By David Fortier
It all begins with an invitation to join in a Bristol adventure and, if it all goes as planned, it ends six months later somewhere in Bristol with those who answered the invitation gathering outdoors in Bristol to complete the final steps together.
Along the way, everyone who joins in on the caper gets a special glimpse into Bristol, its history as well as what we have become today. The interactive journey will include online clues, Bristol sites and a podcast to guide the process and record people’s progress.
“I just found a really compelling story line across different events scattered across the history of Bristol from the early beginnings of when it was the West Woods westward to New Cambridge until it became the City of Bristol,” C.T. O’Brien said about the inception of the project.
O’Brien, who is a Bristol native with deep roots in his hometown, took a deep dive into Bristol’s history while he and his family, he is married with three children, hunkered down here during COVID. His work schedule allowed for the hiatus here.
It was then that the idea of turning hometown history into an adventure story implanted itself, he said.
“I’m not a journalist, but I’m taking incidents from historical records from Bristol and retelling those stories by connecting them together,” he said. “Then, five percent of the time I’m going to make a theory about what happens and we’re going to run with that.”
The “we” is anyone who comes out to the Bristol Historical Society for the unveiling of a trailer introducing the project, to get a look at the website that is chockful of information about Bristol’s history and to hear about the podcast that will be appearing periodically over the next six months with tips and updates.
The BHS event is the first of several that are part of the project. The introduction is Friday, Nov. 24, from 5 to 7 p.m. with the main presentation of the theatrical trailer at 5:45 p.m., followed by a presentation highlighting Bristol’s early history. While it is not necessary to join the event via Facebook, here is a link to do so.
In December, O’Brien will premiere a podcast dedicated to the project, and throughout through May of 2024 activities with clues about the answer to the mystery.
“It’s a little bit overly dramatic,” O’Brien said about the trailer. “But that’s the point. One takeaway that folks might have is, ‘Hey, we haven’t seen anything like this before.'”
O’Brien is the son of Thomas and Marie O’Brien, both are involved in Bristol through their work connections and service on elected and appointed boards–his dad runs a family business and has served on the both the city council and the board of education and his mom is a current member of the board of finance. A great-grand father ran unsuccessfully for mayor around the turn of 19th century.
“I am intentionally downplaying my own family’s role in the whole thing,” he said. “I am also, to be frank, downplaying some of the famous families we know about.”
He included among the famous families, the Treadways, Sessions and Barneses.
“I mean, we’re going to talk about those families,” he said, “but it’s going to be, very much, no heroes or villains here, right.”
This project is not meant to shine either a positive or negative light on any individual or person. Rather it is meant to tell the story of Bristol and its struggles and interesting points on that journey through an interactive forum where the story unwinds as people who are involved with it learn more and more about it.
O’Brien, who works for the state department, has an undergraduate degree in digital media and entrepreneurship. He operates from Washington, D.C., when he is not on a foreign assignment. During the pandemic, he and his family, hunkered down in Bristol.
“I would say that this is about two years of armchair research,” he said, “armchair research is, yes, I have kids to raise, I have a job to do, but in some of my free time, I really delve into published and publicly available material and then Internet archival maps, published histories.”
It is all the information that he has amassed on his website, https://www.brxstol.com/home, lower down on the page under “Explore” and the tabs for maps, lore and clues.
The website includes the trailer, which will be featured at the BHS event, information to join the Facebook Group and links about how to subscribe to BRXSTOL for updates and associated events.
The website describes BRXSTOL has “an immersive history project that chronicles the transformation of the West Woods into the City of Bristol.”
O’Brien said he will be chronicling the project so that as a final product there will be a video record as well as the possibility of other creative outlets, including a novel.
“As a Bristol native, who has spent a lot of years outside of Bristol, it’s a fun way, where I am raising my own family, to connect with my roots,” he said.
“For Bristol history buffs and anyone interested in the history of Bristol to again revisit what they know about Bristol history and look at it in a different way.”
Again, the adventure begins on Friday, Nov. 24 at 5 p.m. at the Bristol Historical Society. To join the Facebook group event, follow this link. For the website, click here.
