Katie Latham came to our newspaper last week holding history in her hands. She had calendars going back to 1993 with carefully culled pictures of Westerlo’s past and some loose photographs as well.

Mrs. Latham, who is 76, had gathered them so we could illustrate our story on Westerlo’s bicentennial. Her life is engrained in the town. She was raised on a dairy farm there, the youngest of 10 children. For years, she taught school in Westerlo and now she is active in the about-to-be opened museum.

Some of the pictures were sad of one-time dramatic events. One showed a cider mill with flames licking its side and smoke billowing from its roof. Her husband remembered that the mill had burned in the 1940s.

Others were happier commemorations — a dozen members of a coronet band, wearing snappy caps and uniforms with braid, each holding his instrument with a sense of gravity and importance.

Other pictures were personal. A photograph of Mrs. Latham’s brother, George Snyder, showed him in his Army uniform, during World War II. Our graphic designer, Christine Ekstrom, scanned that picture on the spot so we could return it to Mrs. Latham. The other pictures she left behind for us to peruse.

We leafed through pages and pages of Westerlo past and saw a history that went beyond names and dates. We saw a rugged way of life where people worked together to get needed jobs done.

Roadways had to be packed down or cleared of snow in winter, although a 1913 photograph at Thayers Corners shows a horse-drawn sleigh that is dwarfed by the height of the snow banks. A 1929 picture shows men harvesting ice on the Mill Pond in South Westerlo. An undated picture shows Harrison Palmer haying; three men, with a dog, are working together — one stands atop a hay-laden wagon, another is on the ground with a pitchfork, and a third is in a horse-drawn cart.

A picture from 1968 shows Harold Bell, wearing a Stetson and a plaid shirt, at Fred Clickman’s maple syrup house. Behind him, buckets on trees collect sap and a caldron hangs from a log tripod. He holds a saw in his right hand and pats a collie with his left. His wife, Helen, is by his side, holding steady the birch log he’s about to saw.

Another picture shows a road crew — muscular men wielding shovels and picks — using a steam-operated jackhammer to make a road just past Bear Swamp. A barn-raising at Lockwood Farm west of Thayers Corners shows the backs of a score of men — some in bib overalls, others in straw hats — each holding a long stick and pushing together, as one, to raise the roof beam of a barn three times as tall as they.

A 1931 photo shows Beaman Hannay, a white-haired man dressed nattily in a three-piece suit, as he leans on the glass-topped counter of his store, a store that was run by his father-in-law, Hiram Jones in the 1800s. The shelves are laden with all manner of neatly stacked goods, from eyeglasses to canned food.

Another picture shows a smiling young George Ford Tozer, leaning on his 1929 model D Harley Davidson motorcycle. He rode his motorcycle from New Jersey to Westerlo during the Great Depression in search of work, the caption says, naming four local farms where he worked. “Working for only a few dollars and room and board, his motorcycle and feet were his only mode of transportation,” the calendar caption says.

Others posed just as proudly with a horse and buggy or a Model A Ford.

We’re glad Westerlo is making an occasion of its bicentennial. You can read our front-page story on the three days of festivities planned for the last weekend in September.

Such a celebration gives a community a chance to gather together, something we do too little of these days. No one wants to go back to the hard work of cutting ice to keep our food safe; we’re used to the convenience of refrigeration. And it’s far easier to purchase goods like maple syrup in the supermarket rather than collect the sap and boil it ourselves.

But such labors once tied us together — a man couldn’t raise a barn alone. One of the qualities we’ve long admired about the Helderberg Hilltowns is the way community members still volunteer for the common good. It’s fitting that the volunteers who fight fires and rush to the rescue of those who are ailing will be leading the bicentennial parade.

Another focus of the celebration will be the opening of a town museum — 20 years in the making. Its new home is at the site of the oldest building in town.

Westerlo’s town historian, Dennis Francher, told us, “I’m the one that encouraged the town to buy the original Meyers homestead.” Philip Meyers, who emigrated from Germany as a young man, eventually built a log house in what is now Westerlo. It stood where the Albert Percy House is now. “Logs from that probably came from the original cabin,” said Francher. “It was said to be built in 1763.”

Francher is hoping his displays and others will inspire more people, and younger people, to join the historical society. We hope so, too. A number of years back, the historical society in another Helderberg Hilltown, Knox, was on the verge of fading away as it had just a few, aging members left.

In this space, we wrote of the importance of preserving and learning from local history. Now the Knox society is flourishing and its members are enriching the community by supporting events as varied as a path through the park with pages of a history book; a new marker commemorating the toll road; displays and exhibits on a variety of worthwhile topics; and, because of member John Elberfeld’s project, an ever-growing trail of barn quilts stretching across the Helderbergs.

Such endeavors have practical results, like encouraging visitors, which helps the economy. But more important is the way a community is enriched by such efforts.

An old adage says that we must learn our history so as not to repeat it. But we believe learning our history can be valuable precisely because there are parts of it we may wish to preserve. If we delve into our local history, we can tease out the threads that distinguish us from other communities, that define the character of the place we live and of who we are.

Certainly places like Westerlo are shaped by the larger forces of history — the wars, the busts and booms of the economy, the changes in technology — but there are still traits that make Westerlo unique.

Katie Latham’s pictures, worn and blurry as some of them are, clearly define those traits — a willingness to work hard, jackhammer in hand, to make progress; an ability to pull together to do what would be impossible alone; a close relationship with the land; and a sense of pride in the everyday.

We encourage the citizens of Westerlo to turn out in force for the bicentennial festivities, to celebrate themselves and their heritage, and to work toward preserving it.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer