BRATTLEBORO — Brooks Memorial Library hosts a workshop on local history and genealogy with Linda Hay, former Academy School librarian, on Saturday, March 16, at 10:30 a.m. in the Brooks Memorial Library meeting room.
If you're a family historian, a writer, a historical adventurer, or are simply curious, you'll find the daily lives ordinary people lived in the past a wonderful story worth piecing together. That's what Hay found in researching what life was like in Guilford in one particular year. Out of that emerged an unexpectedly lively picture, she said.
Hay's talk will cover her search for documents, methods for teasing out the fascinating details from apparently boring statistics, and how she synthesized her findings to bring history to life.
The workshop is free and open to the public and requires no registration. The library is at 224 Main St.
Hay has a wealth of experience exploring the past in Brattleboro and Vermont generally, owing to her three decades working in local libraries. Since her own school days, her passion has been finding and using primary documents to understand people and their world.
Many of these resources are now available online. Others abound at local libraries and historical societies.
Join Hay for an illustrated talk, followed by hands-on examination and analysis of typical sources from the Brattleboro area, including the challenges of deciphering records written with a quill pen.