NATCHEZ — Living history found its way back home Saturday on the grounds of a tragic fire that killed 209 people almost 75 years ago.

The Rhythm Night Club Museum was presented with a collection of lost journalistic photos and Chicago newspapers featuring the Rhythm Night Club fire, which took place at the exact location of the museum in 1940.

Museum owners Monroe and Betty Sago said seeing the photos and old newspapers, which illustrate many casualties from the fire, will help area residents feel the strong affect the fire had on the nation.

“You have to be strong for it,” Betty Sago said. “If everyone who sees the pictures breaks down, you wouldn’t have a chance to experience history and really look at the pictures to see what life was like at that time.”

An anonymous individual, who inherited the photos and newspapers, recently gave Adams County Sheriff Chuck Mayfield the rare collection, Adams County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Courtney Taylor said.

Taylor said Mayfield donated the originals to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, where he had high quality prints made of both the photos and newspapers with archival paper and ink, which Mayfield passed on to the museum.

“We were elated that Chuck got them in to pass on to us,” Betty Sago said.

Mayfield said although a great tragedy occurred in Natchez years ago, the greater tragedy was that many have forgotten it over the years.

As a child, Mayfield spent a lot of his time on the Natchez bluff, but one thing that would always catch his eye was the commemorative plaque of the Rhythm Night Club Fire.

“I remember seeing this monument, but I never knew what it was,” Mayfield said.

It was later in life when Mayfield met Monroe Sago and saw the work he and Betty Sago were doing with the museum that gave him a better grasp on the incident.

“It’s something that changed things in this whole country, not just locally,” Mayfield said. “It’s almost like they were sacrificed so others can live.”

Monroe Sago touched on Mayfield’s words by stating the Rhythm Night Club Fire helped change the fire code throughout the nation.

“It made it better for everyone,” Monroe Sago said. “Exit signs were established, doors began to open out instead of in and the code made sure how many people would be allowed into a building.”

The Rhythm Night Club changed a lot of aspects about Natchez, and it brought people together, Monroe Sago said.

Tricentennial Commission Director Jennifer Ogden  Combs said she wants to use what the city is doing with the Tricentennial to make more people aware of the importance of the museum.

“If it’s true that we will have a lot more people come to town for 2016, we’re going to get them here,” Combs said.