Calling All Meridenites: Say Cheese!

He admits the idea is a little crazy. And he acknowledges that he’ll never see the endeavor finished in his lifetime. But that doesn’t stop Allen Weathers, curator of the Meriden Historical Society, from devoting much of his time to his pet project: Collecting a photo of every person who ever lived in the city of Meriden.

Weathers cooked up the scheme about five years ago and corralled some of his history buff friends into joining him. When Patch caught up with him last week at the Historical Society’s Morehouse Research Center, he and longtime friend Richard Bartholomew were up their elbows in file boxes full of the pictures and profiles they’ve collected so far. Ask them how many, and the two just look at each other and laugh.

Both retired, they work on the project every Wednesday afternoon during the research center’s public office hours. With half a decade invested so far, Weathers says they are up to the 1990s in phase one of the process: going through Platt and Maloney high school yearbooks, or “annuals,” as Weathers refers to them. They photocopy every page of the class pictures, cut them out individually and create an index card file for each person.

“We’ve got about 20 years to go with the two high schools, and then we’ll do Wilcox,” Weathers explains. When they finish with the yearbooks, they plan to branch out into other historical documents, including Meriden history books, church records, newspapers and other publications.

“You won’t live long enough,” Bartholomew playfully tells the octogenarian Weathers.

“I hope somebody comes along to pick it up,” he replies.

Ideally, the two historians would like to get some local youth involved to see the project through and carry it on into the future. They did recruit a high school student to help out for a while, but the young man went off to college.

Weathers, who jokes that he is 39 years old, has been curator of the Society for more than 20 years, and a member for more than 50.

“He has the energy of a 39-year-old,” Bartholomew attests.

When he’s not working on this project, Weathers is answering inquiries from people all over the world about the origins of people and products from Meriden. The Historical Society keeps catalogs from long-closed Meriden manufacturing firms like International Silver. People often come to Weathers hoping to find out about an antique.

“For a town our size, we have more information than most,” he boasts of the Historical Society’s records. And with this undertaking, they’re trying to collect even more.

Why do they do it?

The information is useful for people who are researching their ancestry, Weathers relates.

Historical Society President Peter Slavinski agrees. “We get a lot of requests online. We often have to go to the library to research the information. Now we can use his card file.”

Slavinski hopes to put all the information on a computer eventually.

But the answer to why they do it may be more basic than helping with research on family trees. People like Weathers and Bartholomew seem to have history in their genes. They want to create a complete record. And they enjoy learning about the history of their hometown through the people who have lived here.

“We get to know all the people we ever grew up with,” Bartholomew says. “We get to know everybody in the file.”

If you have a little time on your hands, the project could use some help. And you’ll learn a lot in the process--not only about the people of Meriden and the city’s history as told through their individual stories, but also from Weathers and Bartholomew and the other local historians who run the Meriden Historical Society.

“We get together and we talk history. And we have a good time doing it,” Weathers says.