Big edit button on that machine.
(Laughing) (Laughing)
All right, I'm good to go.
Whenever you're ready, Colin.
Actually, one thing I like to do,
and it's helpful for me, if you're
gonna edit it, is to have each
person say and spell their name,
just so you, if you're doing
anything, just for reference, and
it's also a good audio check too.
So Colin, can you say
and spell your name?
Colin Capurso,
C-O-L-L-I-N-C-A-P-U-R-S-O.
Bill, could you say
and spell your name?
Bill, B-I-L-L.
What's your last name, Bill?
Latin, L-A-T-T-I-N.
Great, okay.
Whenever you're ready, Colin.
All righty.
This is an interview of Carrie
Wilson, or Bill, Latin, conducted by
Colin Capurso on June 12th, 2025.
Bill Latin is a lifelong resident of
Orleans County, New York, and has
played a central role in preserving
and interpreting
the region's history.
He has served as the Orleans County
historian and was previously the
director slash curator of the
Colosseum Society for 40 years,
retiring in 2010.
In addition to his work as a
historian, Latin has dedicated much
of his life to antiquing,
collection, exhibit
curation, and the arts.
Part of a family with deep roots and
local historical preservation, Bill
represents generations of the Latin
family, playing a key role in
safeguarding the heritage of the
Hamlet of Childs in the broader
Orleans County area.
His father, Carrie Latin, was
instrumental in founding the
Colosseum Museum in the 1960s, and
Bill continued that legacy with a
lifelong commitment to education,
community engagement, and
historical storytelling.
Through his decades of work, Bill
has become a vital steward of local
memory, helping to shape how Orleans
County understands
and values its past.
Into our questions.
What can you tell me about your
childhood and early
life in this town?
Well, I was born in 1944.
Grew up on my family's farm on
Gaines Basin Road.
My first remembrance of any
schooling was at
Martha Moore's preschool.
She held a preschool in her home
on the corner of South Clinton and
Beaver Street in Albion.
And then the next year,
I started kindergarten at the Albion
Grammar School and graduated in the
class of 1963 from
Albion High School.
Very nice.
I remember as a child, my father
wasn't very progressive as a farmer,
and so I sort of can say I saw the
tail end of late 19th century and
early 20th century farming.
My father was the last farmer to use
a self binder and then have the
wheat thrashed with
a thrashing machine.
He was the last one to do that.
Everybody else in the area had gone
to using a combine.
As far as entertainment, I was very
interested as far as entertainment.
I wasn't the kind of a kid that was
interested in sports, but I remember
as a pastime, I was always drawing.
And here's a sample
of some of my drawings.
I guess I had put these together in
this role to preserve them.
I took this out of a part of a role
of drawings that I
made when I was a kid.
I think these drawings
go back to the 1950s.
The one way over here by my right
hand is a drawing of a house that
was torn down on
South Clinton Street.
And I recall seeing this house when
I attended Martha Moore's preschool,
which would have
been in the late 1940s.
Similar to what you were saying with
your father, being one of the last
people kind of farming, so to speak,
what kind of role did your family,
more specifically your father, play
in your interest with local history
and historical preservation?
Well, I think I certainly get much
of my appreciation for collecting
and antiques and
aesthetics through my parents.
My father in particular had a great
appreciation for handmade objects
from the 19th century.
It hit one of his prized
possessions, which I still have as
an heirloom, a family sideboard that
was acquired by my great, great,
great grandfather in the 1830s.
My parents collected antiques.
They especially liked things from
the 19th century.
And my father certainly had an
appreciation for historic
architecture and was annoyed when he
saw things happen to
historic buildings.
Of course, this is back in the 50s
before there was a real cognizance
of architectural preservation.
And in a similar realm, were there
any moments or perhaps experiences
that sparked your passion for
history throughout your life?
I can't think of
anything really in particular.
The town of Gaines here celebrated a
sesquicentennial in 1959.
And my father
encouraged me to build a float
for the sesquicentennial parade.
Well, on our farm, we had an old
building that had all
kinds of stuff in it.
My grandfather had used it as a shop
to repair farm machinery.
And in the shop, there
was a forge in an anvil.
And so my father encouraged me to
put together a float that would
demonstrate a blacksmith shop.
And with a neighbor boy, a friend of
mine, Jack Miles, the two of us
pretended to be blacksmiths on this
float during the
sesquicentennial parade, 1959.
We had the forge going and were
hammering on the anvil, hot iron
during the parade.
And as I recall, we won first prize
in having this float
in the parade for 1959.
