The Westport Community Association presents the annual summer program of the Westport Island History Committee, “Stepping Back in Time,” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24 at the Town Hall.

The program is part of Westport Community Association’s yearlong series of events on the island, and is open to the public free of charge.

The History Committee has spent months digging into the life and times of Sarah Tarbox, the Tarbox family and property, inspired by a grant from the Maine Memory Network and Maine Historical Society.

Stepping back to the 1840s and 1850s, the History Committee scanned and transcribed 40 letters to Sarah Tarbox from these years, which had been preserved and donated to the town.

Tarbox’s family and friends shared news about the island, travels and visits, teaching, motherly guidance, and other topics.

Sarah Tarbox was a daughter of Samuel and Polly (Brown) Tarbox, and granddaughter of Cornelius Tarbox, the first Tarbox to settle on Jeremysquam, as the island was called in the late 1700s. She was born in 1823 and died in 1859.

In pulling apart the threads of the correspondence, the History Committee will talk about education on the island, Mrs. Fields in Topsham, and at Kents Hill, as well as social standards and attitudes about young women, transportation, and industry.

The Committee has greatly benefitted from the recent town history by Cora Tarbox, and genealogical research by Mrs. Tarbox and the late Bea Harriman.

Stepping Back in Time will introduce these stories, the letters and photographs, as part of the statewide digital history resource the Maine Memory Network, and help rediscover the Tarbox family, early Westport history and life in 19th-century Maine.

For more information, call 882-6750 or 882-6055.