Thursday, April 25, 2024
Almost nine years ago, Mary Maxwell, the wife of Coryell County native, Dwaine Maxwell (GHS Class of 1962), was going through their collection of photos of Coryell County people and places and thought to herself, “I should start a Facebook page and post all these pictures.”
So, she did just that. The page is called Coryell County History and Photos and with almost 5,000 members, the page has over 10,000 images of Coryell County places, people and history.
The co-administrator of the Facebook page, Carol Cornish Vaughn, also has strong ties to the county. Vaughn’s great-grandfather, Robert J. Brown, was a prominent business owner in Gatesville.
Mary and Dwaine, who live in Midlothian, make routine trips to Coryell County where they can be found at the library, the newspaper office going through old issues of the paper, the basement of the courthouse, the cemeteries, and her favorite place, the Coryell County Museum. She proclaims that Coryell is her adopted county, even though she was born and reared in Oak Cliff (Dallas).
Over the years, she has been able to scan or photograph many of the museum’s collections and has posted these on the Facebook page. She has also shared many of their Coryell County collections with The Portal to Texas History, where the digitized images will live on through generations.
She often says that she hopes the work she has done will preserve the rich history of the county, but she is always quick to give credit to the members of the page who, she states, have generously shared their collections.
Every chance she gets, she encourages members to dig out their family collections and post their pictures. Since she does photo restorations, she has said, “Send me your old negatives. I can bring them back to life.” And she backs that up, having posted several images she has converted from negatives.
If you are on Facebook and you haven’t joined the page, it can be done with a click of the keyboard.
When asked for a sample of the images, Mary responds with, “Oh, how to choose?” But the photo above is one that she selected at random.