So that was certainly one thing that
sticks out in my mind and it really,
I think, is something that really
kind of instilled in me the activity
that was necessary for telling
history and preserving it.
Definitely, especially that kind of
lived experience going through it.
It's amazing.
You mentioned that you graduated
high school in 1963.
What'd you do after you
graduated high school?
Such as college and all that?
Yeah, I always had this interest in
drawing as I showed the drawings I
did from the 1950s.
So I knew I didn't
wanna be a farmer.
So I went to State University
College at Buffalo
for art education.
And that was a great experience.
I took five years to get through a
four-year program because along
about the third year, I thought,
"Why am I taking so many courses?
I'm enjoying these
courses I'm taking.
I'd like to spend
more time doing artwork."
And so I kind of slacked off.
So I spent five years getting the
bachelor's degree
and it was fine experience.
I really wasn't ready to go out and
start teaching and I knew it was
something that I didn't
really wanna do for 40 years.
And so in your past,
you were once a teacher.
Can you tell me a
little bit about that?
First year that I taught was in the
fall of 1968 at the Wise
Junior High School, Medina.
And then the next year, a
job opened up in Albion.
So then I taught art at Albion High
School from the fall
of 1969 through 1978.
So 10 years of
teaching was more than enough.
But it was art and
mechanical drawing.
The first couple of years that I
taught in Albion, I had junior high,
but it was only a couple of sections
of junior high and nowhere near as
many kids in a class
as I had in Medina.
So it was a better experience.
I enjoyed working
really with high school kids.
And I think the best classes I ever
had were oddly and
mechanical drawing.
Do you have any interesting memories
or anecdotes about any particular
students that might have done
something or other things while you
were at the school?
Oh yeah, there's not time enough to
go into detail necessarily, but I'd
be fired now probably for some of
the things that I did.
I recall there was a student that
would dash into my room between
class changeover.
He wasn't my student, but he would
stay, get in the room to talk to a
friend of his who had art with me
and then the next period was
mechanical drawing.
So that boy never left the room, but
his friend would dash
in and I'd show him out.
And sometimes I didn't see him there
until the bell rang, then I'd have
to write him a pass to get
to where he needed to go.
Well, he wasn't my kid,
so I was annoyed by it.
And there was a big strapping high
school senior there, football
player, and he
observed what was going on.
And he would occasionally say to me,
"Well, you want me
to get them for you?"
And I'd say, "No, no,
I'll take care of it."
Well, one day in a weak moment when
this little kid was in my room,
didn't belong there, Mike says to
me, "I'll get them for you."
And in a weak
moment, I said, "Okay."
Well, little did I know
what was gonna happen.
This big strapping kid grabbed the
smaller kid, dragged him out in the
hall, turned him upside down and had
a leg in each hand,
holding the kid upside down.
And then we walked over to the third
floor stairwell and lifted him up
over the railing into the stairwell.
And he says with a big grin on his
face, "Shall I let him go?"
I can get that kid over
this railing immediately.
Uprighted the kid, red-faced, he ran
down that back stairway and I never
saw him in my hallway again.
Definitely put him in his place.
Oh, bad judgment on my part.
I never heard
anything more about it.
I can imagine.
Be arrested today, probably.
More than likely.
One of the last questions I had for
your personal background, early
influences, is you live on Gaines
Basin Road at a very
old cobblestone house.
What can you tell me about the
history of that house?
The house was built in 1842 by
Brigadier and LaVina Bullard.
Mrs.
Bullard was an aunt to Cyrus
Witherill who was a local
cobblestone mason.
And the legend is that the Bullard's
12-year-old son took the team of
oxen to the lake and picked up all
the cobblestones, lake-washed stones
that are used on the
front of the house.
The rest of the house was
made with glaciated stone.
So the walls are not anywhere near
as pretty as the front of the house.
Gotcha.
What about your family living there
throughout the years?
My great-grandfather bought the
house farm, 75-acre farm originally,
from the Bullard estate
in 1885 and moved there.
My great-grandmother died
about that period of time.
So Phoebe Anderson, Latin, never
lived there, but Bartlett M.
Latin and his
children lived in the house.
My great-grandfather had four
daughters and one son, my
grandfather, Nahama.
Very nice.
Now, with the museum, what do you
remember about the
museum and its founding?
What was the kind of vision that
they had at the time when the museum
was coming to fruition in 1960?
My father had pretty much retired
from farming by the late 1950s.
We had a huge barn that was struck
by lightning in September 1956 and
that burned down.
So he really changed his idea about
what he was going to be doing.
And the former county
historian, Joseph Achilles,
died in maybe late 1956.
