Ohio History Journal

THE CONTRIBUTION OF LOCAL HISTORY TO THE

COMMUNITY*

by HENRY CLYDE HUBBART

Professor of History, Ohio Wesleyan University

As we all know, the day of the supremacy of political or

national history has passed; instead we have many historical cate-

gories. The mighty torrent of history has been sluiced into various

channels: the economic, the social, the constitutional, the interna-

tional or diplomatic, and, more recently, the intellectual, the re-

gional, the local. This is true not only in the area of phenomenal

fact, but likewise in the area of interpretation or historical philos-

ophy. If one feels that he and everyone else is his own historian,

he has many schools of interpretation to draw on. There is the

older, optimistic school of progress, and the newer, pessimistic

school of decline. There are schools of civilization cycles, of

pendulum swings, of cataclysm.

To choose from all this for a short informal talk the appar-

ently modest field of local or regional history might argue that

one thinks it is relatively unimportant or that at most is a mere

decorative feature. Far from it. Local history is not merely

added; it is integral and fundamental. Too much history has been

written from above, from the important great documents; some of

it still, let us admit, is produced in ivory towers. It needs to come

up from the grass roots, up from where the people live. Especially

do cultural and social history need to be treated on the local levels.

It thus becomes tempered, and enriched, humanized, and made

more realistic. The general is not complete without the concrete,

the regional, the environmental.

For the sake of better historical composition nothing could be

more fruitful than that the writers of formal and supposedly more

* This article was given as a paper at the annual meeting of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society at the Ohio State Museum, Columbus, April 16,

1948.

298

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respectable and more scholarly history should expose themselves to

the material of this field. Each one of these writers might well,

at one time or other, attempt to write a state history, a county or a

college history, or a family genealogy; or might well interest him-

self in the work of a county historical society, or might become a

connoisseur of some handicraft, or of folklore, or folk music, or

even of antiques. Historical formalists used to say "no documents,

no history," but one might well say "without much fundamental

local data, no history." And, to bend another classic historical

cliche to our purpose, how can history without this local emphasis

really be wie es eigentlich gewesen ist?

It is remarkable how the sages, the prophets, the poets, the

artists, and the novelists appear to excel the historians in skilfully

building up their contributions directly out of the local scene.

They find in homely surroundings abundant raw material for their

wise sayings, their deep insights, their artistic masterpieces, their

dramas of human conflict, tragedy, and comedy. To them the saga

of the locality reveals its wider and deeper meanings. This fact,

no doubt, helps explain the enduring quality of their work.

Henry D. Thoreau, that sage of Concord, that intense student

of his environment, once said that he had traveled much in the town

of Concord. This is a statement at once paradoxical, naive, and

profound. Another Concord sage, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, "I

ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; . . . I embrace the

common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low."1

Such "provincialism" is akin to greatness. Good things can come

out of Nazareth. Thomas Hardy, the great novelist, out of the

rustic, homely life of his Wessex country of south England pro-

duced powerful stories of human conflict and destiny. His work

is an excellent example of the universal rising out of the local.

In Gray's "Elegy," ambition and grandeur might mock the

homely joys and the obscure destiny of the rude forefathers of the

hamlet, and hear with a disdainful smile the short and simple

annals of the poor, but the poet reminds us that potential empire

builders, artists, John Hampdens, and Oliver Cromwells lay in those

graves. The last few decades in American literature have pro-

300 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

duced regional novels which, delving deeper than the former novels

of mere local color, reach down to more significant life issues.

But if literature and art appear to excel history along these

lines, it is not because general historical movements do not have

many forms of local incidence. Indeed the community relationships

of national or general history are often its most important aspect.

The state, the county, or the local community is a microcosm, and

historical forces that are nation-wide and world-wide in scope find

expression in it. It is tied to movements that reach far beyond its

borders. National legislation, especially in these days of the social-

ized state, reaches down to the small town and the farm.

International trade and world war bear down heavily on the

neighborhood. What is the story of the frontier, the conquest of

the continent, if not primarily a story of the people in their heroic

struggles of home building? It is civilization in transit; it is the

accepted institutions of society seeking a new home and a local

habitation.

The national leaders and platforms of Republican and Demo-

cratic parties are often of less real importance than are their local

makeup and behavior. In this or that community what are they

composed of? Negroes, whites, foreign-born, laborers, farmers,

Catholics, Protestants? How do their neighborhood bosses and

machines behave? Moreover, state legislation has a very great

local impact, and most of the problems of law and order, courts,

schools, and churches are primarily community concerns. In short,

on all sides we see subject matter for local history. A group of

this type hardly needs to be reminded of the abundance of material

and the currently increasing interest along these lines. Mention

need only be made of the wave of present-day interest in folklore,

folk art and music, the flood of books of a regional nature on our

rivers and our lakes, on American local speech, and on the general

subject of American regionalism-to say nothing of the collections

and the work of the great state historical societies such as this.

If there is truth in these contentions, then of course local his-

1 Emerson's Complete Works (Riverside ed., 12 vols., Boston, 1885), I, Nature,

Addresses, and Lectures, 110.

