WEST HARTFORD — Cameron Clifford didn’t necessarily set out to write about his hometown when he first started researching and penning books about local history.
But over time his appreciation of the village of West Hartford — and what it means to those who have lived there — grew and he decided it was worthy of a book all of its own.
“You know there’s absolutely nothing that happened here and no one famous is from here,” Clifford, 64, said in an interview in his West Hartford home, where he sat surrounded by books. “… But — like everywhere else — it’s pregnant with meaning to local people.”
The village holds that special meaning for him.
“It’s a sense of place,” he said. “This is home.”
Clifford, who has worked a variety of jobs — including playing bagpipes at funeral services and as a caregiver — over the years, started researching and writing about local history in the late 1980s. That work led to writing articles for journals. In 2007, he self-published his first book, “Failure, Filth, and Fame: Joe Ranger and the Creation of a Vermont Character,” who was born in 1875 lived near the Hartford/Pomfret townline until his death in 1964. He was mentored by Jere Daniell, the late Dartmouth College history professor.
He will discuss his fifth book — titled “A Small Place Through Time: West Hartford, Vermont, 1781-2017” — from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 12 at the Greater Hartford United Church of Christ, located at 1721 Maple St., in Hartford Village. The program is being sponsored by the Hartford Historical Society. Clifford’s self-published book is being released April 12 and can be purchased for $30 through the Hartford Historical Society.
After his father, Erwin Clifford died in 2017, the timing seemed right for him to focus on his home village, where Erwin Clifford owned a car dealership and construction company.
“I could put him in the context of West Hartford,” Clifford said.
West Hartford, which is centered around Route 14, is one of five villages that make up the town of Hartford. Clifford tells the village’s history in chronological order from 1781 to 2017. He chose the cutoff date of 2017 because it corresponded with his father’s death.
That period included West Hartford’s transition from an agricultural community to one that has more of a suburban feel to it, Clifford said. There were brief periods of industrialization, such as an iron smelting plant where workers made cast iron plows. The panic of 1837 — a financial crisis that kicked off an economic depression — put an end to it.
Clifford also spends time writing about area figures, including Austin Howard, a lumber baron in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who worked to get so-called “roller logs” out of the woods.
“These were large, straight maples,” Clifford said. They were needed in the granite industry because they could hold the weight of the heavy stone.
One of the sections he most enjoyed writing is about William Finley who moved to West Hartford from Teaneck, N.J., to run the village’s general store in the 1930s. Finley wrote columns for a small newspaper called “The Landmark.”
“Finley was very witty and he had … a sensibility to see the absurd, the tragic, the funny, all these things in this community,” Clifford said. “Not everybody appreciated it because he was poking at people.”
Clifford touches on events such as the flood of 1927, which wiped out buildings along the White River on Route 14, as well as Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
Clifford’s source material was, in many ways, already there. In addition to being an author, Clifford is also a collector: Over the decades, he has amassed diaries, letters and other source materials from residents who have called the region home.
One of the diaries is from Esther Chamberlain, a woman who lived along the railroad where she interacted with people whom Clifford referred to as “hobos.” In her 1898 diary, she recorded her interactions with them.
“They would stop and would ask for food, or she would have them split wood and give them food,” Clifford said.
He also conducted interviews with residents, recording oral histories that have resulted in hundreds of meticulously organized tapes and notes.
“I think one of the biggest things is, if you can understand how strange the past is, then any of the parallels you find between the past and the present become meaningful,” Clifford said. “It’s kind of almost like a fogged mirror where you can see images of yourself.”
