why local history matters essay

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Why Local History Matters

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The Economic History Review, 1988

Reviews in History, 2017

The Local Historian 45 (2015) 54-67, 2015

This essay is designed to demonstrate how local historians can use published sources to build up a body of information about a particular place. They need not, therefore, be deterred by the prospect of using unpublished and difficult manuscript sources. John Lee chose as his case-study the small market town of Masham, north of Ripon in Yorkshire. He begins by looking at sources which relate to landholdings, including the manor of Masham, its descent and evidence for property-holding and property conveyances. The second main section considers craftsmen, markets and people – published sources include the medieval taxation returns, market charters and inquisitions post mortem. A section on the church and its wider ecclesiastical context considers church court records, monastic cartularies, and records of the prebend of Masham. The final section indicates which other groups of records do not survive for Masham but may be available for other localities, and suggests that it is of course essential also to consider the physical form of the place—for which there are no descriptions of any sort until the middle decades of the sixteenth century. A valuable appendix lists useful reference works for local historians of the medieval period, with websites and publication details, and there is a comprehensive and informative set of notes and references. The paper will provide a very informative framework and exemplar which can be used by local historians elsewhere to guide their investigations into the medieval community.

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This article represents an exercise in microhistory applied to early modern London. Deploying prosopographical methods, it reconstructs the life history of one John Bedford (1601–1667) from his birth in Huntingdon to his death in the West End of London. Much of his adult life was spent in the London parish of St Dionis Backchurch, with an interlude in the Irish town of Londonderry. Bedford fled from Ulster at the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in 1641. His unusually detailed will provides the bedrock of this narrative, and his reconstructed life sheds important light on ties between London and Ulster, on debt and credit relations and on the methodological strengths and limitations of community studies that focus on a specific place.

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U.S. Local History: A Resource Guide

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Local History & Genealogy : Ask a Librarian

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Author: A J Aiséirithe, Reference Librarian, History and Genealogy Section

Created: Sept. 30, 2019

Last Updated: Feb. 26, 2021

This guide includes such topics as: why do or read local history; how to do local history; local history as a field of study; local history both in relation to and distinct from genealogy, and resources for local history of places mainly within the United States.

Why Read Local History? Why Do Local History?

There are many reasons to read and to write local history. Here are some of the reasons suggested by people who have done both.

"Any understanding of the world must begin at home--or end there." --Siegfried Lenz, The Heritage , 1981.

" .... Local history...provides the natural link between immediate experience and general history." -- Carol Kammen, The Pursuit of Local History: Readings on Theory and Practice , 1996

"In the writing and study of...local history...lie the grass roots of...civilization. [Local history] is key to uncovering the history of the nondominant and inarticulate, as well as to trace the influence of the environment, natural and cultural." -- Constance McLaughlin Green, "The Value of Local History," in The Cultural Approach to History , ed. Caroline F. Ware, 1940

"Local history carries with it the potential to reconstruct our ancestors' everyday lives." -- Joseph Amato, Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History , 2002.

"No community has a singular historical past. Every community has versions of the past that reflect varying opinions and many different perceptions of what happened and why." -- Carol Kammen, Plain as a Pipestem: Essays about Local History , 1989.

Historic American Buildings Survey, creator. Hopewell Village, State Route 345 vicinity (Union & Warwick Townships), Hopewell, Chester County, PA. Documentation compiled after 1933. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Highsmith, Carol M., 1946-, photographer. Covered bridge, Rush County, Indiana. [between 1980 and 2006]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Highsmith, Carol M., 1946-, photographer. This is a part of Pilot Town, a crude village for river pilots about to head up the Mississippi River. Venice, Louisiana. [between 1980 and 2006]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Local history and genealogy.

Local history and genealogy often overlap. Many local histories were written by descendants of a place's first settlers or prominent residents. Even those histories whose authors are unrelated to their subjects often provide details on settlers, business owners, residents, elected officials or others--details still for the most part not found anywhere else. In this way they offer valuable resources for anyone researching their families and ancestors who, after all, lived in a particular place at a particular time.