And my father was appointed
historian in 1957.
And I remember going to his office,
which was located in the basement of
the courthouse when I was a kid.
So he was involved in local history.
He wrote a weekly column.
And as I recall, it was maybe
sometime in the summer of 1960 that
my father told one afternoon, this
young man came into his office by
the name of Bob Frash.
And Bob Frash introduced himself.
He was, I believe at the time, a
teacher at Holly High
School and he taught history.
And he perhaps lived in Hilton and would drive Ridge Road
to get to work in Holly.
And he noticed cobblestone
buildings, cobblestone residences
along Ridge Road.
Of course Ridge Road has numerous
cobblestone residences.
At any rate, he was aware of the,
now the historic cobblestone church
at Childs appeared to be abandoned.
And what's going to happen to that?
And he was trying to get some
information from my father about it.
My father really didn't know too
much about it, but he knew a number
of Universalists who were associated
with the church in that they had one
or two services there each season.
I remember as a little kid going
there on a couple of different
occasions with my parents because it
was kind of an event to go to this
old church that looked pretty much
the way it always had for
special church services.
So my father, I think,
maybe made it some calls.
And he, much to a surprise,
discovered that the church property
was going to be
listed with a realtor.
And so he and Bob Frash then
collaborated and Bob Frash, being
from outside of the community,
didn't know any of the people.
But my father knew all the right
people, but it was Bob Frash who had
imagination and enthusiasm and
really was kind of the one that
energized my father.
And so the two of them
got their heads together.
Bob Frash said, "Well, he could see
"this little crossroads community
"as being a cobblestone
center, a museum village."
And so as a result, my father talked
with a number of Universalists.
My father knew the Universalist
minister through the Masonic Lodge.
He knew Homer Brown who had been
sort of a sexton or
caretaker for this property.
And so as a result, the minister and
Homer Brown, they all knew the
people at the convention, New York
State Convention of Universalists.
And so the property was then taken
off of the real estate market.
And negotiations then were
undertaken to try to get this
property turned over to, an entity.
Well, no such entity existed.
So as a result, my father started
talking with people, mostly local
people here in the community of
Childs, this area to see if there
was any interest in establishing a
museum to take over
and preserve this historic building.
So as a result, there were enough
people who agreed and the first
initial meeting for what was to
become the Cobblestone Society
occurred on October 23rd, 1960.
And they met in the sanctuary of the
Cobblestone Church.
My father had put together a list of
people who would be willing to serve
on a board of trustees.
And they talked about a name they
didn't come up with a
name at that meeting.
I was at that
meeting and they discussed
how they were gonna organize in a
board of trustees and membership and
that kind of thing.
So my father had sort of served as a
committee of one to pull these
people together said they would be
willing to serve.
He didn't include his own name and
finally somebody in the audience
said, well, Carrie Lattan should be
on the board of trustees too.
So anyways, they ended up with a
board of trustees at
that initial meeting.
And they needed the advisement of an
attorney and Curtis Lyman agreed to
be an attorney pro
bono for the organization.
And so as a result, they then had
another meeting and it
was at the village inn.
And I recall that it was at that
meeting that they determined what
the name of the organization would
be simply Cobblestone Society.
That's fascinating being there and
seeing all that historical change
come through and kind of evolve into
what it is today.
With all of that in mind, what made
you wanna be part of the Cobblestone
Society and moreover, when did you
become part of it?
I was there from day one and with
the succeeding meetings, they
determined what the membership would
be and so they had a
charter membership.
So if you joined the society within
a certain amount of time, you were
considered a charter member and they
had a student charter membership.
So I was one of the charter members
in the student category along with
Gail Thompson Johnson.
So Gail and I are long time go way
back, we're charter members.
And since you've seen the museum
ever since its inception when it
first came to be, how has it changed
over the years, both physically, how
its mission has maybe changed or
anything that you can recall?
Well, going back to those early
days, it was perhaps sometime in
late 1960 or early 1961, my father
got a call from Charlie Thompson,
Gail Johnson's father and Charlie
said, there's gonna be a meeting,
they wanna sell the schoolhouse.
So Charlie indicated to my father,
really, you're getting organized,
you ought to have the schoolhouse to
go along with the church.
So there was a meeting, it was up in
the, what's now the middle school
auditorium and they determined at
that point that the school,
they were gonna table any decision
about the school until the
Cobblestone Society really got
itself better organized.
So I think they tabled it maybe for
six months and ultimately the
Cobblestone Society ended up with
the real property that they first
owned was the schoolhouse which cost
in legal fees $129 to get this
transferred from old district number
five to the newly formed museum.
