BASTROP, LA — A new exhibit at the Snyder Museum tells the story of one of the oldest companies in Morehouse Parish and traces the evolution of telephones from the 19th century to the present day.
Museum director Emily Graves said the idea for an exhibit on the Northeast Louisiana Telephone Com-pany based in Collinston was partly inspired by her father’s employment with the company from 1976-1993.
“It’s a very family-oriented business,” she said. “They’ve all known me since I was a child. So I asked them if they would like to [participate in the exhibit].”
Graves said this is the first of what she hopes will be a series of revolving exhibits that highlight local businesses, churches and other entities in tandem with the Morehouse Parish Timeline, a permanent exhibit that is currently under development.
From now until April 8, museum visitors can see telephones and other equipment from an 1890 magneto phone to a 1940s rotary phone and 1960s residential colored phone (which came in red, blue, yellow and even pink).
Among the artifacts are a World War II-era military field phone and insulators, and the actual phone used to place the first non-operator-assisted call from Collinston in 1957.
Vintage photos, advertisements, and NortheastTel telephone directories from 1952-2010 are also on display. Some of the older directories bear the handwritten notes and numbers of subscribers who returned the books to the company.
NortheastTel employees Julia Lindsay and Becky Darsey have put a great deal of time and effort into the exhibit.
“Some of the phones came from flea markets, but the majority came from our attic,” said Lindsay. “Those are the telephones that we provided to our subscribers over the years.”
The largest artifact is a Stromberg-Carlson Cord Board which was used by telephone operators in rural areas in the 1930s. Lindsay said the board was purchased from an antiques dealer in St. Louis for the company’s 50th anniversary in 1997, and is identical to the board used by NortheastTel during that time.
Placards at the museum tell the NortheastTel story.
Telephone service was provided to Collinston residents as early as 1913 from Guy’s Blue Front, the village’s general store. The Collinston Telephone Co. had 41 customers when it was purchased by Ben W. “Hop” Hopgood in 1946, and the switchboard was moved to the Hopgood home.
The Hopgood and Norsworthy families purchased the Bonita telephone exchange in 1952, and Northeast Louisiana Telephone Co. was born. Four years later, the company received a loan through the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and expanded telephone services to the Jones-McGinty area.
NortheastTel has continued to grow and to offer more services in the decades since then, adding Cable television in 1987, Internet services in 1999 and long distance services in 2000. Last year the company added computer repair services and classes, and will soon begin to offer cell phone services and home security systems.
