Tioga Point Museum and LeRoy Heritage Museum will cohost an exhibit of the 1890s and early 1900s photography of Dwight Harris with exhibits opening at each museum on Saturday, May 5, 2018. The LeRoy images will be on display at LeRoy Heritage Museum and the Sayre images will be on display at Tioga Point Museum. The public is invited to visit both locations during the upcoming season to view the important images from each community. The Tioga Point Museum is open Tuesday and Thursday, 12 – 8 pm, and the first Saturday of the month, 10 am – 1 pm. LeRoy Heritage Museum is open Saturdays, 1-4 pm, beginning on May 5th. Patrons are encouraged to visit Tioga Point Museum in the morning and then LeRoy Heritage Museum in the afternoon.

Dwight Harris was born in 1881 and grew up in LeRoy, Pennsylvania. Taking up the hobby of photography as a teenager, he recorded scenes of LeRoy on glass plate negatives showing images of people and places along Mill Street and Main Street where his Harris relatives owned property for many years. During his early life in LeRoy he worked as a teamster hauling lumber and coal from Barclay Mountain. He moved to West Franklin and finally to Sayre in 1906 where he operated a milk route in the Valley for 30 years. Harris continued his photography in Sayre and recorded many early images of houses and businesses in that area when Sayre was still a relatively new community. 

Dwight Harris died in 1973. His collection of glass plate negatives made their way to the Tioga Point Museum in Athens but since the negatives were unidentified, it remained a mystery as to where the photographs had been taken. In the mid 1990's, Tioga Point Museum published a few of the images in the Daily Review with a caption asking the public if they recognized the photos. One of the images was instantly identified as a building from LeRoy, Pennsylvania. Over 20 years later, the negative collection was reevaluated, images were made from the plates and they were catalogued by the Tioga Point Museum. Earlier in 2018, Todd Babcock, President of Tioga Point Museum and Matt Carl, President of LeRoy Heritage Museum, worked together to identify the images and discovered around 30 images from LeRoy and many more from Sayre. The LeRoy images show some of the earliest views of the community that are known to exist.

Both museums invite the public to view this newly rediscovered collection this year. More information about each museum can be found at www.tiogapointmuseum.org or www.leroyheritage.org.