It took longer to untangle all the
red tape and so to speak through the
New York State Convention of
Universalists to
fully acquire the church.
They knew they were gonna get it all
along but I think it took about
three years and the church building
cost $500 again to take care of
legal fees and all the entanglements
that came with wills from the past
and money and so on.
Very nice.
Now you mentioned, since you've been
around since the beginning of the
Cobblestone Museum that you've met
some of the founders, especially
individuals such as Gale.
How well did you know some of them
and how they influenced your life,
any stories that you might be able
to say about them?
After this organization got started
immediately my father tried to think
who around would be a person with
money, an angel that
could come on board.
And finally my father thought of an
old time friend that he knew in high
school that he hadn't seen in years
but he knew that he was well to do.
And so my father contacted John D.
Brush who was the owner of the
Sentry Safe Company in Rochester.
Now Brush had been, before he got
into manufacturing
safes, he had been gone to St.
Lawrence University Theological
School and had become a
Universalist minister.
He was only in the ministry for a
very short period of time, didn't
like it and then he and his
brother-in-law went into the safe
manufacturing business.
Anyways, very well to do.
My father hadn't had any contact
with him in years but my father
wrote him a letter and asked him if
he would be interested in coming on
board to help preserve the old
Universalist church.
A week or so went by and one day
John Brush appeared in my father's
office much to my father's surprise.
And immediate said, well I'm,
immediately said, I'm with ya.
Oh and by the way, you remember that
dingy we had when we
were back in high school?
You said sell the
dingy, I got $30 for it.
Here's the money
that I never gave to ya.
(Laughing) But anyways, John Brush
was a real asset to helping a
fledgling group get off the ground.
And of course in the lobby of the
church there is a
plaque honoring John D.
Brush and that plaque was put up
because he was the one who was
responsible for paying for having
the tower restored to the
Cobblestone Church and that there's
a plaque on the other side of the
lobby that indicates he paid for
that as a memorial to
his mother Eva and Brush.
That's amazing.
And now as part of the museum you served as a director for four years.
And retired in 2010.
What were some of the biggest goals
or priorities when you became the
director of the museum?
One, I recall one day Bob Fresh
appeared in my art room at the
school after school.
He must have said, can I
come and talk with him?
I said, yeah, I come at 2.30 or
something because it must have been
a Friday because the board of
directors, the board of directors,
the board of directors in those
early years, and for quite a few
years actually, met on Friday
afternoons at four o'clock.
So Bob Fresh came in, this would
have been in maybe about 1970 and he
said to me, I think you ought to be
the curator for the museum.
By 1970 they had put in a cement
floor in the basement of the church
and were beginning to collect things
and because I was an art teacher and
was interested in pulling things
together so to speak and had
artistic ability,
they thought that I would be the
logical one to be
an exhibit designer.
It was what they really need.
It was kind of a hodgepodge of stuff
and they needed somebody to help
organize it and make these antique
artifacts that they had there more
attractive and educational, make
sense out of it so that you didn't
have a hat pen next to a plow.
You like things together
and make it look attractive.
And now you've contributed to many
different exhibits and other things
relating to curating these types of
things that we have at the museum.
Can you share a project, an
exhibitor, an event that you're
especially proud of that you helped
build while you were here?
It was in 1975 that the Cobblestone
Museum inherited through bequest of
Nellie Vagg, her will, the
blacksmith shop and there were some
volunteers that went in and cleaned
and helped straighten it up because
it had been left just the way Joseph
Vagg had got through using it pretty
much and got it cleaned up
so in the summer of 1976,
people came to the museum to see the
Cobblestone Church and the school
but nobody went over to the blacksmith shop.
I'd say, well, you'd like
to see the blacksmith shop?
Nobody really went over.
As I recall, maybe a couple
different visitors went over there
during the summer of 1976.
So I thought, well, if there was
something else over at 98 for people
to go see, it might be more
encouraging for people to
bother to cross the road.
Well, I really consider myself an
architectural preservationist,
obviously doing drawings of
buildings when I was a kid.
Anyway, I was aware of a derelict
building in Medina.
I knew the man who owned it, Erling
Main, who ran the lumberyard in
Medina where the building was
located and Curtis Lyman had said,
"There's cedar grants that you could
get "to maybe move a
building like that."
So anyways, I went to see Erling
Main and asked him if he would be
willing to give us the building,
which is now our print shop,
if we could get a
cedar grant for it.
And Erling said, "Well,
yeah, I could do that.
"It was just like that."
So we were in business
and we got the cedar grant.
