About 100 years ago, two con men made their way to Putney in pursuit of money. Red Austin and his gang of scouts and impersonators managed to fool Putney’s select board chair out of thousands of dollars, and J. Frank Baxter performed “incredible” feats of psychic trickery at the town hall, practicing a trick known as “Blue Booking.” Rolf Parker is a freelance writer and local historian who has been creating presentations about local history as part of the Brattleboro Words Project. He will present on these two performers of the art known in the late 1800s as “buncoing,” Wednesday, 7 p.m. at the Putney Public Library.
Rolf Parking is one of the principal historians for the Brattleboro Words Project, which was awarded a multi-year National Endowment for the Humanities’ Creating Humanities Communities matching grant to help connect today’s citizens to the stories behind the places we share, and each other.