Some of you may recognise this lady. She was born in 1746 and her name was Hannah Stilley. She is thought to be the oldest person ever caught on camera. The photograph was take in 1840 and she was to die shortly after.
To put her age into context she was born in the year of the Battle of Culloden, when the final Jacobite hopes of returning the Stuart dynasty to the British throne were crushed. The year that Samuel Johnson began to write his Dictionary of the English Language and the great painter Fransisco Goya was born.
So what.
She is an unremarkable person, who lived an unremarkable life and who just happened to be old when a new method of recording images was discovered (although the first photograph was taken in 1827, Louis Daguerrre developed the quicker, clearer process in 1837).
What I am saying is that she is a product of the randomness of events, but her story can serve as a way into history. History isn't a technical, factual process - it is the story of people, individually or together who shape events, witness events, or have them effect their lives.
So what.
So - this can be the great strength of local museums. The many of the small towns of Britain haven''t shaped great events or witnessed great events, but have had their lives effected by change, have witnessed small events that can tell a story of greater things (e.g. industrial revolution). But collecting the past is easy, the events are known and the collecting can be focussed.
What is more difficult is collecting the 'now' for the future. In another 100 years what will museums have to tell the story of 'now'. There is so much to chose from, so much is offered - where do we start?
I have blogged before about the problems of collecting in a globalised and digital world. In a globalised, digital world, what is local? What is local is the population, the stories they can tell. In my town that story is as much Polish and Lithuanian, even though the clothes they wear and the 'phones they use are the same the world over. And our stores are full so we cant collect much anyway.
The answer is actually digital. Collect the stories. Collect the oral history. Collect the photographs. Make that part of what a museum does everyday. Then in 150 years an ordinary person can tell an ordinary story.
I am an extraordinary person, although the rest of the world doesn't realise it. But let me tell you it.
I was born just in time for the Cuban Mile Crisis, I went to infants school the year England Won the World Cup (that will never happen again and the sooner we realise it the better, so that we can learn to live with the disappointment). I was kept back a year in school the year man landed on the Moon. My junior school years coincided with the oil crisis, miners strike and the 3 day week. I went to secondary school the year Richard Nixon resigned because of the Watergate standard (little were we to know that we could then add the suffix -gate to something to indicate a scandal - thus the English language continues to grow).
And so it goes on:
I was in Liverpool when John Lennon was killed
I never believed the Berlin Wall could fall in my lifetime
I saw a 23 year old Kenneth Branagh perform Henry V at the RSC
I saw the events of 9/11 unfold live on TV
I voted in the election that resulted in the first coalition government since 1945.
And my story is as special and unique as 7 billion others on this planet
If we do nothing to personalise, collect and conserve at least some of these lives, to quote Roy Batty Bladerunner,
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain"
Thus in 2150 the grainy image of Frank Rason will stare back at some tyro curator who will be saying either, "who was this?" or ,"he's got a lot to answer for!" Whatever they say, I will have a story to tell about my time - everyday, any day and forever.
