GUILFORD – The stately old homes and churches which line the streets of the tiny hamlet of Guilford bear testament to the locality’s glory days, when the community bustled with business and industry. That rich history is depicted on a timeline which now hangs in the Town of Guilford’s new Town Hall on Marble Road.
The timeline, which traces the “village’s” history from when it was first settled in 1795 to the early 1990s, is the product of countless man-hours of research and documentation by two men – Archie Hubbard and Roger Ree – over a five year period starting in 1988.
“We’re proud of it,” said Hubbard. “We can’t say enough.”
Hubbard said he and Ree undertook the project “not knowing what a job we had on our hands.”
The pair conducted interviews with local residents and poured over copies of local newspapers such as the Guilford News and Guilford Mail, and even old class yearbooks. In doing so, they paid close attention to advertisements, which proved invaluable in documenting the businesses of the day.
The two men recorded the information they gleaned from these and other sources on index cards, which they then compiled onto a scroll.
“Then from this, we made the more permanent display,” Ree explained, gesturing from the annotated scroll to the framed, painted timeline which now adorns the wall of the Town Hall’s courtroom.
The timeline stretches from 1795, when what is now known as the hamlet of Guilford was settled, to 1992, when the pictorial representation of the localities business history was last updated.
“It’s a work in progress even still,” Hubbard’s former assistant explained. The Unadilla native now teaches at the DCMO BOCES Chenango Campus in North Norwich.
According to Ree, the timeline of Guilford’s business tells a story typical of many rural communities.
“As an isolated community, they were quite prosperous,” he said, indicating the large number of businesses and industry which existed in Guilford in the mid to late 1800s, prior to the arrival of the railroad. This “explosion of businesses” included a cotton batten factory, creameries, iron works, tanneries, jewelers, blacksmiths and other merchants.
The coming of the rail in 1890 was a “mixed blessing,” according to Ree. While the transportation corridor “opened the doorway” for goods and services, it also meant that local residents were less dependent on local businesses for their needs. This was exacerbated by the advent of the automobile and building of roads, which turned the once self-sustaining community into more of a sub-community to the regions larger municipalities.
Today, only a handful of local businesses remain.
“It’s really the history of any small town,” said Ree, citing other Chenango County examples such as Coventry and Smithville.
Until recently, the timeline adorned the wall of the Eastern Fayette Guilford Museum, a private museum operated by Hubbard on the property he and his wife owned in Guilford.
Due to Hubbard’s health, the couple was forced to close the museum and auction off many of its contents, which included not only items pertaining to Guilford’s history, but also his extensive collection of antique tractors, farm machinery and rail memorabilia.
One of the last items left, Hubbard explained, was the timeline, which he had been reluctant to part with.
“Archie wanted it to stay local,” explained Ree. “Hopefully it will have a long-time home here.”
Town of Guilford Supervisor George Seneck, himself a social studies teacher with a strong interest in local history, said he was pleased to have the item on display at the new town facility.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful,” Seneck said. “It’s another piece of history.”