By: Maria Moore

This past November the Historical Society hosted a talk by Town Historian David Krimmel on the founding of New Hartford, in which David described the evolution of the town’s landholdings from the original proprietors to those of modern-day landowners. Tomorrow night the Society will host a talk by Peter O’Brien who will populate the early landscape described by David with the people of that time.

Our reporter spoke with Peter about his research of the early inhabitants of the town, asking first of all how he had become interested in that research.

Peter pinpointed the beginning of his interest to when he and wife Sally bought their home in 1977 and were given a page of the history of the house from the previous owner to the one they bought the house from. Colin Tate had given them a rundown of those who owned the house, but it was very difficult to unravel information from the land records. And so he put his interest aside until 6 or 7 years ago when, having recently retired from his position at Post University, he found himself reading a history of New Hartford by Sarah Jones, a 19th Century writer. He started to notice inconsistencies, and that sometimes things weren’t as they seemed.

“When you have doubts, you have to start at the beginning.” Peter said, and that is what he did, going through town records, church records, probate records, even newspaper records. With Sally’s help, Peter created a database in which he records all information he finds regarding the early people of New Hartford. “I have 3,000 people in the database so far.” he told our reporter, scrolling down to the end of his spreadsheet. And he is still adding information. Right now he is going through Litchfield Superior Court records which are stored at the State Library, a long and laborious process. “It feels like voluntary servitude!” He said wryly, adding that he has several more years of research in Hartford still left.

Tomorrow, however, he will have the opportunity to share all he’s learned about the early residents of our town – at least those who lived here between 1700 and 1800; an arbitrary cut-off but a necessary one, Peter and our reporter agreed. Peter will not be talking about any one early resident, rather he will extrapolate from the specific pieces of information that he has accumulated to draw a general picture of what it was like to live in New Hartford during that time.

While describing to our reporter what life was like in the 1700s, Peter said: “It was a very different world back then; familiar and very different.” “What do you mean by that?” Our reporter asked. “The vocabulary was the same, but our understanding is different. For example, take the statement “all men are created equal.” Their understanding of “equal” is different from our understanding of it.” In a little more than 200 years, our value systems have become very different from those of our ancestors.

“There’s something very compelling about connecting with people who shared the same space as we do.” Peter said, expressing perfectly what has kept him at his research for all these years. And tomorrow evening, it will be his audience that Peter will help connect with those early inhabitants of not only our town, but in many cases, of our homes.

Peter O’Brien will present his talk on ‘The People, Material Culture and Relationships in New Hartford in the 18th Century’ at 7:00 p.m. at the Senior Center on the third floor of Town Hall tomorrow evening, Wednesday, February 23. The talk will be followed by a reception at the Historical Society on the other side of Main Street across from the Town Hall. See our video of David Krimmel’s presentation ‘The Founding of New Hartford’.

An 18th Century house currently being used as a private school in the Bakerville section of New Hartford. Photo: Maria Moore