Hypothetical local history project

A local environment that I might try to write a history about would be my home of Mt. Greenwood, a neighborhood in Chicago. I would put together factual data by looking at records—such as when the neighborhood was founded, when it became part of Chicago, who was mayor when it became part of Chicago, who have been the Chicago mayors since, When was the Mt. Greenwood grammar school established, when was the Agricultural High School established, why is there a public agricultural high school in Chicago, etc. Along with the public schools, I would look up the history on private institutions, such as St. Christina, the Catholic grammar school. I would try to find statistics on the demographic break-down of the neighborhood, how it evolved (if it evolved) over the years, and so on and so forth. Getting the dry, black and white statistical data really wouldn’t be a problem. What would become more complicated (but more fun) would be coloring in the rest of the history, filling it in with personal stories. One aspect I could focus on might be the high percentage of Chicago police and firefighters that live in Mt. Greenwood, and why it is the case that so many of them live there. To investigate this, I could talk to and interview police and firefighters who live in the neighborhood and get their take on it. I could also talk to people at the Agricultural School about the farm field that they own, which is the last farm field in Chicago.

I could also talk to senior citizens who have lived in Mt. Greenwood their whole lives, and what it was like growing up there, and how it’s changed. I remember walking my dog—a sporting breed—in the park last year and meeting an old man who started telling me about his youth. He said that the strip mall less than a mile away from my house used to be a pond, and around it there was a field full of pheasants. They used to go bird hunting in the field, and one time a police officer even stopped traffic for them so that their dog could run into the street and retrieve a downed bird. Hearing this old man’s story amazed me…the field he described is now a parking lot, the pond has been drained to build a strip mall, and there is nowhere to bird-hunt legally within at least an hour’s drive (probably more) of my house. It was like he was describing a whole different world to me. I never would have guessed that he was actually describing my home town. Just hearing this story really made me realize how much drastic change a person witnesses in his/her lifetime. It made me wonder, when I’m an old man, how much the world will have changed from how it is now.

It is these kinds of stories that I would try to find to bring color and life to my history. The obstacles, of course, would occur when I would need to go further back in time than any living person could remember. I would have to rely on stories and histories that have been recorded, and as Kammen points out, any recorder of history is going to be unable to avoid bias in his/her writing. Even a primary source like the man in the park that I talked to is going to give his own version of the story. For example, a driver stopped by the police officer so that the dog could retrieve a bird might have thought that the whole situation was ridiculous, and might have been happy to see such activity put to an end.

In any case, any personal testimony or stories that I include in my history, either taken from real people or from writings, I would need to take in with a grain of salt, and try to understand the environment and circumstances from which a given source was coming.

As far as the format of how I would write it, that would probably be decided depending on the kind of information I discovered, and what factors I felt played the largest role in Mt. Greenwood being the neighborhood it is today. The logical place might be to start with the neighborhood’s founding, and go from there.