Current Writings - Byron Clark

In the time off from work, I've been working on a new paper that I'm hoping to get published sometime down the road. For the past eight or so years, I've worked or helped out at YMCA Camp Abnaki, and over that time, I've gotten really interested in the history surrounding camp. I was able to get some documents when I was up there last time to do some more research on various aspects of the camp's history. I've been intending on working on a larger history of camp through a set of papers. There's a lot of possibilities for work with this camp's history.

While going through the documents, I started writing up a timeline of Byron Clark's (the founder of camp) and found that he was not only involved in camp, but over twenty different organizations in the Burlington era, but also was involved with World War I, and might have been responsible for bringing the Boy Scouting movement to Vermont. When I consulted with one of the doctors here, he suggested to look at him as a progressive, which makes sense seeing that he was most active during the progressive era.

After another consult, I've gotten a bunch of sources and places to look, and I've since started an outline and have started working out the bits inbetween. He looks like a facinating person, and much much more interesting than I had previously known, which had been through the view of Abnaki. Now, with a larger view, it's a much more complicated picture.

More as I write it up.