Student Blog: Researching Local History

Hello! 

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the history of your town? Working in my school's archives, I've been able to learn a ton about my local history: notable people, popular hang-out spots, and important events. One thing that's certain is there is a lot of information to explore, online or otherwise. Here are some places that I suggest you look if you are interested in this topic!

Note: As a student living in the United States, especially in such a densely populated place as New Jersey, my insight into what's available in other areas is limited. The resources that are available to me may not be available to everyone else. I hope this article still encourages you to look for what's available close to you!

The first thing I will recommend is the Images of America series. This is a series of books that cover towns all over the United States. In them, you will find old pictures and information of important events in a town's history. There are websites such as Thrift Books where you can find these pretty cheap, or your local library may have them available! If you want an idea of what to look for, try finding out when your school was built, and if it ever was at a different location. You might also find people who were important to making your town what it is today, and have familiar landmarks named after them.

Speaking of libraries: try to find out if your nearby libaries keep yearbooks. There are a ton of digitized yearbooks that you can find online as well. Just last week, I visited my old high school's library to look at their collection of yearbooks. My suggestions here would be to see what clubs existed in the past; you will likely find some clubs that would probably never exist at your school today. I also love looking at what musicals have been put on over the years. 

Many libraries and bookstores have a "local interests" section where you can search for this kind of thing. At my county library, the "local" section has newspapers from the various towns, which are fun to dive into. I also found some cool articles on their website, such as one that showed me the prices of various goods during different decades. You can search for e-books that your libraries have and learn something new from the comfort of your home! If you are a student, your school's library may even give you access to scholarly journals that are not widely available to the public. I would encourage you to look into those, as having access to specific articles has helped me with research papers before.

Finally, I encourage you to learn about historical societies in your state. These are organizations that work to preserve the history of various interests. My town has a historical society, and just a few years ago they created a time capsule for all residents to contribute to. We were all allowed to look at its contents before it was buried. It was fascinating to think about aspects of our every day life that will potentially be obsolete years from now. Furthermore, I learned about things going on in my town in the present day that I had no idea about. If you'd like to, try to see if your local historical society hosts tours - they can be very eye opening!

I think researching this kind of thing is very interesting, because all towns have some time of relationship with their surroundings. It's also very fun to take your other interests (such as musical theatre, for me) and see how they relate to your town's history. I hope that anyone reading has found something new to look into, that you may not have heard of or even thought of before. Happy researching!

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