Residents will no longer have to schedule appointments with Bowdon Area Historical Society members and flip through hundreds of old, fragile photos to learn about the town’s history - they can simply pop in a DVD and press play.

Tuesday night at the Historical Society’s monthly meeting, the group watched a sample presentation of “Portraits of a Place: Selected Photographs from the Collection of the Bowdon Area Historical Society.” The DVD collection includes 438 historical photos of Bowdon.

Judy Rowell, who serves as chair of the Shelnutt House Museum committee along with husband Jim, and fellow Historical Society member Mignon Wessinger started work on the DVD project about six months ago. The society received a $5,000 grant in 2006 from Carroll EMC’s Operation Roundup program with which to complete the project. Rowell said she and Wessinger did not ask local residents to donate personal photos, but rather used photos from the Historical Society’s current collection.

Wessinger said compiling the photos serves both of the purposes in the Historical Society’s mission statement: to preserve Bowdon’s heritage while instilling an appreciation for that heritage in both the present and future generations.

“[Rowell] and I, our intent was to be able to preserve them and provide a way for people to be able to see them,” Wessinger said.

The DVD is divided into a number of chapters including businesses, schools, people and Bowdon College. Each chapter plays numerous photos pertaining to the topic to music played by Chuck Leavell, who has played piano and keyboard for The Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. Wessinger said that Leavell gave special permission to use his music on the DVD.

The DVD contains photos of a number of people, places and events from Bowdon’s history, including the town’s centennial celebration in the 1950s. Rowell, whose great-great-grandfather, Samuel Copeland, was present on the day Bowdon was founded, said many of the photos rouse memories from the shops and schools that surrounded her as a child. One of the most interesting parts of the DVD for Rowell is the series of photos showing unnamed people in the final chapter.

“There are a number of those unidentified photos that stand out to me because you aren’t focusing on where they are or who they are, you are just looking at those people and what they had on,” she said. “It’s just such a good example of the dress of that time and the photography method of that time.”

Wessinger said a number of the photos on the DVD have never been published before, including some shots of destruction taken by a woman following a storm that tore through downtown Bowdon in 1934. Wessinger said more than 200 homes were damaged during that storm, and many were destroyed completely.

The Historical Society has several of the small 1934 photos in a collage, but Wessinger said the details show much more clearly when the photos are viewed on the DVD.

“It’s really amazing what you can see as far as that storm damage,” she said.

The DVDs, which are being sold at Bowdon City Hall, Bowdon Pharmacy and through Historical Society members, are also intended to serve as a fund-rasing project.

Rowell said the society has already received a set of fire-proof filing cabinets from Tisinger Vance through the Community Foundation of West Georgia’s wish list program, but the group hopes to purchase additional space and equipment to display a larger collection.

Rowell said the Historical Society has a number of military uniforms and photographs that group members eventually hope to display all in one well-lit, temperature-controlled area.

“One of our goals is to establish an area that will be a military museum,” Rowell said.

Wessinger hopes the DVD will generate enough interest in historical preservation that the Historical Society may eventually be able to create a second DVD collection.

For now, Wessinger and Rowell are just glad to have a small portion of Bowdon’s history preserved in a form all residents can access.

“A lot of the photographs, they’re truly art,” Wessinger said.