Claude Ledoux is this year's town historian

Thursday, October 20, 2005
Claude Ledoux is this year's town historian

It's hard to imagine anyone more vigilant in preserving the town's history than Claude Ledoux. And Mr. Ledoux has used every imaginable media to document local history, including video, literature and the computer.

The Westport Historical Society acknowledged those efforts at its annual meeting on Oct. 13 when it presented Mr. Ledoux with the 2005 History Award. The citation reads, "For his skill in saving the Westport past for the present and the Westport present for the future."

Beginning in 1993, Mr. Ledoux embarked on three initiatives to preserve local history. The cable access program "Westport Matters" documented the people and life in Westport around the turn of the millennium. It contained about 300 episodes and spanned 11 years.

"I estimate I spent about 1,500 hours and a few thousand dollars on this activity," Mr. Ledoux said.

Mr. Ledoux co-authored the booklet "A History of Westport in the 20th Century" with his good friend Carmen Maiocco, a project that lasted from 1993 to 1995.

"My part was to trace the evolution of the last century's events, which determined the status of Westport at the turn of the century and at the millennium. That project occupied a few hundred hours of my time," Mr. Ledoux said.

The third idea that preoccupied him was the ambitious project of inputting the official town records from 1787 to the present into computer format. With the help of a few others, Mr. Ledoux completed the conversion of records up to 1927, when they began to be typewritten, not handwritten. In the new computer format, the records are searchable and easy to reproduce.

"The conversion from 1927 to the present involved a monumental amount of work," Mr. Ledoux said. "Town Clerk Marlene Samson and (her assistant) Beverly Kut wore their fingers out finishing in that time frame," Mr. Ledoux said. "My best guess is that I spent about 1,000 hours on that project over the period of a few years."

Mr. Ledoux thanked his wife, Clarisse, for her forbearance while he was engrossed in these projects and thanked the society for the recognition of his work.

The Westport Historical Society's annual meeting also provided an occasion to introduce the newly appointed, part-time director, Jennifer O'Neill.

Ms. O'Neill has a background in museums and she spoke about the historical society from that perspective. She said that since 1990, the American Association of Museums has articulated a code of ethics that provides an ethical framework for three aspects of museum activity - collections, programs and governance.

Ms. O'Neill said Westport Historical Society has intuitively embraced the essence of this code. She said it now needs to articulate its mission to the public and set a standard for other institutions.

Ms. O'Neill summarized three major issues facing the society in the coming year - the Bell School house itself, the society's collection and growth of the organization.

As pluses, she counted the location of Bell Schoolhouse at the Head of Westport and its watertight nature as distinguishing characteristics and said the building itself was part of the historical society's collection.

While the interior space is adequate for displaying the present collection, on the down side, "The temperature and relative humidity levels inside the building pose a real threat to the collection it houses," Ms. O'Neill said.

Ms. O'Neill said there are reasonable, low cost, low tech ways to improve the situation. She said the first thing on her wish list is to monitor the interior environment and use the data to decide how best to resolve the problems.

"The greatest uptapped resource you have is the collection," Ms. O'Neill said. "We need to find out what we have, track its location and condition and record the significance of the objects and their meaning to Westport."

Ms. O'Neill said she wants to scan photographs in the society's collection and digitally photograph each object in the collection. These efforts will pave the way for developing high quality exhibits and educational programs, she said.

"We can set the standard for preservation and documentation. We can open the collection to researchers and offer access to Westport history to others in the community," she said.

Ms. O'Neill deferred discussing the society's growth until later in her tenure. She said the initiatives with the Bell School House and collection will help define how the society might evolve.

by Paul Tamburello

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