The New Year holiday is a time to look forward.

But at the Tamaqua Historical Society, they’re looking back.Society members are reflecting on the Baily photo collection, a legacy of photography that started 155 years ago. The images are carefully packed in more than 100 boxes stored in a fireproof vault.With work on a new museum underway, society members hope that one day all of the images can be made available to the public and used for research. The precious plate-glass negatives are etched with scenes of Tamaqua area neighborhoods and images of local residents of long ago. Problem is, the fragile plate glass is hard to handle and the images carry no markings to indicate dates or subject matter.Photo pioneersDavid and son Elmer Baily were photography pioneers. Their vast collection of glass negatives, spanning 1861 to 1942, presents a valuable chronicle of Tamaqua area from pre-Civil War days to World War II.The collection was discovered by Tamaqua’s Karen Mundy Davison and husband Pat Davison in the 1970s.The couple found the priceless artifacts not in a fine repository, but stashed away in an old attic in Baily’s former studio, a three-story building that once stood at Broad and Berwick streets.“They had been there a long time. I remember there was so much grime and coal dirt,” Karen recalls.One by one, she and Pat carted the heavy boxes to her homestead at nearby Rowe Street.Karen has fond memories of how her late mother, Ella Rae, and late journalist Eleanor “Scibbie” Weaver pored over the pictures and tried to identify people and places of days gone by.“It was a lot of fun,” Karen says.Recognizing the value of the find, the Davisons turned the boxes over to the Tamaqua Historical Society for safekeeping. There, the delicate gems await professional preservation and archiving.Select viewsFor 82 years, the Baily family photographed tens of thousands of images of people, places, ceremonies and events.But only a small portion of the huge collection has seen the light of day. That’s because the number of glass plates is overwhelming.“A $1,000 grant from the Schuylkill River Heritage Corridor through the Pennsylvania Heritage Parks Program was matched by the historical society and paid for the printing of select views of the area,” said Dale Freudenberger, society president.“There are portraits, class photos, buildings — all kinds of images in all different sizes, especially large photos. Some of these haven’t been seen in decades and maybe even never.”David Baily arrived in Tamaqua from Berks County, where he and wife Lydia Schmidt Baily were farmers. He worked for a time as a carpenter before opening a photography business in 1861.Among his earliest photos were men heading off to the Civil War. Many of these works can now be found for sale on the Internet where they fetch sky-high prices, often hundreds of dollars each.Family-runYoung entrepreneur David fathered six children, two of whom became professional photographers — William, who moved on to Columbia borough, and Elmer. David retired in 1892 and passed away 10 years later, Sept. 23, 1902.By then, young Elmer took over full ownership and managed the gallery. He fathered several sons including one, Clarence, destined to take over the operation.The studio maintained the finest equipment in the region at its prominent corner location in the heart of downtown.Baily’s great-great-grandson Guy Bailey visited Tamaqua in 2014 to pursue genealogy.(It must be noted Baily family members spell their name two different ways. Some add a letter e, as in the case of Guy Bailey.)“Photography must be in my genes,” he said. He provided additional information about the Baily family.The exact date of the studio’s closing is unclear, but a former Tamaqua council president, now deceased, once said the business ended in 1942.“I started working right around the corner at Burdick and Moser News Agency in 1943 and I know it was no longer there at that point,” said Herman Lutz prior to his passing in 2011.The former Baily Studio building was torn down in the early 1980s as part of a full-block demolition program.Fortunately, the Victorian building yielded its biggest secret — the lifework of three generations of photographers and 82 years of Tamaqua history, a slice of Americana-in-still-life as captured by one of America’s photo pioneers.