FOREWORD

We’ve been “Windham” for the better part of three hundred years. As of 2016, my family has been here for about forty of those years, so I am honored to have been asked by Derek Saffie to write the foreword for his Historic Tales of Windham .

In 1883, 164 years after its modern settlement, and 133 years ago, the first memorial of the “past and present” of Windham was penned by Leonard Allison Morrison, who opened his book with the words, “To the People of Windham N.H., and to those who derive descent from the Scotch settlers there, beneath whatever skies their homes might be, this memorial of the past and present is dedicated with sentiments of high regard.” Back in 1883, Morrison listed 250 families by name. Today, Windham is the home to more than 5,000 families.

Ninety-two years after Morrison’s book in 1975, the Windham Historic Committee asked, “What is Windham?” and after three hours of deliberation, dubbed it a “rural oasis,” naming its newly published update of Windham’s history by the same name. Rural Oasis is an important and well-written follow-up to Morrison’s nineteenth-century work.

Many regard Windham’s history as encompassing the last three hundred years of modern civilization. Recently, Derek Saffie and I visited Windham’s historic “Indian Rock,” our oldest known archaeological artifact, dating back thousands of years. I was amazed at how Derek brought this artifact to life for me and others by telling stories of the past and how this spot was so significant in its time. How many of our young people know about this and other important parts of our town’s history? I would bet that most don’t. Derek takes people, places and events that lie silently nestled in our past and brings them to life through stories and chronicles of our past. Humanizing these people, places and events makes them real for today’s Windham residents and, building on the foundation created in earlier works, creates a fascinating connection from our past to our future.

The blending of old New England values and traditions, the fingerprints left on our town by generations of the past in historic places, is a treasure to be celebrated. It’s one of the things that makes Windham so special. The symbols on our town crest—the castle towers, the water, the trees—all have meaning in our history and tell a story of who we are. My wife, Patti, and I were proud to commission in 2014 Windham’s first flag, featuring our town crest prominently, and as of this writing, it is the only such flag in existence. We rely on storytellers to keep our history and those traditions preserved for the benefit of future generations.

Derek Saffie, a brilliant and thoughtful young mind of today, presents a fresh and modern interpretation of the history of our beloved home, Windham. He will now go down as the latest teller of our rich history, an embodiment of the spirit of Charles Knight, who, in 1883, said to Windham’s future inhabitants: “History has a great office, to make the past intelligent to the present, for the guidance of the future.”

Al Letizio Jr.
Chairman
Windham Board of Selectmen 2016