Sept. 7, 2022 | Sarah Heinonen sheinonen@thereminder.com

David Bourcier stands in The Old Meeting House, 450 Main St., Wilbraham, holding a framed map of Wilbraham during its railway heyday in the 1800s. Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen

WILBRAHAM – When former Wilbraham Fire Department Chief David Bourcier looks around town, he sees the ghosts of buildings that no longer stand and the storied families that once called Wilbraham home. Since retiring three years ago, Bourcier has made it his mission to share the history of his hometown with others and created the website, “Wilbraham Historical Tidbits,” to do just that.

“I always had a love of history,” Bourcier said.

Bourcier grew up in an old house in Wilbraham next to a couple with antique furnishings. “Their house was like a museum,” Bourcier said, adding that he loved their antique furniture and collections of bottles and other old items.

When Bourcier grew up, he took up a career in one of his other loves: firefighting. Once he was retired, Bourcier began looking at other things to fill his time, beginning with metal detecting and collecting old bottles.

In early 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic put everyone into lockdown, Bourcier began posting old photos of life in Wilbraham on Facebook with short blurbs about what was in the picture. He said people responded to these photos from the town’s history. Another local history buff, Raymond Gore, reached out to Bourcier and suggested they team up on a Facebook page Gore had created called “Wilbraham, Massachusetts – A Pictorial History.”

Bourcier began writing stories about the places and historical objects in the pictures he posted. He began doing more research and learning more about the people and life of Wilbraham in colonial times. In December 2021, his daughter created the website as a repository for all the history and images that Bourcier had uncovered.

Each story on the website, more than 25 so far, requires Bourcier to research archives of Springfield Republican newspapers going back to the 1820s, as well as genealogies, books and other historical records. He uses so many sources to gather as complete a history as possible for each topic he writes about.

Bourcier related a story, which acts as an example of this need for multiple sources. The 1799 drowning of six teens and young adults in Wilbraham’s Nine Mile Pond is fairly well known in the town, however, Bourcier said he discovered something interesting when he read a genealogy of the Warner family, whose daughter Mary Warner was one of the drowned. According to the book, Abigail Merrick, Mary’s best friend and another of the victims, had reportedly read her tea leaves earlier in the afternoon and predicted that she would die by drowning. This account was in none of the other records Bourcier could find on the tragedy.

“All these little tidbits come up,” Bourcier said. Whether or not the teen predicted her death, Bourcier said, is less important to him than why that information was included in the book about the Warner family. “Did they hold a grudge because the girl knew she was going to drown and went out on a boat with their daughter, anyway?” Bourcier speculated. “We’ll probably never know.”

Sometimes the historical record contradicts itself. Bourcier said he will sometimes try to present all accounts, but if there is a great deal of confusion, he may leave the information out of his story in an effort to report the most factual details.

Residents have responded to Bourcier’s tidbits. The Athenaeum Society, of which he is president, received donations of antiques in response to the stories he has written. After Wilbraham Welcome Project President Aurora Pierangelo Frias reached out to Bourcier and asked him to do a story on the history of peaches in Wilbraham, a resident contacted him and said her mother’s great-grandfather was Ethelbert Bliss, who pioneered peaches in the town. Bourcier was able to speak to the woman about her memories of her relative who gave Wilbraham one of its most recognized symbols.

Wilbraham Historical Tidbits has been viewed by 5,000 unique visitors in seven countries. “A lot of people have grown up in town and moved to these places,” said Bourcier. He said Florida accounts for the largest share of visitors and assumed it is due to retirees who have moved from the Wilbraham area to warmer climes. Bourcier has partnered with Gore, who owns Wilbraham Candle, to make scents based on the historical tidbits. So far, candles scented like peaches and the Parson’s Rose, a variety that thrived in Wilbraham, have been produced and sold out. Each of the candles’ packaging directs customers to Wilbraham Tidbits to learn more about their stories.

“It’s a really cool collaboration,” Bourcier said, adding that he is working on similar collaborations with other local businesses.

Bourcier would like to publish a book of his historical tidbits once he feels he has collected enough. That said, one benefit of the online format of Wilbraham Historical Tidbits is that, as Bourcier learns more information, he can update previously uploaded stories, creating a more complete picture of the lives of Wilbraham residents who lived more than two centuries ago.

“I like it when I come up with a story that no one’s ever heard before and it brings it to life. I’m trying to put a little bit of feeling so people can see what it would have been like,” Bourcier said. “These were real people dealing with real problems of their day.”

Those people have come alive to Bourcier and now, as he drives through town, he sees the Wilbraham that was.

Wilbraham Historical Tidbits can be found at https://david-bourcier.wixsite.com/wilbraham-tidbits.