In January of 1964, a booklet entitled The History of Tavistock was published. It had been compiled by the Grade 7 and Grade 8 students of Tavistock Public School and was really the first comprehensive history of the town. The booklet included everything from the founding of the village by Captain Henry Eckstein written by his descendent Michael Eckstein to histories of most of the businesses and organizations of the town and stories of some of the vanished landmarks of the town.
According to the Tavistock Gazette, more than forty senior students contributed to the project. Several of the students spent untold hours going through old files of the Tavistock Gazette in their search for material. Others interviewed older residents of the village, digging up little-known or forgotten facts. Many of the students were second or third generation relatives of the business owners.
The principal and teacher of the senior students at the time was Mr. James Axtmann. He says that, instead of asking the students to write on "What I did on my Summer Vacation", he asked them to research something in the history of Tavistock that they had an interest in or were familiar with. Mr. Carl Seltzer who had been principal of the continuation school in Tavistock was preparing a history of Tavistock at the time for the Rotary Club in preparation for Canada's 1967 Centennial. It is believed that Carl used a lot of material that the students gathered for his book that would be "Fact and Fantasy."
2024 was be the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of the Student History of Tavistock and so the Historical Society used that booklet as the focus for their Annual General Meeting. Members of the 1963-64 grade 7 and 8 classes were contacted as were their teachers Bernice Marsland and Jim Axtmann. Over 70 people gathered on April 20, 2024 to celebrate this important work and to reminisce about what it was like growing up in Tavistock in the 1960's.
The History of Tavistock as compiled by the senior students of the Tavistock Public School in 1963-64 can be viewed at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zvjdEC2K8RzPgkYHnoIM4yXDArs-Tv9r .