It was fortunately, it was because
of payroll, the Albion school
system, I was friends with the
superintendent, agreed to take care
of the payroll, so
they handled the grant.
And anyways, we cleared the lot that
had come a small lot with the
blacksmith shop, cleared the lot and
got the building moved to the shop
and moved there in 1977.
The print shop was moved there and
we had to tear off a part of the
roof so it would
come under the wires.
Keeler Construction Company agreed
to put it on a flatbed once it was
ready to be moved
from Medina down here.
So I had success with that.
And then also recognizing the
urgency of doing something with the
old Kendall Town Hall,
I again talked with
the superintendent,
that was Douglas Houk at the time,
and he said, "Yeah, go for it."
So I saw Mike Paduchek who was the
supervisor of the town of Kendall.
And it was noised about that the
fire department in Kendall wanted to
burn the old town hall down for a
practice fire, they'd build a new
town hall, didn't need
this building any longer.
Well Paduchek had put them off.
And so when I approached Mike
Paduchek and asked him would there
be any way with the town of Kendall,
give us the old town hall, his
immediate reply as I recall was,
well, you'd be doing me a real favor
if you could get that out of there.
So we got it out of
there, so to speak.
We started on May Day,
and we had all the pieces
disassembled and trucked here by
Pete Roth who was a neighbor here at
the museum, ran a trucking business,
he had a flatbed, got all the pieces
here by the 1st of July, and
miraculously got the building put
back together and painted on the
outside by the end of October.
I'm telling you, ignorance is bliss.
I would never take on a project like
that because pieces of wood got
broken, had three or four unskilled,
untrained kids in their early 20s,
of course that was the purpose of
CETA, was to give people training,
to put this building back together.
So we had to buy supplies in some
cases to make the building more
secure, but miraculously we got it
put back together.
And then the following year, we
worked on the interior.
Again, I had two CETA workers that
season to work on the interior, got
up the drywall and the building
finished on the inside.
And then it was dedicated with a
grand parade on June 1st, 1980.
And it pulled together from the
1960s, people started dumping on the
museum agricultural equipment.
Well, there was no place to put it.
Smaller things eventually got put in
the basement of the cobblestone
church, but then there were bigger
pieces of farm tools
from the 19th century.
Charlie Thompson said, well, I got
room in my barn, Curtis
Murray, he had a big barn.
Well, I can take some stuff in my
barn as things were given, both men
on the board of trustees.
My father had barn space, so we had
stuff scattered in different
buildings, didn't know what we had.
So by getting that building here, it
allowed us to pull this collection
together and to display it and to
deaccession duplicates.
So that project, I suppose in some
ways, it's visual storage.
We've tried to make it thematic in
some areas, but at
least it saved the stuff.
I've never been opposed to having
just a repository.
Well, then the other building over
there, the harness shop, was a
little building up in Gaines, and it
was located next to the Chatterbox
restaurant, which
is no longer there.
Rose Wells owned the little building
and ran the Chatterbox restaurant.
And I would frequently go to the
Chatterbox sometimes for lunch, and
I'd say to her, "Why don't you give
the museum that little building?"
And she'd get out of here.
I'm never gonna give
that building to you.
Well, after several years of
banding, I let it go.
And one day I went in for lunch and
Rose says, "Well, when are you
coming to get the building?"
I said, "What?"
She said, "Well, I'm gonna put this
place up for sale.
"When are you coming
to get the building?"
I've gotta get it out
of here in two weeks.
So Marsha Hart, who was a member of
the Board of Trustees at the time,
her cousin was Lyman Rice, and he
sold mobile homes.
So Marsha and I went to see Lyman
Rice, and he agreed to load it on a
flatbed once we got
the building ready.
So we were able to move that here
because getting the printing
equipment out of the basement of the
church, getting some architectural,
or getting some agricultural things
out of the church, and getting the
harness shop stuff out of the
basement of the church opened up the
basement of the church so we had
then space for people for receptions
and meetings, which we just didn't
have at that period of time.
So anyways, the town again assisted
in getting the building moved down
the road on the flatbed.
And that's kind of an interesting
story in itself that we got the
building all ready to come and I
didn't have a permit to move it.
And so I thought, well, I guess I
better do something about this.
So I called the sheriff, Dave Green,
and I said, "We've got a building.
"We wanna move down to
Childs from Gaines tomorrow.
"I think it would be good
to have a police escort."
Well, what time do
you want me to be there?
So he came and I knew we were
over-hyped and I didn't wanna have
to tear off that curved,
fake front on the building.
So I got a long stick and cut a V
shape in it so I could push up a
couple of telephone wires as I rode
on the flatbed down the road and get
it in here next to the print shop
and the harness shop.
