Oral histories are the earliest method of passing down a record of events from one generation to the next. An oral history is a telling of personal remembrances, augmented by family legends and hearsay. It strives for truth and accuracy, but is primarily interested in conveying the quality of life, the texture of the times – the unique perceptions of people from an earlier generation.
The Landmarks Society has been collecting recorded oral histories for at least 40 years. Many were collected in our publication Both Sides of the Track by Shirley Mitchell (1985), which is available in hard and soft cover. Subsequently we continued to collect recordings, many of which have been transcribed, and many have yet to be.
We will be posting our Oral Histories as we get them transcribed and formatted for easy reading and searching.
The links below will open as an Adobe pdf, which is word searchable, if you are looking for a specific topic, by pressing ctrl+f.