FARMINGTON – Scores of pictures taken by longtime freelance photographer Barbara Niles Yeaton, who chronicled life in Franklin County for decades, will be displayed at the Farmington Fair next week.

Local historian Don DeRoche is organizing the exhibit of black and white photos and hoping viewers can identify a few people in them whose names he doesn’t know.

“There’s already been some debates about who’s pictured in the photos,” he said. “But I’m confident people will fill in the blanks next week.”

He believes most of the pictures were taken from 1949 to 1959 and are from all over the county.

Yeaton, who started writing for The Lewiston Daily Sun in 1949, worked 55 years for the Lewiston paper as well as the Franklin Journal in Farmington. A self-taught writer and photographer, Yeaton took a slew of pictures for both papers and developed many of them herself.

After her death in August 2007 at the age of 92, her son Niles Yeaton of Strong, on behalf of the family, offered between 700 and 1,000 of her photos to DeRoche, who believed they would be of interest to many in the community.

“I felt the public should have those rather than have them sit somewhere,” Yeaton said. “It’s the history of the area and should be seen by people. It was the right thing to do.”

Many photos stored in the basement of Barbara Yeaton’s home in West Farmington were destroyed when floodwaters from Temple Stream rose in 1987, her son said.

“She was close to tears when she told me about losing the photos,” said DeRoche, who became acquainted with her after returning to his hometown from years of military service. She became a source of information for his exploits into local history, he said, and she was always willing to share her knowledge of the area and its people.

With age, the photos had rolled so DeRoche undertook a tedious process of flattening them by lightly spraying the backs with water, ironing them, placing them in envelopes and flattening them under a piece of iron railroad track for 30 days.

The collection has been separated into categories including Grange, American Legion and Auxiliary, scouts, school, Masons and medical, including some taken in 1952 when the Salk vaccine was given at polio drives.

DeRoche will man the historical exhibit from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 14-20 on the second floor of the Exhibition Hall.