TIME WILL TELL By Melissa Walsh Photos Yanni
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heodore Roosevelt said “the more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future”, and this philosophy is the catalyst for the members of Somerville's historical society to keep pushing on. Every Wednesday a group of community-minded men and women gather together to make sure the history of their home town is never forgotten. They are the members of the Somerville, Tyabb and District Heritage Society, and dedicated to sharing and educating locals and visitors about the township’s rich history. “We are a hist orical society dedicated to preserving, collecting, researching and cataloging our history so that future generations can understand more of their past,” said Brenda Thornell, the secretary of the group of bubbly members who meet at the Mechanics Hall each week.
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34 | PENINSULA
October 2017
“It has been such a great community here and we want the history to be there for our young people to look up if they need it,” said Brenda. “We have had to step into the technology era and now have our youngest member, Lisa, doing our website and social media with our Facebook page.” Walking into the Somerville Mechanics Hall, the members of the society include members of some of the oldest families on the peninsula, many of them born in the Somerville Hospital. Somerville, Tyabb and District Heritage Society was formed in 1996 and has around 60 members. “The basis of our collection is from the late local historian Mrs Leila Shaw and is known as the Leila Shaw Collection, along with other locally collected memorabilia. Leila had called a meeting of the residents that had been here for many years and wanted to see if they wanted to start a historical society. We had