especially useful for local historians. They help confirm where a photo was taken, show how a town grew or shrank, and record buildings before they are lost.
Visiting the Tippah County Archives in Ripley
The Tippah County Archives is at 201 Union St. in Ripley. The society has previously said the archives are open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visitors can use the collection for genealogy and family history, wills, marriage records and other county records, along with the growing photo collection.
The building has its own history. The site held the Tippah County Jail beginning in 1896, and the later jail building that replaced the original was restored and now houses the archives.
The Tippah County Historical & Genealogical Society was founded on Dec. 15, 1975, by Bill Gurney, Don Martini, Oleta Rutherford and Martha Braddock to research all aspects of Tippah County’s history and its people, according to the society’s Facebook page. Anyone planning a visit with a specific question, or anyone who wants to help identify photos, can contact the society through its Facebook page.
October is also Archives Month, which makes this a good time to stop by, whether you are tracing your family tree or simply curious about what Blue Mountain, Falkner, Ripley and the rest of the county looked like generations ago.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
