LEBANON — When Ed Ashey uncovered a century-old map of Lebanon’s Glenwood Cemetery showing yet-to-be-discovered roads and an unused portion of the burial ground, he had to investigate.
Map in hand, the city historian took to the woods on long excursions, hoping to find evidence in the landscape overlooking downtown.
“He’d go up with a map and try to figure out where this road and this extra section were supposed to be that’s not there,” recalled Fran Hanchett, president of the Lebanon Historical Society.
Hanchett, who has done extensive research on Lebanon’s cemeteries, would accompany her friend, although she drew the line at bushwhacking through the forest.
“I told him, ‘I’ll be here cleaning stones when you’re up there. When do you want me to call out the troops to look for you?’ ” she said. “And he’d just giggle.”
Ashey, who cared for the historical society’s collections for more than a decade, never was one to give up on a challenge. Stubborn, sometimes to a fault, he threw himself into research and new hobbies with zeal.
“He’d take an interest in something and he’d go all out to find out everything he could about it,” said Ashey’s younger brother Gordon.
It’s that approach that friends and colleagues say they’ll miss following Ashey’s death on Aug. 31. He was 82.
Ashey was born in 1938 in West Newbury, Vt., to Gordon Earl and Julia Ashey. His father was a farmhand and the family lived for a time at the Grafton County farm in Haverhill before moving to a transient camp in Lebanon.
But his father soon got a job working in the city’s woolen mills and Ed Ashey, his mother and two younger brothers moved into an apartment on Mechanic Street.
“We certainly weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouths,” Gordon Ashey recalled.
Ashey worked from a young age, first as a paperboy and then in the city’s department stores. He left high school after his sophomore year and found work first at the Baltic Mill in Enfield and then at Western Auto in downtown Lebanon.
Gordon Ashey, who is eight years younger than his brother, said his love of history started young. He remembers Ashey religiously collecting what were called Straight Arrow Injun-uities cards that came in boxes of Nabisco Shredded Wheat.
The cards were first printed in 1949 and featured “Indian lore and know-how,” such as making Native American-style artifacts or showing correct ways of doing various outdoor activities.
“He ate a lot of shredded wheat to get them all,” Gordon Ashey said. “Eventually, he did. He got the complete set.”
Ashey was working as a salesman at Western Auto on June 19, 1964, the day a massive blaze destroyed much of Hanover Street, including the shop that sold appliances, auto parts and sporting goods, in downtown Lebanon.
He and a co-worker stepped outside when they spotted a plume of black smoke going up over Mill Street.
“I no more got it out of my mouth, when flames shot up,” Ashey told the Valley News in 2014. “The fire whistle blew and firemen ran down Hanover Street telling all the store owners to get out and lock their doors.”
Shortly after the fire, he started Ed’s Bike and Sports Shop near the former Hirsch’s department store and, when that was ultimately unsuccessful, he went back to work at Western Auto and later became a manager at Wilson Tire Co.
During that time, he met and married his wife Beverly Picard, who grew up in White River Junction and whose grandfather worked for the railroad. Ashey told the Lebanon Times in 2016 her family wasn’t enthused with the pairing.
“I had a license, and I was driving around picking up girls,” he told the paper of his youthful days.
However, the couple settled down and had five children — Debbie, Vickie, Reggie, Missy and Cheryl.
Debbie Rich, the oldest, remembers her father taking the family on walks in the woods to go berry picking along with long fishing trips.
“He liked trains and forts. I think we’ve been to every fort in New England,” she said. “A lot of our excursions were for learning.”
Rich also recalls that Ashey was a strict parent and “wanted to make sure we did things and did them right.”
Vickie Daniels, his second oldest child, said Ashey also loved pranks and recalled a time in the 1990s when he called, saying he needed help getting rid of something in the trunk of his car.
“I went right there not knowing what I was getting myself into,” she said. “He opened the trunk and there was $500 in it. He had played my numbers in the Massachusetts lottery and had won $1000 so he split it with me.”
Ashey, she added, took pride in the flowers he cultivated at his Mascoma Street home and enjoyed being by the ocean, including trips to Campobello Island in New Brunswick.
“We would sit there and watch the whales and boats go by and it was so peaceful there,” Daniels said of the visits.
Ashey joined the historical society in 2009, three years after his wife’s death and two years after longtime City Historian Robert Leavitt died.
Leavitt, who wrote books on Lebanon’s history, was a family friend and Ashey told city officials he hoped to continue his work promoting the region’s history.
Hanchett said he quickly became the society’s curator.
“He had to train himself because there was nobody to teach him how to acquisition things,” she said. “So, he more or less looked over what Robert Leavitt had done and figured it out on his own.”
Ashey eventually was appointed city historian in 2014 and helped move forward several initiatives, including the society’s efforts to save the old Westboro Rail Yard ticket depot.
Although he was responsible for caring for Lebanon’s historical images, he also took plenty of new ones and was up bright and early to capture events like the depot’s pre-dawn move down Main Street or the groundbreaking of the new Lebanon First Baptist Church.
“He was really very protective of all of the historical society’s belonging’s in the vault,” Hanchett said. “That was his domain.”
She added that Ashey’s shoes will be hard to fill.
“He was my mentor. Every time I needed to know some information, he always went to the vault and showed me where things were,” she said. “He was very, very helpful.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.