OSSIPEE — Ossipee Historical Society will be presenting Jo Radner and her program “Wit and Wisdom: Humor in 19th Century New England” on Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Historic Courthouse in Courthouse Square in Ossipee.

Whatever did we do during the long winter evenings before cable, internet, satellite and smartphones? In the decades before and after the Civil War, our rural ancestors gathered, reading aloud homegrown, handwritten literary newspapers full of keen verbal wit. Sometimes sentimental, but mostly very funny, these newspapers were common in villages across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and revealed the hopes, fears, humor and surprisingly daring behavior of our forebears.

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