By JESSICA SIEFF
Edwardsburg Argus

It is a collection of Edwardsburg history.

Close to 350 photos of the area taken between 1910 and 1920 – captured slices of time, of the Edwardsburg Depot, of homes that may or may no longer be standing, school houses, village churches and families.

Husbands and wives, brothers, sisters and cousins and friends each a door to a new story, each home a setting to a scene – and many of them remain faces and places without names.

The collection is that of Dean Andrus who, years ago, found an old glass plate of negatives in a storage bin of the old Edwardsburg Argus office, which was owned by Andrus’ father, Charles, uncle George and grandfather Henry owned and operated The Edwardsburg Argus at the time.

“I worked there as a kid when I was going to school in Edwardsburg,” Andrus, who now lives in California, said.

“My uncle George took the photos of the area,” he added. “There are a lot of pictures of the homes and people in town.”

Andrus isn’t sure what the photographs were used for but he began scanning them a few years ago, he said, and he’s made them available online in the hopes that many of the faces and places of historical Edwardsburg will be identified.

“It’s there for their information as well as if they can identify,” Andrus said. “I just think it’s of general interest to the community.”

And, one might argue, of significant importance to the village’s history.

Andrus posted his photos on the Cass County, Michigan Genealogy on the Web website, part of the USGenWeb Project.

“The genealogy of studying a town and the ancestors within is similar to solving a huge mystery,” said Deanna Branson West, Cass County Michigan Genweb County coordinator. “From the smallest of dwellings to the local cemetery, the journey along the way offers intrigue and suspense. Sometimes we are lucky and through photos and stories from their heirs, we get answers to questions of what were their lives might have been like.”

In discovering those missing pieces of an area’s history, everything from old letters, journals and photographs can open the door to a multitude of stories, West added.

“The journals and diaries are normally recorded as the every day happenings were occurring and give us a crystal clear image of these wonderful people,” she said. “Bible records passed down from one generation to the next show accurate dates that might not appear anywhere else, including the final resting place of a child who might have died young.

“Photographs are invaluable in seeing where they lived or activities they were involved in,” West continued. “Such is the case of the photos of Edwardsburg that Dean Andrus submitted to the Cass County MIGenWeb. These photos show the places and people in their Sunday best, vacationing or just going about their daily business.”

The photos are available online for viewing at  www.dunelady.com/Cass/ under the listing of Photo Files and ‘Edwardsburg Andrus Collection.’

“We are asking viewers to help identify some of the people and places within,” West said. “None the less, whether you  can help in identifying any of them of not, they show a wonderful time capsule into the past of Edwardsburg.”