The administration building at the Craig Colony for Epileptics at Sonyea. From museum of disability.org

LEICESTER, NY — Leicester Town Historian Tom Roffe has been given a state archives grant to do research on the Craig Colony for Epileptics in Sonyea.

“This history has been not only crucial to our local heritage but neglected for far too long,” Roffe said. “What material remains available is scattered and obscure, including the photographic documentation.”

Roffe’s research is being funded under the L. Hackman Research Residency program, which annually awards about a dozen applicants a grant to come to Albany and work with staff guidance in the New York State Archives special collections. Roffe believes he is the only town historian in western New York ever to have been given this opportunity.

In the late 1800s the living conditions and treatment for the afflicted were deplorable. Through the compassionate vision of William Prior Letchworth, the progressive Craig Colony facility was established.

The first patients arrived in 1895 and were placed in an environment conducive to healthy living and exercise. It was the first community of its type in New York State.

The facility was also important for the economic opportunities it provided for the workers: the Irish and Italian immigrants and their first born American children who obtained job security, pensions, a dependable income and a productive family future. Furthermore, agriculture gained a valuable, progressive medical resource with the colony’s educated professionals and schools.

Roffe’s concentration of study will be the years of the colony’s development and treatment methods up to 1950, after which modern medications and clinical advancements altered methods previously considered beneficial.

Roffe noted that, from almost the first decade of the colony’s opening until it closed in the 1980’s, he has had family and relatives who worked at the colony.

Roffe will be grateful to talk with anyone that can provide information to further his understanding of the Craig community.

He would like to examine any documents and photographs. For interested groups or organizations, he would be happy to present a power point show and history-based lecture.

Roffe can be reached at 221 Main St, Leicester, NY. 14481; or call 382-3234.