Over the years, the Buncombe County Special Collections, an archive and reference library located in Pack Memorial Library, has collected the stories of communities in and around Asheville.
Now, the library is setting its sights on the Leicester, Sandy Mush and French Broad communities through an endeavor known as the Leicester History Project.
Buncombe County Special Collections Manager Katherine Cutshall, herself a Leicester native, told BPR the project aims to tell the stories of residents in Buncombe County’s rural northwest. It builds on the success of last year’s “Come Hell or High Water” project, which gathered stories related to Hurricane Helene and displayed them, in part, through a “digital memory bank.”
“We were looking forward to taking a look at our rural communities, because we just simply do not have as much material about rural Buncombe County or rural Western North Carolina,” Cutshall said in an interview. “So, we thought, wouldn't it be neat if we tried the same original, branch-based concept and added those elements that we used during ‘Come Hell or High Water’ that were so successful?”
The online portal will be the primary way that members of the public can access the materials, but there will also likely be books and transcripts produced from the oral histories and photographs collected, Cutshall said.
One key difference between the current project and “Come Hell or High Water” is that many of the materials related to Leicester’s history haven’t been digitized yet.
Cutshall noted that there will be community scanning days in the summer. Volunteers can also use their Buncombe County library card to check out “personal archiving backpacks” — which include a scanner, guidebook and other equipment — to assist with their work on the project.
Contributions can include anything from a high school scrapbook to a collection of cell phone photos or an interview with a neighbor about their memories of the community. The project seeks to gather materials and stories from the distant past as well as those from the present day. Cutshall said it’s important for the initiative to reflect the region’s diverse communities.
“I remember being told when I was at Erwin High School that there were something like 30 different languages and dialects spoken at home — that it's one of the most diverse high schools on this end of the state,” Cutshall said. “And so I thought, this is a really good opportunity to capture not only long-term generational stories that focus on these rural communities, but also to capture some new immigrant stories, which I thought would be really interesting.”
A kick-off event will be held Saturday, May 9, from 2-4 p.m. at the Leicester Branch Library. Some volunteer training will be happening before then, including an online training on how to collect oral histories from 5:30-7 p.m. on Thursday, April 23.
Ultimately, Cutshall said, the project is about strengthening community in the present, not just about collecting stories.
“I think it's really important to add that this project is community-led and community-driven and that our main goal is not to simply extract memories from people but to build community together with the pathway of sharing memories together,” Cutshall said.
For more information on the project, members of the public can contact the Buncombe County Special Collections by email at packnc@buncombenc.gov or by phone at (828) 250-4740, or the Leicester Branch Library by email at leicesterlibrary@buncombenc.gov or by phone at (828) 250-6480.
