KNOX — Kathleen Putzig has returned to her Hilltown roots. She’ll delve deep into those roots as the newly named Knox Town Historian.

Putzig is now spending hours in the basement of Town Hall, searching through birth, marriage, and death records.

Being a historian, she said, is “like treasure hunting.” One certificate she came across listed the cause of death as “falling dead,” she reported, and another said “poisoned with opium.”

“I love digging stuff up,” said Putzig.

She grew up on Cole Hill, a dairy farm. “Leaving the farm, there was a feeling of loss for that culture,” said Putzig. “I’m a country girl.”

As a student at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, she was a member of the Yorker Club, which focused on state history. As a high school project, she took pictures of old buildings on West Mountain and in Huntersland “so, if they fell down, we’d have a record,” said Putzig.

She married her high school sweetheart, Bart Putzig, after following him to the West where he got a degree in petroleum engineering. She graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in business.

They have been married for 32 years and have four children: Allen, a veterinarian in Massachusetts; Elias, who is earning a Ph.D. in physics at Brandeis; Mollie, who is finishing a master’s degree at the University of Colorado and recently won an award for her environmental science writing; and Irene, with a bachelor’s degree in biology from the State University of New York College at Oswego who is planning to earn a master’s degree.

Finding history in written and spoken words

Having recently moved back to the Helderbergs from western New York, Putzig now spends several nights a week with her 96-year-old grandmother, Frances Miller.

“I’ve been going through her diaries and talking to her about her life in the ’40s,” said Putzig. “She had nine children and was active in the Grange and the Lutheran Church. She canned her own meat, and fed her children and the farmhands. It was a huge business.”

Frances Miller grew up on Switzkill Road. Putzig has learned about events great and small by listening to her grandmother. An example of small practices of everyday life: “They used soapstone to keep warm in the sleigh in the winter,” said Putzig.

A large, life-changing event occurred in 1888 when Miller’s grandmother’s house on West Mountain fell in, killing her and leaving her son buried in rubble for two days.

Putzig urges, “If you know someone who is elderly, talk to them before they leave us.”

Others in her family have a passion for local history, too. Her uncle, Harold Miller, has written books on Hilltown history and founded a website on local history and genealogy that Putzig is maintaining and adding to.

Putzig’s father, Ralph Miller, is the Berne Town Historian. Putzig has been working as his assistant.

“Next year, I’ll apply to be the Berne Town Historian,” she said as her father is retiring. She thinks being historian for both of the neighboring towns would be fruitful.

The job is not about making money. “Daddy hasn’t asked for a salary in a few years,” she said.

Putzig is currently transcribing diaries kept by John Miller, a Lutheran pastor in Berne in 1928 and 1929. “I’ve been typing them into the computer,” she said. “Wendy Cook is excited,” she said of the pastor of the Helderberg Evangelical Lutheran Church in Berne.

The diaries tell how the pastor “played snooker almost every night,” said Putzig. Snooker is a a table game, played with a cue, similar to pool. “Parts are heavily scribbled out about his ex-girlfriend named Mabel,” Putzig said of the diary.

John Miller, who died young, is not related to her family, Putzig said; she surmises someone gave the diaries to her grandmother believing there was a family connection.

While she has a trove of notebooks from previous Berne historians, Putzig said she hasn’t yet been given archives from the former Knox historian.

“There’s very little,” said Cheryl Frantzen of the archives. “Almost everything is in the Knox Historical Society museum,” she said, which is housed in the Saddlemire Homestead.

Frantzen was appointed to the post after long-time Knox historian, the late Frieda Saddlemire, retired eight years ago.

“She was dedicated to the job,” said Knox Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis of Frantzen.

Asked about her role in the post, Fratnzen said, “The history is already told and is documented in our sesquicentennial book…I’d respond to questions and inquiries and help people with genealogical research if I could.”

Frantzen stepped down from the post, she said, because she was so busy with her farm. She and her husband, Dale, raise poultry, pork, beef, and vegetables, which they sell at farmers’ markets, she said.

Bicentennial celebration

Putzig is an experienced teacher, having worked as a reading specialist in Rochester schools.

She plans to use the Suitcases of History program developed by Mary Kinnaird to teach Berne-Knox-Westerlo students. She will have one suitcase packed with items used in daily lives in the past and another suitcase filled with Civil War memorabilia related to Knox.

On April 20, Putzig will practice her presentation for the Helderberg Kiwanis Club, and then teach fourth-graders in May. “The kids will do an art history project and present to the Kiwanis in June,” she said. “They’ll show off what they made.”

Putzig is already making plans for the Knox bicentennial in 2022. “We have a five-year plan to build up to that,” she said, referencing programs planned by the Knox Historical Society of which she is a member.

One program will be on costumes so that residents can dress for various periods of Knox history. Another program will consist of home and garden tours “so people can see old homes,” said Putzig.

“We’re encouraging period decorating,” said Putzig, and period gardens will be featured, too. “We want people to really celebrate the history of their own homes,” she said.

A Knox historical calendar is being planned, and, over the course of five years, Christmas ornaments will be created and sold. “Each year, we’ll release a new ornament” featuring a different Knox landmark, said Putzig.

Finally, she said, the society will look into a historical district for Knox.