So really, that project, to me, it's
like a beautiful painting, those
three buildings, which otherwise, at
this point in time,
would have been destroyed.
And when our charter, provisional
charter was written by Curtis Lyman,
it included to say that the museum
was established to preserve all
forms of regional art and
architecture, not
just cobblestone things.
So we, in essence, represent a
regional museum, a local history
museum, and are kind of, in a way, I
think is seen as a kind of county
museum because there are other
historical museums in the county,
but I mean, we
have 10 buildings now.
Yeah, you seem to have a knack for
acquiring buildings, apparently.
Well, ask and ye shall receive.
I wasn't good at raising money.
I think I'm more of a materialist
than I am an idealist.
And so I was good at getting
artifacts and acquiring buildings.
And after 40 years, I could see that
we were losing ground as far as
membership and finances and so on.
So at this point in time, I'm so
pleased that Doug Farley came on
because he's doing exactly what I
felt needed doing when I retired.
And it didn't happen for several
years until he came on board.
But we all have abilities for
different things.
And at this point, what we have here
is certainly a well-rounded
collection of historic buildings.
And at this point, now we need to
make the best use of them.
Definitely.
Which I had no interest in doing.
I only was in the repository.
As a director, would you argue that
financials were some of
the biggest challenges?
It was always a challenge.
I tried several different people to
get money when we needed money to do
restoration work at the
Farmer's Hall in 1978.
And I couldn't get anywhere.
I went to see the head
of the Lipton Company.
And I thought, well, maybe we could
get some money out.
And several people said, well, go,
go, go, you know, be
the manager at Lipton.
So I went to see him.
And when I suggested something
about, well, it could, if the gift
was significant enough, it could
include a naming right.
I barely got the words out of my
mouth and he says, "Oh, no."
Well, now in
hindsight, that was 1978.
He knew Lipton's
was gonna be moving.
Nobody else knew.
And by 1980, Lipton's was gone.
Interesting.
And you've, as I've mentioned
before, curate and gather lots of
artifacts for these exhibits.
Some of them were just left in the
basement or across the
county in different barns.
But altogether, how would you go
about acquiring those kinds of
artifacts and building the
collections inside the museum?
Such as the morning art
gallery that you've curated?
Well, with the morning art stuff
that's now an exhibit
over at the Brick House,
that's just
something I did on my own.
I started collecting that kind of
thing back in the 60s
for my own interest.
I had a professor of photography
when I was in college.
I still correspond with him.
He was only six years older than me.
He was real young at the time.
But he was into collecting historic
photographs and showed our class
post-mortem pictures, daguerreotype
pictures from the mid 19th century.
So I thought they
were very interesting.
Then I began to realize in
antiquing, well, there was a lot
more to death than
just post-mortem pictures.
So I then started
collecting stuff as I saw that,
sort of told the
story more completely.
Very nice.
Now, on top of being the director
slash curator for a long period of
time in the museum, you also served
as the county historian.
When you were the county historian,
what kind of work did that involve
and how did it compliment
your role at the museum?
The only thing that I was asked to
do when I was appointed historian,
which began on January 1st, 1979,
said already been museum curator as
they first called it,
beginning in January, 1971.
And I had success with moving the
print shop in the farmer's hall.
So the board of supervisors
recognized that I had some interest
in local history.
It was Pete Roth, a
neighbor over here.
He was the vice chairman of the
Republican party.
And this position opened up for
county historian.
And he came to me and he said, "Why
don't you apply for that?"
And I said, "I don't
know as I can do that."
And he said, "Well, do
it as a favor for me."
Well, he'd done the museum all kinds
of favors, so I felt obligated.
They had a couple of other people
that were interested in the job, but
anyways, I was appointed the
historian to begin in 1979.
The only thing that they said to me
that they wanted me to do
was to do a weekly column.
So that worked out oftentimes to the
benefit of the museum because I
could write about stuff and
sometimes wrote about events that
were gonna be here, putting a
historical twist on it or finding
stuff that would
relate to the museum.
And so there are a lot of my columns
that related to the museum.
Nobody ever complained that I did a
lot relating to the
museum, but it was all history.
My column was known as
bethinking of old Orleans.
And I did that column
for 1979 through 2014.
Wow.
Spanned quite a few decades, huh?
Yeah, I wasn't and I certainly
wasn't an A plus student in English.
Maybe through your columns or even
just as county historian, what are
some of the most interesting stories
or perhaps discoveries that you've
made or found out about the county's
history or even a specific location?
Oh, I don't know.
