Everyday People -- Exhibit at Rundel Library

It is the 1910s, and these boys have recently won cross-country races sponsored by the YMCA.  The Rochester photographer, Albert Stone, working for the Rochester Herald at this time, has lined the boys up and taken their photo, and it will be printed in that week’s paper.  

   Notice the proud boy in the middle, standing so straight and tall, looking directly into the camera, looking directly at us.  He is Jonathan Theorius Dinkle, and he has won the 1-1/4 mile race for the No. 3 School.  

What will happen to young Jonathan Theorius as the years unfold?  Well, I can tell you.  In 1918, he will be awarded the Silver Marksman Medal from the Winchester Junior Rifle Corps.  In 1919, he will enlist in the United States Navy, probably lying about his age, saying he was born in 1901, making him 18 years old — his birth certificate shows that he was, in fact, born in 1903.  Jonathan wanted to serve his country, and to travel, and he didn’t want to wait.  

Jonathan T. Dinkle, 1930s

In 1923, he was living on Turpin Street and married Aldean Clemons.   Here is Jonathan T. Dinkle in the 1930s — a handsome fellow, to be sure.  

        By the 1940s, he had set up a taxicab business on Clarissa Street, the first such business by an African-American in Rochester.  And then, in 1968, Jonathan Theorius Dinkle passed from this world.   But he left behind his children, who have also passed from this world, but who also left behind their children.  One of them, a granddaughter of Jonathan Theorius Dinkle, is my friend, Karen Dinkle Bunton.  

Jonathan Dinkle, 1960s

In 2013, shortly after I moved to Rochester (that story and the strange coincidence involving my apartment is told in this earlier blog posting Living in the Past) with the intention of researching and writing about my ancestors, the musical Dossenbachs, I met Karen’s husband, Jerry Bunton, at a Memoir Writing Course at Rundel Library.  Jerry read stories to our class about his African-American family, who had arrived in Rochester during the Great Migration of the 1950s.  Jerry told me about his wife’s family, who had lived in Rochester from the 1870s, the same time my own family had settled here.  

Soon, Jerry and Karen talked to me about their family stuff — papers, photos, artifacts — which they had packed away in tubs in their cellar.  For the next year or so, I badgered them, yes, I did, I badgered them about getting their stuff out of the cellar and letting me look at it with them, so Karen and Jerry could share the stories which their stuff told about the Rochester that I wanted to learn more about.  

In 2015, we began our two-year journey of meeting weekly (mostly), and taking the stuff — we now called it “archives” — out of the tubs.  We organized it; I photographed it and catalogued it.  Bit by bit, piece by piece, I learned the story of the Dinkle family in Rochester.  And a grand, marvelous story it was.   

It is a tale well told at a current exhibit on the 2nd floor of Rundel Library, called “Everyday People:  The Dinkle Family and Rochester’s African-American Past.”  And this is what this blog post is all about.  I urge all of you to visit Rundel Library, which is always a pleasure in and of itself, and to see this exhibit — the posters, the printed information, the photos and artifacts in their glass cases. 

Exhibit at Central Library, 2nd floor Local History in Rundel

The Dinkle family was connected to many of Rochester’s important historical events  — Rochester servicemen in WWII, the Boy Scouts in the Third Ward, the first bookstore dedicated to selling African-American books, the FIGHT organization, Malcolm X’s visit to Rochester shortly before he was killed, and the silent march after Martin Luther King’s assassination.  

Add Exhibit at Central Library,
2nd floor Local History in Rundel

While you ponder the Dinkle family, consider your own family, and the stuff that you or other relatives have stored away somewhere, in boxes or tubs or file cabinets, perhaps in the attic or basement or junk room, perhaps in a rented storage facility.   And remind yourself:  it isn’t merely “stuff”; it is, in fact, archives.  And these archives tell stories not just about your family (although I can guarantee you that your family members did marvelous things, accomplished much, survived tumultuous times), but they also tell stories about places, cities, time periods.  Your family archives are the evidence of what happened, what it was like — they remind us of worlds long gone.  (Consider this:  even our own childhoods happened in worlds long gone now, right?)  

        In 2018, I showed the photos of the Dinkle/Bunton archives to Christine Ridarsky (City Historian) and Michelle Finn (Deputy City Historian) at the Central Library, and, shortly thereafter, introduced them to Karen and Jerry Bunton.  Christine and Michelle were thrilled and fascinated.  Since then, Michelle has worked with Karen and Jerry to understand the artifacts, and to clarify the details and the people’s relations to each other, all leading to the current Exhibit, and soon Christine will consider how to store and preserve much of the Dinkle family archives for future historians.    

Jerry and Karen Bunton at Lake Ontario in 2014

Many thanks to all of the good people — the Dinkles and the Buntons and your relatives and my relatives — who lived and who left behind evidence of their lives! 

Thank you to Karen Dinkle Bunton and Jerry Bunton for lovingly shepherding their family collection and for all their ongoing efforts to remember their relatives.

And a great, big thank you to the historians, librarians, and archivists at the Central Library at Rundel for presenting to us the Dinkle Family, everyday people who were part of history.   The exhibit was curated by the Local History Exhibits Team:  Michelle Finn, Emily Morry (who has written a lovely blog post on the exhibit which you can read at Local History ROCS!), Veronica Shaw, and (formerly) Amy Pepe. Corinne Clar (Library Graphics) created the design, and additional support was provided by Arianna Ackerman (Library Graphics), Christine Ridarsky and the library's Local History & Genealogy staff, and Wheatland Town Historian, Barb Chapman.   

        Bravo!  Bravo!  

        Go see it — today!  (You don’t want me to badger you about it, now do you?  Because I will.)