LOCAL HISTORY 301

tory makes a great contribution to the community itself. It gives

to the people of the community a sense of the meaning and the

dignity of their environment; a sense of background and reserve;

a sense of continuity and personal intimacy with the past that a

study of general or national history cannot give. A people sees

that its own community life has validities and justifications. A

study of the local settlement and development of a township or

county brings a realization that the processes of civilization have

been at work near at hand; that there has been enacted in one's

own neighborhood significant scenes in the larger drama of our

national history. The romance or the tragedy of the frontier is

seen being enacted on a local stage right here at home. Indians

once lived here; here people were once involved in great catas-

trophes like the Civil War or the two World Wars, or great de-

pressions; here prosperity waves and important political campaigns

had their local repercussions. Of course, this respect for the rich-

ness of neighborhood tradition and fact must not be allowed to

descend to mere blind credulity and sentimentality; always the

sense of historical objectivity must be preserved.

It has been aptly said that much of our cultural nationalism

and patriotism has its roots in the locality. Marco Bozzaris and

his Greek compatriots fought for their homes; they struck for their

altars and their fires, for God and the green graves of their sires.

A. E. Zimmern has said that the sense of nationality is a "corporate

sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy, and dignity."² It "recalls

an atmosphere of precious memories, of vanished parents and

friends, of old customs, of reverence, of home, and a sense of the

brief span of life as a link between immemorial generations."

Local history, of course, develops an interest in family history.

If members of certain families see more clearly the part that their

own ancestors played and thus get an exciting interest in genealogy,

this interest need not be a mere matter of family sentiment and

pride or of boresome family detail in which no one is interested;

it can be made to be historically constructive. The type of gene-

alogical work which helps one to "establish a Revolutionary line"

so that one can be entitled to join some society or other is, of

course, on a higher level than the type which, for a consideration,

302 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

302 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

is willing to help one trace his lineage back to William the Con-

queror "if necessary." But the best kind of genealogical work

functions on a higher level than either of these, and is often found

to be on a par with the best historical scholarship both in its

methodology, its accuracy, and its productive results. In the in-

vestigation of county and church records, in documentary study of

wills, deeds, and marriage and birth certificates, and in work in

the varied types of material to be found in state historical society

libraries, the trained historian can get many "pointers" from the

genealogist.

Interest in local history also binds the citizen of the com-

munity to his fellows by other ties than those of his immediate

business or social interests or responsibilities. Let him establish

an acquaintance with certain older men and women whose memo-

ries go back sixty or seventy years. Let him note their intimate

knowledge of the neighborhood and its local lore, their pithy and

expressive speech that bristles with localisms. Let him read through

the county histories or the township atlases and a new world opens

before him, one that is often positively fascinating. An interest in

local history overcomes the feeling of uprootedness and transience

that is so characteristic of Americans and which perhaps contributes

largely to American nervousness and restlessness. If a person has

been compelled to take up residence in a distant large city, he may

still cherish his old home ties; in fact, as he matures, he can and

often does, on returning home, see values in the old place that he

entirely missed while living there. I once had a student who, upon

graduation from college, felt that New York City was the only place,

and, going there to live, he soon took on all the marks of the

modern city dweller. He wrote back that he had "learned to

loathe" his old home in the Middle West. It is quite likely, how-

ever, that this uprootedness, this loathing, created more unhappi-

ness than pleasure for his mature life. He had no real home.

Also, an intense local historical interest provides an altogether

valid substitute for the vapid amusements so prevalent in our day

which often bring little or no satisfaction.

2 A. E. Zimmern, "Nationalism and Internationalism," Foreign Affairs, I, No. 4

(June 15, 1923), 120.

LOCAL HISTORY 303

Again the geography of the home region takes on new meaning

to one who is interested in local history, as do also the fundamental

geology of the region, the archaeology, and the agricultural and

general economic development. Perhaps a reference to a certain

Ohio county is in keeping here. This county is about one hundred

and forty years old; it has had abundant reason for the growth of

a lively historical interest and for the establishment of a vigorous

historical society. The settlement and development of its townships

present good historical material. Its county seat once had a real

chance of becoming the capital of the state; it is the birthplace of

a president of the United States; it was a minor center of mobili-

zation in the War of 1812; it was the seat of a pioneer college

that has grown into a large institution. It was one of those Ohio

towns which were once accorded, and perhaps deservedly so, the

label "classic."

And yet this county during all this time had no effective county

historical society. Several were formed only to pass out. Even

the demolition by a prominent oil company of the presidential

birthplace, although it brought a wave of indignation at the sheer

vandalism involved and incited a group of earnest souls to form

another society, did not produce permanent results. The flame of

interest again flickered out.

More recent developments in the county, however, seem to

have produced better results. The decision of the United States

War Department to construct a large conservancy dam in the county

brought the condemnation of thousands of acres of land. The

threat that scores of farms and homes would be destroyed or cov-

ered with water brought to the people of the valley the desire to

put on record what was happening, and to memorialize their com-

munity life that so soon was to face extinction. The result of this

and other factors was the formation recently of a county historical

society that will perhaps persist. Moreover, the digging up of some

Indian remains by an energetic woman in the same area helped to

give these developments an archaeological turn. This archaeolog-

ical and historical society was brought into the picture, and today

several people of that county have a much more direct interest in

archaeology than they had before.