"Local history is the study of the everyday struggles and triumphs of ordinary people."
Ohio Local History Alliance
It can be difficult to pick a topic that is interesting, under-researched, isn't too broad or too narrow.
Not all topics are equally easy or equally hard. Some may turn out to be impossible due to a lack of sources.
If your family is from Smith County, see what sources you can pull out and use. Do you have a set of old letters? A great-grandmother's diary? Items from your grandfather's old business? These are things that nobody else in the class has, probably nobody else in Smith County has. Use them as a core, then build context around them. Take digital images for possible future presentations or publications. Then be sure to donate a copy of your final product to the Smith County Historical Society Archives.
Here are five key Smith County history sources to get you started:
1) If you are getting started and want an overview of Smith County, read the article in the Handbook of Texas Online.
It was written by a former faculty member here at UT Tyler and includes a short bibliography. Here's the one on Tyler.
2). If you want a short, predominantly photographic history of Smith County, see:
Reed, Robert E. Tyler. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing Co., 2008. F394.T86 R44 2008. It is also available for purchase at the Carnegie History Center and Barnes and Noble for $22.00.
3) If you want the most thorough single source on Smith County, particularly for prior to World War II, see:
Smallwood, James. The History of Smith County, Texas. Austin: Eakin Press, 1999. 2 vols. F392.S55 S63 1999. It is also available for purchase at the Carnegie History Center for $60.00. This was also written by a former history faculty member at UT Tyler.
4) If you want a small chronology up to about 1980, see:
Whisenhunt, Donald W. A Chronological History of Smith County, Texas. Tyler: Jack T. Greer Memorial Fund of the Smith County Historical Society, 1983. F392.S55 W55. It is also available for purchase at the Carnegie History Center for $15.00. This one was written by a former vice-president of academic affairs of UT Tyler.
5) *THE* journal on Smith County history is Chronicles of Smith County, Texas. It was published between 1962 and 2004 by the Smith County Historical Society. It is not online. The UT Tyler Library has an almost complete set, along with four indexes, on the 2nd floor. Tyler Public Library and the Smith County Historical Archives in the Carnegie History Center have complete runs. Many of the back issues are also available for purchase at the Carnegie History Center. Chronicles articles were written by everyone from well-informed amateurs to faculty members at a variety of Texas universities, including Dr. Gajda.
The Library has a number of books on "doing local history."
See also the books on oral history listed under the People tab.
Encyclopedia of Local History by
How is local history thought about? How should it be approached? What is the context behind local events and institutions? Where does one start? Through brief, succinct notes and essay-length entries, the Encyclopedia of Local History presents ideas to consider, sources to use, historical fields and trends to explore. It also provides commentary on a number of subjects, including the everyday topics that most local historians encounter. Useful appendices provide information on ethnic groups, religious organizations, and immigration. A handy reference tool that no public historian's desk should be without! Topics include: African-American history, agricultural history, almanacs, archives, biographical dictionaries, business history, census, children's history, copyright, economic history, family, genealogy, government records, historic preservation, labor history, maps, obituaries, photography, regionalism, slang, state historical journals, tourism, toys, virtual shopping, zoos.
Interpreting the Landscape by
Most places in Britain have had a local history written about them. Up until this century these histories have addressed more parochial issues, such as the life of the manor, rather than explaining the features and changes in the landscape in a factual manner. Much of what is visible today in Britain's landscape is the result of a chain of social and natural processes, and can be interpreted through fieldwork as well as from old maps and documents. Michael Aston uses a wide range of source material to study the complex and dynamic history of the countryside, illustrating his points with aerial photographs, maps, plans and charts. He shows how to understand the surviving remains as well as offering his own explanations for how our landscape has evolved.
Nearby History by
In the Second Edition of Nearby History, the authors have updated all chapters, introduced information about internet sources and uses of newer technologies, as well as updated the appendices. A comprehensive handbook on investigating the history of your community, family, local institutions, and cultural artifacts, Nearby History guides you in researching the world close at hand. Nearby History provides insights on how to find and use published, unpublished, visual, and material records while also instructing on how to collect information through interviews, connect individual investigations with broader historical issues, and use photographs, documents, and objects in a study. Both professionally trained and self-taught historians will find this work an excellent resource in developing a more comprehensive view of the past. Individual books on Nearby History topics are also available as a part of The Nearby History Series .
The Pursuit of Local History by
In this work readers can discover the role local historians play, find out what the experts see as the values of the local history while exploring their theories, and see how local history has been practised by those who have dedicated their lives to it.
Rethinking Home by
Joseph A. Amato proposes a bold and innovative approach to writing local history in this imaginative, wide-ranging, and deeply engaging exploration of the meaning of place and home. Arguing that people of every place and time deserve a history, Amato draws on his background as a European cultural historian and a prolific writer of local history to explore such topics as the history of cleanliness, sound, anger, madness, the clandestine, and the environment in southwestern Minnesota. While dedicated to the unique experiences of a place, his lively work demonstrates that contemporary local history provides a vital link for understanding the relation between immediate experience and the metamorphosis of the world at large. In an era of encompassing forces and global sensibilities, Rethinking Home advocates the power of local history to revivify the individual, the concrete, and the particular. This singular book offers fresh perspectives, themes, and approaches for energizing local history at a time when the very notion of place is in jeopardy. Amato explains how local historians shape their work around objects we can touch and institutions we have directly experienced. For them, theory always gives way to facts. His vivid portraits of individual people, places, situations, and cases (which include murders, crop scams, and taking custody of the law) are joined to local illustrations of the use of environmental and ecological history. This book also puts local history in the service of contemporary history with the examination of recent demographic, social, and cultural transformations. Critical concluding chapters on politics and literature--especially Sinclair Lewis's Main Street and Longfellow's Hiawatha--show how metaphor and myth invent, distort, and hold captive local towns, peoples, and places.