Local History Beyond Genealogy

Apart from the ways local histories offer details on specific people in a particular place and time, local history offers valuable insight into a great many other aspects of the past. Local histories illuminate foodways and culinary traditions, often rooted in particular microclimates and geographies. They highlight musical and other artistic traditions and cultures. They shed light on labor history and forms and cultures of work such as farming, mining, railroads, meatpacking, canneries, fishing, weaving, and more. They offer crucial insight on patterns of economic development. Local histories show how nationwide events, such as wars or economic downturns, were experienced differently in different places. Local histories also highlight the ways that local political cultures can influence broader trends.

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What is Local History?

Local history attempts to reconstruct the history of a place to understand how the way people lived connects to the community’s present and future.

–What isn’t local history?

The study of local history is not dominated by out-of-date antiquarians throwing together physical remains from the past without any focus on using their collections to bring change for the future. This form of superficial history allows historians to develop a pattern of conclusions without deeper engagement with local history in a comparative context. Worse, this stereotype of history does nothing to help us understand the dynamics of a place. These historians can take so narrow a view that they miss the insights history provides about our futures. By missing the opportunity to examine and interpret conclusions from historical evidence, historians are missing out on what local history does best.

–Why are so many people dedicated to studying local history?

Local history reflects the reality that our lives are shaped by particular places and that our physical place in the world is a major determinant to how our lives are lived. Local history is the study of the everyday struggles and triumphs of ordinary people. The study of local topics allows for in-depth research to connect the past with the present, which is done more simply and with more meaning than studying the national, faceless masses. It allows for greater depth in studying the history of our communities and the relations to the people within them.

–Why is this important?

History is typically taught with a focus on national and international events, but ignores the places students (of all ages) engage with most, their neighborhoods. Involving students in local history helps them to learn to analyze their place in larger events. By understanding their part in history, people become directly involved in their studies of the past. By focusing on local history, students will learn to question history as it has been taught and history as it is being made around them.

— How can I study my own local history?

Asking and answering questions about the history of a place helps us learn what questions to ask about our present and future. A starting point for studying your own local history can be asking:

• Did the feeling of “community” exist? In what terms?
• What impact did human activity have on the landscape?
• How did they govern themselves?
• What work did men, women and children do and how much choice did they have in this type of work?
• What were their attitudes and relationships like towards outsiders?
• How much did the physical setting determine opportunities for people?
• How were the people educated?

Comment below to let us know why you study local history.

Katherine Buckingham served as 2013 summer intern for the Ohio Local History Alliance.

Recovering and Teaching Local History

The battle for American history—real American history—is happening right now. By “real history,” I mean one that captures a more complete story and includes narratives of oppressed people, a history that connects the past with the present. It’s a stark contrast to the way history has been taught in our schools . 

As more people gain access to historical documents and online platforms that emphasize equity and justice, we see deeper dives into this real history. A recent, shining example can be found in the 1619 Project and the reporting on the legacy of slavery that it’s inspired. This initiative is an extraordinary undertaking that shows how slavery shaped the United States and continues to affect nearly every facet of American life.

While it’s encouraging to watch this public recovery of history unfold, it’s critical that an accurate account of American history takes place inside the classroom. As we work to better educate ourselves about long-ignored national histories, though, we often miss something right under our noses: local history. 

Students must learn the truth about their own communities. That’s the history that has the most direct impact on the trajectory of their lives. 

Local History Matters

When I worked as a newspaper journalist, I would often look beneath the surface of breaking news stories to find the histories that provided context for current events. In 2014, I traveled to Grand Saline, Texas, the town to which Rev. Charles Moore returned for his self-immolation . The Southern preacher had sacrificed his body to protest the United States’ treatment of marginalized people. He decided to perform this act in his East Texas birthplace, which was notoriously known as a sundown town , where Black people who remained after nightfall were threatened with violence. 

