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Antique Lantern Slide

Percival Lawton Spencer

This "about us" section shows details of the antique lantern slide collection, otherwise called magic lantern slides. We set it up in June 2000 to provide information and reference materials for history buffs, genealogy, and other historical research. Canon Percival Lawton Spencer took many photographs in many parts of the world and collected other factory-made images in slide displays in the Hamilton area. He traveled widely during his work and visited his family members worldwide. These images give us many interesting insights into life in the Victorian era. They provide a little bit of history and a little bit of mystery.✞

Canada 1854

Slides predate black and white movies and the full colored films we are accustomed to in movie theatres today. In those early days, Lantern slides Shows were of great interest in communities with no radio or television and little knowledge of the outside world. Percival Spencer came to Canada across the Atlantic by ship with his family in 1854 as a five-year boy. It was pioneering days not long after the Province of Canada was established in 1841, and the beginning of steam-powered railways from 1836. He traveled by ox cart with his parents along wooden bush roads.✞

Fenian Uprising

As a young man, Percival enlisted and took part in the Fenian uprising and for which the British Government in Canada gave him a piece of land. Later, he became a distinguished clergyman and one of the six founding clerics in the Diocese of Niagara of The Church of England in Canada. His record of life and times in the Victorian era with his antique lantern slide collection, and his written work, gives us many insights into this age. We hope you enjoy your World tour!✞

"Antique Lantern Slide"
by Ron Meacock © 2021

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