Old stories come to life on Bedford town website

Above, photo accompanying the joint oral history of Ruth Ragonese and Eileen Powell. Below, cover page of David F. Brown oral history; TOWN OF BEDFORD Photos 

By JEFF MORRIS

More than 20 years ago, Bedford Town Historian John Stockbridge conducted a series of interviews with people who had first-person knowledge of decades of town history.

Now, those oral histories are widely available for the first time — in a manner of speaking.

What are available, to anyone who wants to access them on both the town website and on Instagram, are the transcripts of those interviews.

“I started them in 2002, and did the bulk of them through 2005,” Stockbridge told The Recorder. “In the next decade I did about a half dozen more. I’m thinking of starting them again.”

Stockbridge spoke about his motivation to begin doing the oral histories.

“I think it was a way of understanding that what had been the events of our town would be best known by people who’d been around for most of their lives,” he said, “and were not young then but were now elderly people  — who’d seen a lot and done a lot. And that was a better way, rather than just reading a book, to hear firsthand from people what things happened.”

There were a lot of people in town then “who had been through so many things,” said Stockbridge, “and I was fortunate to have met a lot of them. It was very interesting.”

The transcripts have actually been available for some time, but you had to know where to find them. 

“I had put transcripted hard copies into all the libraries in town,” Stockbridge said. They were only accessible by visiting either the Bedford Hills, Bedford Village or Katonah libraries. Now, they are available to anyone with online access.

Stockbridge is quick to point out he did not do the oral histories alone. 

“Sue McMahon worked with me on the actual interviews,” he said. “And originally at the time it was Amy Hunter who did the transcriptions.”

Missing, he said — lost to the mists of history? — are the actual interview recordings. But thanks to Hunter, the transcripts remain, and the town website has given them new life.

Right now, there are some 15 histories posted on the town historian’s page, under “Oral Histories,” though that number is increasing; when we spoke with Stockbridge, there were a dozen posted, the latest of which was David F. Brown, who passed away last year.

“I’ll have another dozen coming in the next month and a half or two months,” he said, and he has already added Lloyd Bedford Cox Jr., Jaap Ketting, and Volney “Turk” Foster Righter.

A number of the earlier interviews with female subjects were posted on “thebedfordhistorian” page on Instagram during Women›s History Month.

Stockbridge said he will have another eight or 10 coming from 20 years ago, and he is thinking of restarting the interviews. “I have some ideas of who I’d like to interview, but I’m not going to share those right now,” he said.

As to why the interviews stopped, he said, “I guess I’d sort of run out of steam, and I guess Amy wasn’t available.” 

Unfortunately, said Stockbridge, he has since lost track of Hunter. “I don’t know where she is,” he said. “If you can find her, I’d appreciate it.”

The postings are meticulously done, with photos of the subjects and brief summaries of their lives and stories. The transcripts are presented verbatim.