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.