Comments on: An Open Note to History Lovers…

By: Robert Howard

Robert Howard — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:51:08 +0000

I like your enthusiasm. Now you’ve got bug, I hope it never leaves you. As for me, I grew up with my grandparents in Wembley, London in the 1940s and 50s and my grandfather’s arrived in the town with the railway in 1837 and was laways telling me stories about local places and people. Years later, living in Birmingham I was a Labour Party city councillor and got involved in a fight to save a local cinema. We lost but I re-discovered local history big time. Added to this my wife get a job as a museum curator and I became Chair of the regional museum service. I used local history to help me win two elections, so I know its power. In 1984 my wife and I started ‘Local History Magazine’ here in England and passed it to another publisher in 2004, but kept our website and on-line bookshop. Local history has been (and remains) a great way of getting people iterested in local issues and realising that much of what they take for granted in their lives has its roots in local people and not governments. Our free health-care has its roots in community based free health-care from the 1860s onwards. The list goes on and on. Me. I treasure my free bus-pass which enables me to travel free to lots of places outside Nottingham where I now live and I know I have thanks to an enterprising Labour city councillor in Birmingham who persuaded the council to introduce free bus travel for pensioners back in the 1950s. We all come to local history in different ways and for different reasons. It’s a great tool for testing the past and its relationship with us today. By the way my favourite local historian is Carol Kammen who lives in Ithaca, NY. You can read about her on the news page of our website.

By: Steve H.

Steve H. — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:29:00 +0000

Well, I accidentially came across this page and even though you use initials I can identify several of the people you talked with. With that said, I have some Jones County tales that are yet unproven, but with much research I have a pretty good circumstancial case. It started with the excavation of the ministers house just outside Langworthy, grew legs and has been creeping along every since. Hence, the reason I know who C.P. is. I have a pretty good feeling there was an under ground railroad connection through Langworthy, probably by rail, but can’t prove it. I have three slaves delivered to Fairview by a Quaker farmer, but no one knows where they went from there; I have a pretty good idea! Seven years I have tracked various people looking for leads and every time the trail grows dim another tidbit of information arises. It is a tale that twists and turns on all sorts of events, some distant ones have national ramifications. Don’t stop what you are doing, the more you get wrapped up in your story the more your readers will also get wrapped up in it. That is the magic of history and story writing! Steve

By: Art

Art — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:58:47 +0000

I think you put the proverbial finger on it – the gnawing tooth of time. When I began research into my family’s history, it was mainly out of curiosity. I wanted to see if all those stories my grandfather had told me were true (most were). But as I got further into it, I began to see that if it were not for my curiosity and my grandpa’s love of storytelling, those facts would have been lost to the ages… the gnawing tooth of time. And I didn’t want that to happen. Just in case my children and their children don’t have the motivation or curiosity, there will be a record of what I have learned for them to pass down.

By: Shalene

Shalene — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 05:20:48 +0000

Hi DM,
Well I don’t know what’s motivating you, but I’ll tell you a story. Back in April of this year, I started out doing some geneology research. I was trying to find my great grandmother’s birth parents (she was an illegally “adopted” Cherokee baby.) Anyway, I ended up not getting any results for that search. But during that search I came upon some information about working from home in an Associated Content website. Well, that intrigued me, so I researched it further. Wouldn’t you know it, that research led me to find a number of Christian websites and blogs, etc. that led me to start my own website and blog ministry. So you may never know why you’re doing something at the time that you’re doing it, but there is a reason for your consuming passion. HE knows what it is, and perhaps it will be revealed to you. Blessings to you my friend.

By: totaltransformation

totaltransformation — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:36:30 +0000

Research can be addictive, can’t it? I know. I went from law school to a Ph.D. program because of my addiction to historical research.