When Moore’s self-immolation made headlines, it was sensational. Journalists and readers focused primarily on the traumatizing way he completed suicide. But few delved into why he did it in that space. The town had changed, some residents pointed out. They noted that it was no longer a sundown town. Racism no longer lived there, they said, so there was no need to bring up the past. 

But the remnants of the past were, in fact, still with them. Residents I talked to said the infamous sign that warned Black people to stay away was visible from a major highway as late as the 1980s. Today, less than 1 percent of the population is Black, and Black people outside the town warn in jest, “You don’t want to go through there.”

Later in 2014, after I’d visited Grand Saline, the author of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas  contacted me. He’d been helping the descendants of the massacre’s victims preserve this history. Black residents in a rural East Texas town were killed or forced off their land following days of relentless white mob violence —just as they were in Elaine, Arkansas (1919); in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921); and in Rosewood, Florida (1923). It doesn’t take much research to see that these aren’t isolated horrors. This type of terrorism helped create all-white communities, build wealth and sustain white supremacy across the nation. 

Descendants of the Slocum massacre’s victims worked tirelessly to get this history acknowledged by Texas officials. They also wanted it included in the state’s history textbooks—a goal still unrealized. Unless this oral history was passed down in their families, most people in Texas don’t know about the land grab, murder and displacement of a community. The story is buried—figuratively and literally. At least one descendant wants to honor these ancestors with a proper burial, but attempts to lobby residents to allow the exhumation of an alleged mass grave were unsuccessful. The mass grave is said to lie on the property of a current landowner who is unwilling to explore the issue. 

And then there is the town where I lived: Tyler, Texas, less than an hour away. The city has a complex history with deep ties to the Confederacy and Texas’ secession from the Union. Tyler was the site of at least three public lynchings, and many white residents were fiercely resentful of integration. 

I always wondered why I couldn’t find many stories about resistance in Tyler. But learning about this Confederate-friendly region and reading the stories of violence made it easier to understand. The keepers of white supremacy were just too powerful, and they caused too much fear in the Black community. It’s no surprise that, in 2017, when an effort to rename Robert E. Lee High School failed, opponents clung to notions of culture and heritage . 

Local history helps students better understand their community, as well as the inequities they see around them every day.

Why Teachers Must Dig Up the Past

It’s hard to find real local history in textbooks, and it takes courage to teach these hidden, hard histories. But it’s not hard to help students uncover this history. They can start with the origins of the names of streets, schools and government buildings in their city. Or they can consider how the hard history of our nation played out in their community. After learning about the slave trade, they might explore the lives of enslaved people who lived in their town. When learning about the courage of youth during Freedom Summer, they can track the fight for voting rights . Or they can learn about their district’s integration story and compare it to the Little Rock Nine and other stories. 

Local history helps students better understand their community, as well as the inequities in education, poverty, health outcomes and other issues that they see around them every day. 

Teachers are already introducing concepts and events that set the scene to examine their community’s history. For example, students in New York, Chicago and Detroit could explore the origins of housing discrimination in their cities when they study the Great Migration—a direct result of white mob violence. World War I resulted in more than the Treaty of Versailles. It also produced Red Summer and other acts of violence lobbed at Black soldiers returning home to Houston and other cities. And when educators teach about U.S. geography, they are talking about how slavery and settler-colonialism helped to literally and figuratively shape our nation—whether they recognize it or not.  

This work isn’t easy, and educators must do some self-reflection before they begin. We know that the past never really goes away. When transgressions against humanity go unchecked, that injustice stays with us. And it doesn’t take much digging to see how the history of your students’ community shapes their lives. 

It’s important to understand the place where you serve. Reach out to local elders and storytellers. Visit the closest museum that doesn’t center whiteness or dominant narratives. Take frequent trips with your students to the local library, make use of its many resources and dive into projects about your town’s history. 

Doing this work with students might inspire them to continue to look for real history long after they leave your classroom. 

Dillard is a staff writer for Teaching Tolerance.

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Lesson Plan Exploring Community Through Local History: Oral Stories, Landmarks and Traditions

Students explore the local history of the community in which they live through written and spoken stories; through landmarks such as buildings, parks, restaurants, or businesses; and through traditions such as food, festivals and other events of the community or of individual families. Students learn the value of local culture and traditions as primary sources. They relate stories, landmarks and traditions of their community to history, place and environment.

