About the Lafayette County Digital Museum
Preserving, Restoring and Displaying Our History
The Lafayette County Digital Museum is a program created by the Oxford-Lafayette County Heritage Foundation. The Foundation was organized in 1996, and has been responsible for several historic preservation efforts locally. It is a tax-exempt, non-profit organization that operates from donations and grants, using volunteer staff to collect, digitize, analyze, preserve and display items of significance to the people, past and present, of Lafayette County. We welcome new volunteers, new exhibit ideas and donations!
Since its inception, the Foundation has acquired and led the restoration of several historic local properties, including the L.Q.C. Lamar House and the Burns Church. We worked with the prior owners of both the Burns Church and the Lamar House, accessed grant funding, collaborated with stakeholders and coordinated construction phases for each historic site. Once they were completed, we donated the properties to the City of Oxford to enable public use and provide for the sites’ perpetual maintenance.
The Foundation and the Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society are now applying the same approach that helped preserve and restore physical locations, into the digital space. The Digital Museum continues our work to gather, preserve, and display historic maps, photographs, stories, videos and documents. We have created this accessible, web-based platform, for the public to view this collection which includes numerous historic maps, dating back to the 1830s, hundreds of pictures, videos and stories. The software combines these maps with modern satellite imagery, allowing users to view Lafayette County through different eras. Additionally, many of our historical photographs and important documents have been geo-tagged in to the system based on approximate location, showing how the area has evolved through the years.
