KENT, Conn.—They are silent voices from the past. Letters, diaries, even doodles in the margins of books—they are all windows into our history, offering context and texture to the lived history of our families and towns.
The Kent Historical Society is inviting those silent voices to speak again with the help of the families they helped form. “We have had the ‘Places of Kent,’ the ‘Faces of Kent,’ and now we are exploring the ‘Voices of Kent,’ which will be a different way of telling the town’s story,” said historical society curator Marge Smith. “We are having our annual meeting Sunday, Nov. 8, and are inviting people to share any old letters or other things they might have that shed light on the history of Kent.”
Letters, journals, ledgers, land and probate records, birth and death certificates are primary resources that are integral to preserving history. The society is asking people to bring photocopies of the documents if possible, or the originals if they cannot be copied.
“We will be swapping stories about recording our own family histories,” she said.
The annual meeting, which will be held at Town Hall at 2 p.m., kicks off the year-long effort by the historical society to gather insight into local experience. There will be a renewed effort to record oral histories as well as written documentation. A series of events will be held to record and transcribe contemporary voices.
“This will not be just your typical oral history project,” Smith said. “We want one or two or three people to work with us on the oral histories, but we will ask people how they would like to be interviewed—do they want us to do it? Do they want to interview each other? Do they want to do it one-on-one? We don’t want to make those decisions.”
They also will not draw lines in the sand about what is “old.” Modern history will someday be our shared past and deserves to be recorded.
“We [the society] started talking about how technology is threatening history because we don’t write letters anymore,” said Smith. “People can’t even read or write cursive. We chose one item from the museum’s collection and right now I’m transcribing a letter from Rufus Fuller [1781-1850] so it perhaps can be read at the annual meeting.
“Looking through our files, I found two letters from Rufus, one of which touched my heart,” she continued. “He was the operator of the South Kent ore bed and was in ill health. He wrote from Saratoga Springs and talks about his treatment there. His handwriting is horrible, but he wasn’t feeling well.”
Smith noted the different ways that people wrote to each other and the different purposes of those missives. Some were sent to catch up with family news, some were for business, and some were on postcards, often used to advise family members of when a visitor planned to arrive and on what train. “They preserve the idiom of the day and tell us about people’s everyday lives,” Smith said. “Deb Chabrian [president of the historical society] says postcards with the TikTok of their day.”
The historical society is launching this effort as it comes off a stellar year celebrating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s birth. It’s exhibition, “Homespun Kent: Revolutionary Households,” was one of 20 in the state to receive an Award of Merit Tuesday from Connecticut League of Museums.
The exhibition focused on the efforts made by local people to support the Revolution, from embargoing British products and shifting to local production, to the extraordinary workload that descended on women and children as men disappeared into the armies.
“We wanted to focus on the everyday people and what they were going through as their mindset changed,” Smith said. “At the beginning of the war, everyone was loyal, they were British citizens and it wasn’t easy to decide to split away.”
The exhibition is housed in Seven Hearths, the society’s museum, which was a trading post in the colonial era, and a natural gathering point for townspeople. “I often wish these walls could talk,” said Smith. “I’m sure there were a lot of conversations here about the revolution.”
The exhibit is now closed for the season, but tours can be scheduled by appointment: 860-927-4587; info@kenthistoricalsociety.org.