Students will be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of local history;
• develop interview skills;
• demonstrate knowledge of library research skills;
• analyze, interpret, and conduct research with primary sources.

Time Required

Lesson preparation.

• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
• Explore Your Community : A Community Heritage Poster for the Classroom
• Learning About Immigration Through Oral History
• Local Legacies
• Oral History and Social History

Lesson Procedure

Possible teaching options are noted with individual activities.

• Introduce students to the  American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940  collection. Students read the  Special Presentation  of the collection. For additional resources for teaching from the  American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 , see the lesson  Using Oral History .
• Discuss how to structure an interview for the best results. Note that open-ended rather than yes/no questions get more detailed responses. For additional resources about types of interview questions, see the lesson  Immigration and Oral History .
• Discuss the types of local landmarks, traditions and customs that could be project subjects, such as a plaque commemorating WW II veterans or a mural showing a state or local event. Decide in advance whether students will work alone, with a partner or with a small group; and whether to limit the number of projects on a particular landmark or tradition. Allow students to self-select a subject. For additional ideas on how to generate project ideas, see  Explore Your Community: A Community Heritage Poster for the Classroom
• Assign students to take pictures of traditional customs, activities or landmarks for their project as homework.
• Provide access to books, materials, pictures, and artifacts from the school library to gain insight into the community's past.
• Have students visit the local public library and work with primary documents from the local history collection.
• Ask students to submit a plan for their interviews, including specific questions and possible candidates for the interview, for peer or teacher review before conducting their interviews. Students might benefit from a reminder to form open-ended questions and a review of interview etiquette. Possible interview candidates for a landmark might include people who work, visit, shop, or eat at the site, or other passersby. Students conduct interviews, taking notes. Students write a report of the interview, which should be evaluated based on the number and variety of people interviewed, the types of questions developed, and the types of responses elicited.
• Teach students how to combine their pictures and text in a multimedia presentation.
• Students share their presentations with the class. Presentations should include an explanation of how interviews were conducted, and what the student learned about the community. Class members write a summary and a critique of each presentation. (Teacher option: provide guidelines for the critiques, or generate them with the class before beginning the presentations. Students may evaluate all presentations, or be assigned particular presentations.)

The high school library will store the students’ work to be used as a resource by future students. Web projects may be shared on the school Web site.

Lesson Evaluation

Develop a rubric on your own or with the students.

• Students demonstrate understanding of interviewing techniques and oral traditions through a written essay about their interview and through their multimedia project.
• Students successfully prepare a multimedia presentation.
• Students present their local history project to the class in a clear and informative manner in order that other students in the class can write a summary and a critique of their presentation.
• Students submit a self-evaluation clarifying what they learned and what materials and experiences were valuable in learning about local history.

Marilyn Frenz and Mel Sanchez

What is Local History and why is it important?

Local history focuses on the geographic of a  region, district, town, or community and it   embodies  the cultural and social aspects of its history.

Understanding Local History helps highlight the everyday hardships, victories and occasions of ordinary people. Locations, stories and articles within the community help us reflect the long and rich heritage of past generations.

Whilst researching this topic I stumbled on a quote from Carol Kammen's book:

Plain as a Pipestem ( 1989)   Essays about Local History  

Which I feel explains Local History perfectly "No community has a singular historical past. Every community has versions of the past that reflect varying opinions and many different perceptions of what happened and why." Local History is important to us because  it reflects how it  plays a significant role in who we are and how we perceive the world.

It gives us a strong sense of identity, and learning our Local History teaches us to view things from a different perspective.  Preserving and restoring our Local History is essential, it helps us  explain the architectural, and cultural heritage of a community, as a result establish  our connection to it. 

Local History is one of the oldest and most recently recognised fields of study.

Something I found very prominent when researching certain topics in the 18th and 19th centuries, was that many Historical Societies existed then. 

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