The Importance of Local History

There are two things that connect us to and establish us in a place. The first and foremost is people–people who are (or were) part of our lives in any fashion, those dearest to us, our friends or co-workers. The second thing is closely related to the first–history. It may be our history. Or it may be generations of family history. History can connect us to places we might only visit from time to time.

I had a great sense of this when I visited in 2005. You see, I had visited Mt. Vernon earlier–in 1969. And so, when I went back in ‘05 I already felt acquainted. This may sound odd, but I felt somehow a part of George and Martha’s story. I remembered the color of the dining room walls, the view out over the Potomac River. And all of this was in the context of the Washington family history that I had earlier learned: why they lived there, the fact that they had no children, what they ate, and George Washington’s wooden teeth. 

History matters. And it doesn’t have to be history on a world or national scale. You can reduce it down as far as you want. How about the history of your town? How about the history of your back yard? The place to begin your inquiry should be with a local historical society or at least with someone who has lived in a place a very long time.

I had the pleasure of getting to know one of my dad’s friends, the late Aubrey Morris, who was a history-teller of the highest order. In fact, Aubrey was a journalist for the Atlanta Journal for many, many years. I could sit and listen to Aubrey talk for hours about historical events because he had not only a fine recall but told it so well. I’ll never forget Aubrey describing how he accompanied the late Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen in 1962 to that field in France, next to the Orly airport, to help Mayor Allen identify victims of the plane crash that had claimed the lives of so many Atlanta arts patrons.

Aubrey was describing the scene to me–the bodies and suitcases lying everywhere–when he said that Mayor Allen recognized a necktie and said, “I gave that to ----“ (one of the victims, whose name I’m purposely leaving out). Hearing Aubrey say this was an amazing connection for me.  My husband had worked with this individual’s son back in the 1990’s, who, as a grown man, had told us the story of the Orly crash, but from the perspective of a child who had lost a parent.

You may not know it, but you see history every day because it is found in geography. I’ve developed a good enough eye for local geography that I can tell where cotton fields have been based upon the types and ages of trees that are growing there. And I can easily see old home-sites, even when no structures exist, again, based upon the types, ages but also placement of trees. 

There are other, long-lasting geographical features.  When my kids were in high school they told about exploring a “canyon” nearby. Not any canyons in Alpharetta or Milton that I could recall but I was interested so I began digging around. As it turns out the canyon was a quarry off of Freemanville Road and at one time supplied gravel for the many, unpaved roads in north Fulton back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I even contacted the property owner (before he developed the property) and we walked around the quarry and I got some great pictures. 

There are three great torch-bearers to geographical history: mountains, waterways and trees. We love old trees because we know they have “seen” so much even if they can’t tell their stories. But trees eventually decline and go away leaving mountains and waterways as the longest lasting testimonials to history. It’s fairly impossible to remove a mountain and mighty difficult to change the course of a waterway, although this is a continual project in southern Louisiana. Because of the unchanging nature of these geographical features, their history is ever-present. And waterways, particularly, have a way of retaining man-made artifacts, along shores or buried deep under the water.

This history, this proverbial Mt. Vernon story, is everywhere people have been. Even the land itself has history. And history matters because it has this power to make the past come alive and connect us to it. If you are feeling disconnected and not a part of things, begin an inquiry into the history of your place–the place where you now stand.