GUILFORD – The stately old homes and churches which line the streets of the tiny hamlet of Guilford bear testament to the locality’s glory days, when the community bustled with business and industry. That rich history is depicted on a timeline which now hangs in the Town of Guilford’s new Town Hall on Marble Road.

The timeline, which traces the “village’s” history from when it was first settled in 1795 to the early 1990s, is the product of countless man-hours of research and documentation by two men – Archie Hubbard and Roger Ree – over a five year period starting in 1988.

“We’re proud of it,” said Hubbard. “We can’t say enough.”

Hubbard said he and Ree undertook the project “not knowing what a job we had on our hands.”

The pair conducted interviews with local residents and poured over copies of local newspapers such as the Guilford News and Guilford Mail, and even old class yearbooks. In doing so, they paid close attention to advertisements, which proved invaluable in documenting the businesses of the day.

The two men recorded the information they gleaned from these and other sources on index cards, which they then compiled onto a scroll.

“Then from this, we made the more permanent display,” Ree explained, gesturing from the annotated scroll to the framed, painted timeline which now adorns the wall of the Town Hall’s courtroom.

The timeline stretches from 1795, when what is now known as the hamlet of Guilford was settled, to 1992, when the pictorial representation of the localities business history was last updated.

“It’s a work in progress even still,” Hubbard’s former assistant explained. The Unadilla native now teaches at the DCMO BOCES Chenango Campus in North Norwich.

According to Ree, the timeline of Guilford’s business tells a story typical of many rural communities.