The Franklin Historical Society’s (FHS) monthly offering for November is a slight departure from the norm. On Thursday night, November 7 at 7 PM, the speaker will be Bonnie Randall to discuss the book she co-authored with Carol Stone entitled Around Tilton from the Images of America series of books.
As a rule, programs for the FHS are chosen as having relevance to the history of Franklin, but as Tilton no longer has an historical society, presenting such a subject was deemed a nice gesture. While delving into our neighboring town’s past, we can educate attendees that all town histories have many things in common, and the events of one municipality often impact their neighbors. Influence does not stop at town lines.
Bonnie Elaine Randall lives in Tilton with her husband Ken and has been in the area for more than 52 years. She graduated from State University of New York at Geneseo with a degree in Library Education and took her first job as Assistant Librarian at Plymouth State University (PSU) from July 1960 until July 1962. Before leaving that job, she helped with the original plans for the library across the street.
She and her husband Ken met while he was teaching weekdays but working as the bookkeeper for the Cog Railroad and Inn at the Top of Mount Washington, a job which he held for 32 years. They married in 1961, after which Bonnie joined him at the top of Mt. Washington on weekends, where she worked in the gift shop and rolled and counted the money.
After leaving PSU, Bonnie worked as librarian at the boys school in Tilton when the Tilton mansion was converted to the Tilton School. When her daughter Kathy was born in 1966, Bonnie retired from the Tilton School but kept busy at home while raising her baby by volunteering to catalog the elementary school library books for Sanbornton Central and Union Sanborn schools.
When Kathy went to third grade, Bonnie went back to work at the middle school as librarian and generalist for the next 20 years. During this time, she was also the First Vice President of the New Hampshire Library Association, President of the Advisory Board for the Happy Wanderers in the Tilton Extension Service for Homemakers, and a Trustee of the Public Library among other interests.
Most recently after finishing her book Images of America – Around Tilton, Bonnie has worked indexing the 1940 US Census for the Mormon Church for their Web site FamilySearch.org by registering 50,000 names. She is also researching documents for the State of Maine tracing births, marriages, and deaths from old unrecorded documents in family bibles, etc. to update the state genealogy.
Bonnie says that working with Carol Stone and Dennis Evans to publish the pictorial history of Tilton was one of her most exciting projects to date.
The presentation will take place at the FHS building at Webster Place (21 Holy Cross Road, off Route 3; directions at FranklinNHHistoricalSociety.org). All are welcome. There is never an admission charge, and light refreshments will be served.
All those who attend are encouraged to become members if they are not part of our family already, and stay after the program for our regular business meeting to add their input and insight.