November 2: I feel about blogging as if I am a new driver, knowing the principals or the goals, but not having mastered the controls. Having finally gotten to this site I now wonder if I will actually be able to find it again. Nonetheless, this is an interesting venture and I like the idea of a cross-Atlantic, and even global conversation about local history.

I am struck by Robert’s observation that local history is for everyone—for indeed it is.

People come to local history from various interests: genealogical, architectural, academic history, for source material, for local knowledge.

While all this is true, and there are good relationships between generations as shown in the picture Robert posted, I think we also need to be alert to the fact that those of us who do local history often regard everyone else as audience. They are people to be educated, entertained, and enticed into financially aiding the cause.

But “they” are surely more than audience and once we regard everyone as having a stake in local history, and that it is something many people can be guided to do well, and with satisfaction, we will achieve our goals of education and financial support while also enriching and enabling others to become personally involved themselves, There is, after all, so much to be done, so many interesting questions to be answered beginning with one’s own relationship to place. There is also a great deal to learn from archival collections, from government records about how local services began, what sorts of controls have been enacted, how expansion can be explained – or how it was blocked. There is the evidence in homes of culinary traditions, community celebrations, house styles, democratization of education and of political participation, and there is the history of how we in our home towns have coped with the major trends of the twentieth century – and now of the twenty-first: the growth of technology, of economic upheavals, demographic change, of war, commercialization, globalization, and the decline and fall and rise of new occupations to be found on Main Street, to name but a few.

I am a great fan of the English idea of Adult Local History Workshops and run an approximation of one in Ithaca, although Allan Rogers might not recognize it if he were to sit in on a meeting. What it has done is expand the number of people engaged in doing local history research, it provides a forum for discussion of local history projects, problems and opportunities, and it has educated the participants in historical techniques and provided information for the public.

Local history can be inclusive but I think it is our job to make it that way by mentoring others.