By Claudine Klose

arly in July 2020, Town Historian Emily Majer received an email from a former Red Hook resident, asking whether the Town’s Red Hook Advertiser newspaper had been microfilmed and indicating that he would be interested in supporting a project to digitize them. The former Red Hook resident was none other than Bill Wilken, whose family had run Wilken Brothers, an agricultural business cooperative active in Red Hook in the mid-20th century. Then-president of Historic Red Hook, Claudine Klose, began a conversation with Wilken, now living in Ohio, that resulted in a major gift to support the preservation and electronic dissemination of more than 40 years of Red Hook Advertiser newspaper

By Thea Burgess

What was the zip code of the address where you lived five years after high school? The artist, cartoonist, writer, teacher, and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant winner Lynda Barry asked us this during the Omega Institute workshop “Writing the Unthinkable.” Most couldn’t remember. A few of us still were doing math in our heads related to Lynda’s first query when she asked who our fourth grade teacher was. A couple of names were stated but not many. “Mrs. Onody,” I smugly murmured to myself. Building suspense, and our worries that we desperately needed a memory tonic, Lynda hesitated before asking her final question: what was your phone number when you were a kid? We all shouted the digits…

By William P. Tatum III, Ph.D.

How do historians reconstruct the past from fragmentary evidence? Join us for the introduction to this new series exploring how we uncover Red Hook’s hidden past.

“How was your week?”

Consider your reaction when someone unexpectedly asks you what you’ve been up to over the past week. If you’re like me, a sip of coffee, a few “hmms,” or a drawn out “weeeelllll” covers your desperate rifling through your memory. One day tends to bleed seamlessly into the next, especially in these “interesting” times.

Historians face a similar challenge. We ask them questions, expecting a polished, complete answer informing us about events that transpired before our earliest memories. There is little patience for gaps or best guesses, unless one is discussing known mysteries. Yet the records from which they can draw factual information are even more fragmentary than our memories of last week.