Oral History Collections

A number of long-time residents have wonderful memories of their life in New Hope and Solebury Township. The New Hope Historical Society (NHHS) and the Historic Carversville Society (HCS) have agreed to link their oral histories with STHS. In addition, the Heritage Conservancy (HC) shared an album of local songs and the National Canal Museum (NCM) shared their oral histories that are relevant to the Solebury Township area. All of these bring a great richness to the web sites as residents of town and countryside have recorded memories about locations and events across the entire community stretching to Doylestown, PA, Lambertville, NJ, and many Buck County locations. These stories give real insight into the history of the area. Their remembrances and stories are being recorded through personal interviews conducted by the Oral History committees of the societies.

Note:  Only a small part of the National Canal Museum collection of oral histories is included on this site. To see the entire list, click oral history interviews or oral history transcriptions (for those whose tapes are lost).

In 2014 STHS began a dialogue with the Michener Art Museum to share each organization’s oral history archives. The Michener Art Museum (MAM) interviews are available here.  The Michener Art Museum also made available audio of Solebury/New Hope artists who were interviewed via the Senior Artists Initiative. You will see SAI after the name. These are linked to the Senior Artist Initiative web page.

The video interviews marked SAI have been made accessible for public viewing by Senior Artists Initiative as part of its Inventory and Oral History Project.

The STHS, HCS, SAI, and NCM interviews are presented in sections according to content. Click on the name of the section to see the list of interviewees and to access the audio or video. If you wish to see an alphabetical list, click here. If you are interesting in a special topic, check the list at the right.

• Artists, Writers, and Actors
• Canal
• Carversville Residents
• Farmers
• Music and Musicians
• New Hope Residents
• Solebury Residents
• Teachers

If you know of a township resident who has interesting tales to tell, please contact us. Also,  if you are interested in joining the committee to learn how to conduct oral history interviews, see our Oral History Program page for details.

Many people have conducted the interviews and worked on this project. Click to see their names.