Our birthday and some reflections

As we hit 2019, the Together Trust once again finds itself on the brink of yet another birthday. This is its last one before the big 150 in January next year. Like many of us, teetering on the edge of a decade, we gaze back in wonder at how quickly the years have passed and what has been achieved in the last decade. 

Our earliest photograph taken 1873

From an archive point of view, we have seen the passing of many events and projects highlighting the history of the charity and making it more accessible to the public. Notable highlights include: 

• The cataloguing of the first 90 years of the charity, which, was completed in 2009. This section of the archive resides at Manchester Archives and its cataloguing has allowed for easier access to researchers as well as to the charity itself.

• Digitisation of part of its collection. Borthwick Institute for Archives digitised all the Orphan Homes Admission Books in 2014, whilst in 2011, genealogy website Ancestry, digitised our emigration books. 

Exhibition at The John Rylands Library, 2011

• A six-month exhibition at The John Rylands Library in 2011, chronicling our last 140 years. 

• World War One projects. Both in 2014 and 2018 projects were completed around those associated with the charity who fought in World War One. Alongside a permanent memorial plaque at its Cheadle Offices, a roll of honour was also completed.

• Getting Down and Dusty – a blog highlighting some of the fabulous archives in our collection to help tell the story of the history of the charity. The blog has now been going since 2011.

Part of our First World War commemorations in 2018

• An online searchable database on our website, which allows genealogists to discover if their ancestor may have been in one of our homes, 1870-1915. 

• Deep Pockets and Dirty Faces. An 18 month project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which allowed young people from our services to delve into our archive and display their finding in a number of artistic ways. 

With our 150th on the horizon, 2019 will be a busy year of planning and researching in order to celebrate this momentous occasion. It has been interesting looking back at some of our other big celebrations over the years to see how the charity has celebrated its history. Our next blog will look at this in more detail, revealing the various events partaken in. For now, we will wish you a very happy new year along with these words taken from our annual report of 1970 on our 100th anniversary:

This is the first annual report of our second century and we step over the threshold feeling full of beans and eager to tackle whatever the next hundred years may hold for us. 

The sentiment is echoed today.