There's just so much here that it's
amazing the really the number of
people that is fire
reaching in the county.
You know, there's obvious
ones like Charles Howard
world famous Santa
Claus, so to speak.
Going back to the 19th century, one
of our famous people is certainly
George Pullman involved with the
Universalist Church here and then
later built the
Pullman Church in Albion.
Just so many people that are of
national importance that
came out of Orleans County.
Henry Porter worked for Walt Disney
and is considered to be
the father of Donald Duck.
He's buried in
Mount Albion Cemetery.
And then there are people who did
things that their
names are lesser known.
Elizabeth Harriet Denial.
She was a professor of art history,
first woman professor at the
University of Rochester in 1902.
And she spearheaded the
establishment of Memorial Art
Gallery in Rochester.
She was an author, wrote about
Nicholas Poussin,
17th century painter.
Reverend Dr.
Charles Vail, minister at the
Universalist Church in Elbin early
20th century, spearheaded the
establishment of the
National Socialist Party.
All these people that did things
that are, you know,
way beyond the
scope of Orleans County.
Truly goes to show that
interconnectedness of not only the
world, but just the
United States as a whole.
All these big notable figures,
whether they come in through for a
day or so, they still have some
significance in here.
It's amazing that you've
been able to find those.
Well, there are many.
And as a county historian, how did
you see the role in preserving
community and the identity relating
to history or kind of uplifting the
community facilitated through
history, perhaps?
Well, one thing is, especially
through the museum,
was through events.
I started the idea of
doing cemetery tours.
I think the first cemetery here in
Orleans County, that is the first
cemetery tour I did
was at Mount Elbin.
And that was in 1994.
And I advertised it in my column.
And anyways, much to my surprise,
about 300 people
showed up for this tour.
It's a good thing I had a bullhorn.
The village historian at the time
before the tour said to me, well,
what are you doing that for?
And I said, well, I don't know.
I go out to the cemetery and I see
people walking and
jogging and the coach for,
as the team go out
and run, a track team.
I just thought they might like to
know something about the monuments
they're running by.
Well, then after the village
historian found out how many people
came on the tour, well, gee, if you
do another tour, can I help you out?
(Laughing) So anyway, you can get
people involved in history and
motivated and active in history, I
think is important.
So they have a better understanding
of their environment.
Definitely, that kind of broad
appeal for people, whether it be a
small thing that
captivates them or a larger scale.
Just the other night on...
(Engine Revving) That was MSNBC,
somebody said, well, all
history is local history.
Well, yeah, we've heard
that any number of times.
Definitely.
Alongside, this is a little bit
later, beyond county historian, but
my grandfather, Al Capersa, was one
of the major reasons behind the
Commissary Schoolhouse on Gaines
Basin Road being preserved.
What was your role in that?
What did you do to help kind of
preserve and
revitalize the building?
At the time, Al was president of the
Orleans County
Historical Association.
This probably goes
back to maybe 2013 or so.
One day I got a call from the code
officer in the town of Gaines and
asked if I could come
to his office for a chat.
I don't know, what's he want?
So anyways, I hadn't done anything
and the museum hadn't done anything.
So anyways, his
name was Roger Copus.
He wasn't code officer very long.
I got to his office,
we had a nice chat.
And he proceeded to tell me that Jim
Panic had been in
to get some permits for something.
And while he was there, made an
inquiry about getting a demolition
permit for the
Cobblestone School at Gaines Basin.
Copus told me, he said, "I didn't
give him a permit.
"He just made an inquiry about
getting a permit.
"What do you think
about that building?"
And I said, "Well, it would need a
lot of work "and I
think it could be restored."
But I said, "I don't know who's
gonna take that on.
"I don't think, if he's inquired
about a demolition permit, "he isn't
gonna be interested
in preserving it."
And Copus says, "Well, I think the
old girl "still got
some life in her."
So I said, "Well, would you like me
to write a letter "to Jim Panic and
just ask him to, in the letter,
"from behalf of the
Cobblestone Society,
"would you be willing to just put
off doing anything "with the
building for a while?"
And in the letter, I suggested,
because they have Panic's pumpkin
patch, I said, "Gaines Basin Road's
a very busy road.
"Could that building serve as a
background, "as kind of a satellite,
farm market for you?"
I never heard anything back from,
the letter was sent, I never heard
anything back from Jim Panic and I
never talked with him about it.
Well, the next thing I knew, Al
Caperso had contacted, and I told Al
about what was going on, and so Al
contacted Panic and being president
of the Historical Association,
Al was able to surprisingly convince
the Historical Society
to take on the school.
