As a special event to celebrate Putney’s 250th charter anniversary, the Putney Historical Society Board decided to update the town history, first prepared in 1953 by the Fortnightly Club. Planning for town wide participation began in 1999. Interviewing was conducted for two years. Well over 200 people contributed by interviewing, being interviewed, taking notes, donating photos, writing, editing, and reviewing many versions of the manuscript.
Four Putney schools developed curriculum so that their students could contribute in a way that both provided community service and met student learning objectives. Interviewing support included: Laurie Fichter’s 8th grade class at The Grammar School, Alan Owens’s writing class at the Greenwood School, Stephen Sadlier’s ESL-B students at The Putney School, and Landmark College students under guidance from Jan Thompson, Chris Grele, Tom Trenchard, Stuart Strothman, and Christina Nova.
In November of 2002 Arcadia Publishing accepted the history into its Making of America series, the first Vermont town to be included! The publisher requested that the history begin in the 1700s, rather than in 1953 as originally planned. The opening chapters deal briefly with the older town history, but are not as detailed as the original Fortnightly book. The subtitle World’s Best Known Small Town comes from George Aiken who created this slogan for Putney around the time of the opening of Exit 4 on I-91 in 1961.
The making of Putney: World’s Best Known Small Town would not have been possible without grant funding from the WEB Project, the C. Michael Paul and Josephine Bay Paul Foundation, and the Vermont Council on the Humanities.