Many moments in local history: Rumrill marks 40 years curating the past

The Stoddard resident marked the milestone with the release of a new book last month. “Monadnock Originals: Colorful Characters From New Hampshire’s Quiet Corner” is a collection of local stories, drawn from his weekly Sentinel columns and radio programs for WKBK.

“Rather than having those stories all simply disappear into the newspaper somewhere and somebody’s archives or into the air on the radio station … I compiled about a hundred of them into this book,” he said. He published a previous collection of 110 stories, “Monadnock Moments,” in 2009.

The two story collections are his favorites of the nine books he’s written so far. “They allow me to share with a wider audience what I’ve been sharing on the airwaves for years,” he explained. However, he added, a long-gestating manuscript about his great-great-grandfather, Jonathan D. Hale, a Union spy in the Civil War, will hopefully become his favorite when finished. He did his senior thesis on the story at Keene State, but said he began conducting more research and writing on the topic in the past eight years.

The collections represent only a fraction of the stories he’s told over his four decades of work, though, so he had to choose the stories wisely. “I tried to find stories that are a little bit unusual, sometimes a little edgy … but things that show how the region has changed and how we’ve gotten to where we are today,” he added.

One story tells of “the frugal Yankee,” a Stoddard farmer who had money but never spent it, even on clothes. “There’s a story about him walking into Keene with 1,500 dollars to deposit in the bank, because he wouldn’t pay for a stagecoach ride,” Rumrill said. “Some robbers heard that he was coming and so they lay in wait for him and because he was in rags, essentially, when he walked by they let him go. They thought he had nothing. And the next guy who came along was dressed very neatly and they went out and robbed him, and he had 15 cents.”

But how have the historical society, and Rumrill, reached where they are today?

“Things have changed with the organization, with myself, and in the field too, especially,” Rumrill, 65, said. He joined the organization in May 1983 as its first paid staff member, working as executive director in the headquarters at 246 Main St. “It was me in two rooms in this building, and it has grown to include this building, our Wyman Tavern, the Bruder House and six staff.” Beyond staff and buildings, the society now boasts 150 programs per year and 300,000 items in its collections, ranging from diaries to business directories.

Programs include its monthly Walldogs Mural Tour, the Wyman Tavern Brew Fest and the society’s annual used book sale.

Development Director Rick Swanson, who has been with the organization for almost 10 years, elaborated on the transformation. “When I started, there was a very frugal mindset, and I think now [Rumrill’s] had goals and success where budgets have grown, staff has grown, programs have grown,” Swanson said. “In 40 years, he’s grown it from basically a volunteer organization to now it’s … kind of a standard among historical societies.”

As for how research has changed from when he began, Rumrill pointed to digitization. “When I came here, I had to use an IBM Selectric typewriter to type all the catalog cards, and now everything is cataloged on the computer, and people know what’s here,” he said. Thousands of genealogy researchers used to utilize the historical society’s library each year, he noted, but many now perform the work online.

“I think I’ll let the next generation of historians and museum people determine exactly where we’re headed, but much more technology and a lot more collaboration,” Rumrill said, adding that the society now works with artists, musicians and land conservation groups.

One such collaboration in 2022, “Nature and Humanity in the Monadnock Region,” had local artists create pieces that considered “nature’s effect on humanity in the Monadnock Region, or humanity’s effect on nature,” according to Swanson. For the program, Rumrill presented on the history of the conservation movement in New Hampshire, and the Monadnock Conservancy led hikes in the region.

What keeps him returning all these years later is his love of research and storytelling. “The research process is wonderful because it’s like being a detective. You are searching for some information and suddenly there it is if you dig deep enough and know where to look,” he said.

As for his advice to young historians, he emphasized the most important aspect is hands-on work.

“Read constantly, but volunteer,” he said. “Get involved in an organization — that’s a great way to get a job, to get experience.”

Reflecting on his own beginnings, he points to his grandmother, Pheroba Wilson — the family historian and longtime historian for the town of Stoddard — as a main reason he fell in love with history. His family, which has lived in Stoddard since 1770, owned an abandoned farmhouse and would visit it frequently, sparking Rumrill’s curiosity about the past. “What had happened here in this old house where now it was just dirt and dust and holes in the walls, and how had it gotten to that stage? And what had happened to the people that had lived there previously?”

By the time he was a student at Keene High, he knew he wanted to be a historian.

But to get from that high-school self to the one leading the Historical Society of Cheshire County took a moment in local history, one not yet written in the papers.

“As the story goes, there was some community leaders that hired him,” Swanson said. “And they said, ‘We can afford to hire you for about a year, so see if you can find enough funding to support the position long-term.’ And the rest is history.”