Small Histories and Small Towns

History is made of great events and larger-than-life characters. That’s how the past is presented in high school and college, anyway. But there are smaller histories and more down-to-earth players who may warrant more local attention than they receive.

Case in point, when I was doing research for a historical novel, I came across Carolyn Wakeman’s book about Old Lyme, The Charm of the Place. In it, I discovered the town’s early 20^th-century pharmacy on Lyme Street. Fritz Morris James managed it, likely the only African American in town then. Mr. James led me back across the river to his sister in Old Saybrook, Anna Louise James, who was the first African American woman to be licensed as a pharmacist in Connecticut. Her pharmacy still stands on Pennywise Lane.

From “Miss James,” I discovered her niece Ann Lane (later, Ann Petry). She graduated from Old Saybrook High School (OSHS) in 1929, and following family tradition, got a pharmacy degree. But her real fame was as a fiction writer. Her debut novel, The Street, was published in 1946 and went on to sell 1.5 million copies. She published other novels and short stories and lectured at several universities. Ann Petry died in Old Saybrook in 1997 at the age of eighty-eight.

I must have passed her house on Old Boston Post Road hundreds of times without a clue of her existence. I graduated from OSHS in 1974, when Petry was only sixty-six. I took a creative writing class in high school, but no one mentioned the famous writer half a mile from the school. As far as I know, no one invited her to the school to give a lecture or to talk about the craft of writing. She reportedly disliked fame and perhaps memories of small-town racism fed her seclusion. Whatever the reasons, I remained ignorant of her, her books, and her family’s history in Saybrook and Old Lyme until I was sixty-six.

There has been some recent effort to correct this omission. Last Fall, the Old Saybrook Historical Society featured an exhibit about Anna James the pharmacist, and Ann Petry the author. The Acton Library now has a permanent Ann Petry Reading Room and a display of her books and books about her. Still, it seems too little, too late. Maybe the town or the high school should have an annual Petry Writing Prize for local writers or students. Maybe the high school should devote a week or so to local history, to the people and places in town that warrant remembrance. Maybe every town high school should devote a week to looking back at the people and events that made their town.

Old Lyme and Old Saybrook are admittedly target-rich in history and famous people. Yet, many of Connecticut’s towns have hosted enough history and residents to write their own local Atlas Obscura of the forgotten. Maybe one of them will find another Ann Petry.

Edward McSweegan is the author of the forthcoming historical novel about Old Lyme, The Cottage Industry.