They had even
talked about disbanding.
And Al spearheaded the
preservation of the building.
But I'm glad I sent the letter,
because I think that did stall Panic
from doing anything more about
seeking a demolition permit.
Definitely.
So a lot of money has gone into
preserving that building.
A lot of money has gone into it.
And then additionally, you've been
responsible for publishing numerous
books throughout your life.
Is there anything that you can tell
me about them, along with any
findings you were able to uncover
within them, such as "Architecture
Destroyed," for example?
Well, I did a series of
architectural buildings that had
been destroyed in my column as
county historian.
And so after having a number of
these buildings all written up, I
suggested to the board of trustees,
why couldn't we put out a book on
that as a money raising
project for the museum?
And the board
readily agreed to that.
Well, first, that was done in 1984.
And so this last year, it was
reprinted with additions, again, to
benefit the Cobblestone Society.
The other thing that I've always
been very proud of is the research
that I did in pulling together a
book entitled "Luminaries in the
Firmament," which is a guide to
stained glass windows in the county.
Magnificent
specimens of stained glass.
You wouldn't think that these
treasures of great art would be so
many of them in a
rural area like this.
I suppose they represent a certain
amount of permanency
for something like that.
But anyways, my idea was that
these windows should be documented,
and stories about them should be
preserved, and people look at these
windows, and they really don't know
what they're looking at because
there's so much symbolism
in a lot of the windows.
What does it mean?
So these windows were not only meant
to be memorials, but they were meant
to be instructive.
And I truly hope that other
communities would pick up on the
idea and do documentary photographs
of these windows as a
way to preserve them.
Don't have to
necessarily publish a book.
I believe in Genesee County,
somebody did go out and take
pictures of stained glass windows in
the churches there.
But this is something that really
needs to be done because
congregations dissolve,
buildings get torn down.
So these are
important community treasures.
It's beautiful, that kind of like
bottom-up approach of history, kind
of capturing all.
When it comes to your philosophy
towards history and any reflections
you may have towards it, what do you
believe is the importance of local
history to a community?
Well, like I said, all
history is local history.
People need to have an understanding
of where community has come from.
You have a better idea
of what it's all about.
And usually there's a reason for
something to be the way it is.
And in some cases,
don't meddle with it.
We've seen that too
many, too many times.
Keep your meddling hands off.
Now, what advice would you give to
someone who wants to get involved in
historical work or perhaps being a
curator for a museum, anything in
that sort of realm?
Well, you'll never become rich
because it seemed like with the
museum and it's true to this day,
we're always looking for funds.
When bright people come on board and
can seek grants, that's wonderful.
And we've been fortunate to get a
lot of grants here.
But you need, it's always a struggle
for money, it seems,
to keep things going.
And with the museum in mind, what do
you hope the future
holds for the museum?
What would you like to
see beyond your time?
Well, with what we have at the
blacksmith shop and the print shop
and even the harness shop there,
I could see this becoming more
educational than
we're doing that now.
But I think we could become more of
an educational facility
and with the new building that's
being planned for out back here.
Visitor center.
It can take this, what we have now,
which is pretty much a three season
museum, can bring it into a four
year round four season facility.
That'd be incredible.
I hope to see that someday.
And then my last question for you,
how would you like your
contributions to be
remembered by the community?
Well, I think that if what we've
done over there on Route 98 lasts, I
feel that was one of
my better contributions.
And also, I had to stick my neck out
to preserve the brick
house next to the church.
The planning board in
the town again said,
"Oh, that could be torn down.
Nobody famous slept there."
Well, I don't know how anybody knew
whether anybody
famous slept there or not.
Maybe somebody did, I don't know.
But when the property
was gonna be sold in 1998,
the owner was gonna sell the store
in the brick house, which had a wing
on it and a liquor
store later added to it.
And well, we said, "We don't wanna
look at gas pumps from the
Cobblestone Church.
Nobody could see it
from our perspective."
So I had to stir up
community interest.
We had a meeting over at
the village in one night.
There were 100 people showed up that
were against seeing
that building torn down.
So as a result, we worked out a deal
between the seller and the new owner
and everything was placid and
agreeable in the end.
The Cobblestone Society had to tear
off an 1870s wing on the house and
the concrete block liquor store to
get it back to the original
configuration of the
house built in the 1830s.
So we were able to preserve it and
that's an important building to have
here at the, and it functions so
well for a very needed office at
this point in time.
Well, that is all that
I have for you, Bill.
Thank you for the interview and for
the incredible legacy
that you have left behind.
We appreciate the time
that you've given us today.
Well, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.