Hello everyone - and Labor Day Greetings one and all!! (Delete now... if you don't want to wade through general musings on local history...) Yes, it is Labor Day... and I've just "visited" my home town (village, actually) in Connecticut via a visit to the website of the local Historical Society. I am making the rounds here... virtually via computer... on this Labor Day morning. Got me to thinking. We've recently had a discussion about "local memories" and their applicability to our research. I think we all agree that we're after sourced names, dates and events! (blast those brick walls!) And I think we all agree that the more we know about the local towns, villages, historical events, daily lives of those ancestors - the more "real" they become for us. How I would love to stumble across an old diary from someone in the 1700s, 1800s... talking of the days events... and their daily lives.. to gain insight not only to what happened - but what they "thought and felt" about them!! Well... going to go on the proverbial limb here - and on this Niagara County, NY list... share with you the website address for that village in CT where I grew up. (they say it's 4 miles by 1 mile in size!) It's hosted by the local Historical Society. Why? 1) When I first found the site some time ago, it prompted me to write the local Historical Society - and "thank them" for the "visit home" (pictures and all) - from 3000 miles away. It was a present... and proceeded to share with them my "own" memories of growing up there... marching in Memorial Day parades... the glories of weeping willow trees... the Fireman's carnivals... etc etc 2) Of particular note, is a section by a local resident on his "memories"... a series of articles on everything from the history of the local Volunteer Firs Department - to the railroad - to a model T they drove. (Vee - couldn't help but think of you... and how wonderful it would be if some of your "vignettes" were available at either a town site or a county site) I kept thinking.. I know that place... or I know of that family... I thought "ah, will have to ask my mother about that one...", etc etc. And this is regarding the late 1800s and the early to mid 1900s!!! Imagine what I don't know about how people really thought and lived in times before "that"!! 3) There is talk there of the "Merwinsville Hotel". This is where 3 generations of my mother's family lived up to around 1946 or 1947. My mother has now typed out some "memories" of growing up there... and sent them to me. (again, everything from how coal was delivered... to the ice house... ). The point here is that I am currently putting my mother's memories into a Microsoft Word document.. to submit to that same local historical Society... to add to their website. 4) Strangely enough... it is now a possibility that I will write of "my" memories... to add to the site. Funny to think that many of the ways in which I grew up... are indeed "not here" anymore. And now circling back to Niagara Co, NY. This is the "flip side" for me. Two of my dad's primary lines wandered into Niagara County in the early 1800s... the HOSMERs and PRATTs. Imagine seeing "local memories" from any of them over the last 200 years!!! Can't fix "that".. but "can" do what I can to capture what my living relatives know and "get it down on paper". Believe it or not.. even my own sisters do not know many of the "upstate NY" stories that I do.. as I was the "eldest" and they were too young to even really know their grandparents (on either side). Yet, I have a yellowed copy of an article from the Lockport newspaper... showing "4 generations"... and there with the article is a photo of my great-grandfather, Calvin PRATT - my grandmother, Marian Bell (PRATT) SMITH, my father and myself (think I must have been about 3? 4? 5?) all smiling away on the occasion of my g-grandfather's birthday celebration!!! << Another loose end... no one wrote the "date" on the paper... and have to go get microfilm of newspaper to find that article (and the photo!!!) from the early 1950s... >> How I would love to go online (or anywhere) and visit in stories and photos... what my Nathan PRATT or Sylvester HOSMER saw and knew in Niagara County in the 18-teens when they first settled there. Shoot, I'd be happy to see a photo (many generations later) of my dad's high school!!! You see how it is!! What is around us "now" in the hearts and minds of our living relatives (and in our "own" hearts and minds) are the very things later generations cannot "find" in the VR, land or probate records. Those things that help us "connect" in our families. Whew! Another missive here. So, I'll close with the CT website address that got me on a roll here this morning - and thank you all for your indulgence here in reading all this!!! http://www.gaylordsville.org debbie in calif CAhobbies@aol.com