West Oaks Branch Library & Genealogy Center

The theme of our latest lobby display is Home for the Holidays. Featuring antiques on loan from the City of Ocoee Withers Maguire House, this display includes items that might have been found in a typical Ocoee home in the late 1800s.

A cast iron skillet, cookie cutters, a meat grinder, recipe book, and a coffee grinder are among those items used to prepare for the holidays. Objects representing dinner with the family include an elegant menu card, pickle caster, tea strainer, salt cellar, and butter server. After dinner entertainment includes playing cards, an inkwell, dominoes, an oil lamp, books, and a stereoscope for viewing photographs.

The most recent display in the lobby of the West Oaks Library and Genealogy Center features historic school items. A class picture from 1918 shows a group of serious-looking Ocoee School students and their teachers. A full sized antique wooden desk is on display, along with spectacles, an inkwell, a microscope, and a composition notebook. Pieces of plaster and a brick from the original 1927 Ocoee High School building are included, as is a report card from 1939. Photographs from 1945 show members of both the baseball and basketball teams of Ocoee High School. A sign explains that in 1888 a teacher’s monthly salary was $44, as they were paid $1 per student based on average daily attendance. The display is provided courtesy of the Friends of Ocoee History Preservation, and the items are on loan from the Withers-Maguire House & Museum.  Look for new displays coming soon!

A selection of military-themed antiques and photographs are currently on display in the lobby of the West Oaks Branch Library and Genealogy Center. The exhibit includes patriotic items from a variety of time periods when the United States was at war. Advertisements for government bonds exhorting women to “help America’s sons win the war” are displayed alongside photographs of local soldiers. The collection also includes WWII-era model airplanes and a battleship, ration books, flags, prayers for the troops, bullets, binoculars, cannonballs, and a helmet from World War I.

The items on display are on loan from the historic Withers-Maguire House & Museum, as well as from members of Friends of Ocoee History Preservation.