BETHEL — The Bethel Historical Society annual History Symposium was held in the Bethel Inn’s Gibson Room on April 14 with approximately 40 people in attendance. This year’s theme was “Don’t Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story: Myths, Lies and Other Traditions of Local and Regional History.”

Retired Telstar Regional High School faculty member Rodney Abbott of West Paris set the scene by describing some of the reasons false historical beliefs  have been so essential to America’s cultural past. Using the late Stanford University professor Thomas A. Bailey’s noted 1968 Presidential Address to the Organization of American Historians titled, “The Mythmakers of American History” as a departure point, Abbott noted how strongly our nation’s history has been influenced by so many Americans believing in the superiority of the American people, the supremacy of the white race, the “safety-valve free” land in the West, unbridled rugged individualism and in the rags-to-riches certainty of success.

In addition, Abbott warned of the distortions of Hollywood films and television, cultism and the idea that certain events only have one cause. Also to be distrusted are the “devil theory of history,” historical pronouncements by U.S. presidents, that the American nation is omnipotent and that permanent victories exist. In summing up his remarks, Abbott cited Bailey, indicating that historians need to get the story straight and as free from bias as possible since we have so much history we can be proud without claiming a past that never happened.

Following the discussion of examining history from a national viewpoint, Stanley R. Howe, Bethel Historical Society associate director,  focused on myths and distortions of the local past. One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome, Howe stated, is the belief that “Sudbury Canada” (Bethel, before it was incorporated in 1796) was located in Canada, as the name is so often written with a comma between Sudbury and Canada. He related how difficult it was to persuade the editors of his most recent book on Bethel to leave out the comma. He thought he had the problem solved until the book came out and, once more, the comma was still there. The historical reality is that there were a number of “Canada townships” created in New England to compensate soldiers from Massachusetts for their service in the various campaigns by the Commonwealth to remove the French presence from Canada. In Bethel’s case, these troops were from Sudbury, Mass., and thus the name.

The cemetery on Route 5 in Bethel is often mistakenly called “Woodlawn,” despite every effort to promote its correct name of “Woodland,” including the placing of the name on the receiving tomb near its entrance. “Robertson Hill” is the historically accurate name for the prominence just west of Bethel Village, based on some of the early settlers there bearing that name, but for some reason it is now referred to (and shown on modern maps) as “Robinson Hill,” despite several recent efforts of getting it corrected.

As Howe pointed out, another problem in connection with local names is the tendency to call the recently-named “Intervale Road,” between Route 26 and Rumford Corner, “Middle Intervale Road.”

One final distortion of the local past was highlighted by Howe: that although no buildings were burned during the famous “Last Indian Raid” of 1781, the centennial and sesquicentennial celebrations of this event in 1881 and 1931, respectively, largely focused on the destruction of a log building by fire.

During the second hour of the symposium, Randall H. Bennett, Bethel Historical Society executive director, provided a presentation about some of the region’s myths and historical distortions. Bennett based many of his comments on personal experience, pointing out misperceptions he’s observed while assisting others with genealogical research and while conducting tours of the society’s 1813 period house museum.

He also related several stories in connection with an early 1980s survey of historic architecture in Oxford County, including problems associated with dating older houses in the region. Other subjects offered by Bennett included the life of the Indian “Princess” Molly Ockett, the famous “Moon Tide Spring” on Mount Zircon near Rumford and such well-known White Mountain stories as the Great Carbuncle, the Willey Slide and the “Mount Washington Valley,” earlier known as the “Eastern Slope.”