Transcription
Mark: I’m Mark Stolzenberg and I grew up on the dairy farm up in Lower Zimmer Hill. I don’t have as many as many family connections that go back in the town of Wright. My family moved here in the 1930s. But growing up when I was growing up in the 1960s, early 1970s, and Chet Zimmer was always a kind of mythical historical figure, historical expert in town. Whenever we were doing some sort of project or whether it was construction excavation, we come across something that was that was obviously old, and sometimes we knew what it was, sometimes we didn’t. My dad would always say, we gotta get Chet here to have to look at that. Or we would take it to Chet and it would be added to this collection in the basement, and we would get a story of what this site was or what the history of it was.
The history of the Zimmer family was of course because we were on Zimmer land up there which of course sparked Chet’s interest, and he was foremost on all of the ins and outs of what went on there as far back as the revolution. I think at least at least 2 or 3 of the guys that are sitting here today worked for my dad as I was growing up, and I was the one sitting on the fender of the tractor while they were driving because I’m a little younger than these guys. But they obviously were well connected to Chet and our families were intimately connected. Our families were very close in generations past. And as I went to college and graduate school and moved back here, I started to appreciate the history of the area and the history of our farm even more so. And that spurred a lot of visits both to Chet’s house and Chet coming up to the farm to show us various artifacts and various things to areas of the farm where we’re of historical significance to the Zimmer family.
I remember fondly Chet’s basement and their office and Collections and Museum of most of which now are at the Stone Fort. As I said he was this figure that we always, we always knew was going to have an answer for what we were looking at and working here, at the Gallupville house as well. Chet was very, very instrumental. And the National Historic Register designation here. And with the early efforts to save this building. And I think that’s an important part of this legacy as well.