The late Hazel Sheffer Crawford collected hundreds of old photographs related to Emlenton during her long telephone career. The photographs, eventually dispersed to out-of-town relatives, have returned to the collector's hometown.

A collection of photographs culled over many years by a former telephone operator has found its way back to its home community of Emlenton.

Hazel Sheffer Crawford (1909-1983) spent her life in Emlenton and worked as a telephone operator and later office manager for Peoples Telephone Co. there. She and her husband, Earl, and their son Don resided in the borough.

Her job lent itself to accumulating history, said Nancy Kingsley, a borough resident and volunteer for the community's Pumping Jack Museum in the Crawford Center.

"When residents came to pay their phone bills, they often observed her sorting through the photos which she originally began collecting when she researched her heritage for an application to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)," Kingsley said.

That led to customers and friends donating their old photographs to Crawford. Eventually, the local woman had an extensive portfolio of old pictures that included people as well as scenes involving Emlenton. They date from the late 1870s through the 1950s.

The photo collection eventually went to her heirs who lived out of the area.

One heir, nephew Rick Sheffer and his wife Ilene, recently traveled from their home in Michigan to Emlenton to present the Crawford photograph collection to the Pumping Jack Museum.

Kingsley said the Sheffers gave 750 reproduced photographs to the museum.

"The return of the collection to the town is tied to the 150th anniversary celebration of oil (Oil 150, the sesquicentennial of the birth of the oil industry) and will be featured in a presentation by Rick Sheffer," Kingsley said.

The public presentation is set for Sept. 6 in the auditorium of Emlenton's Crawford Center, a former school converted to shops, public offices and the Pumping Jack Museum.

Sheffer will tell the story of his family, starting in 1770 when Johann Adam Shaffer (as the name was then spelled) immigrated from Germany to Philadelphia and then Westmoreland County, eventually settling in the early oil town of Pickwick in Clarion County before moving to Emlenton.

"He will tie in several generations of his family, four generations (who)...were totally or partially engaged in the oil industry," Kingsley said.

Sheffer's program will also include information on well-known Emlenton residents, including his father, George Elmer Sheffer; his grandfather, James Austin; and his great-grandfather, George Mansfield Sheffer who moved to Emlenton in 1885 and started the Sheffer Machine Shop.

An exhibit of family memorabilia at the museum will include the Sheffer photographs and Civil War relics collected by George Mansfield Sheffer, a Civil War hero who was Rick Sheffer's great-grandfather.