Telling Stories

Like others of you in your blogs I was struck with the reading today: "Historians tell stories." I see each of you busily trying to figure out the "traces" that have been left behind about your house. The house history project asks you to find out a lot of minutia but the hope is that at the end some stories will emerge. And then even beyond that our collective house histories will start to suggest a number of stories about the neighborhood! So what stories can we tell about the neighborhood? Without a storyline all of the facts we are uncovering have no meaning. I can see interesting things emerging.  Look at Rafael's blog - he found out that the house used to be a "tin shop" so what does that say about businesses in the neighborhood and how that has shifted over time. Rachel also talked about the furniture shop. Rafael also uncovered some scrapes with the law - could you actually figure out how much police action has taken place in the neighborhood over time and find a story in that? What about the "cultural landscapes" around your houses? What else is in the neighborhood near to your house? Nearby History asks us to sharpen our perceptions - can we learn to "see" and "listen" through these odd traces of the past in the landscape and in the archives?

I am excited to go to the museum today and meet our partners for this project! Among the documents that the book points out as potential sources be sure to learn what the newspaper sources are for Goshen and whether they are indexed or not!!! What kind of government documents might be helpful to you? Most of the "ephemera" that the Elkhart County Historical Museum has collected is in the vertical files so be sure to see what they have there. They have a much more complete set of city directories than does the Goshen Public Library and these are really fun to look at because you can look at all the houses in the block and make some comparisons of your house to others (p. 78). And of course the plat maps are always interesting, I wonder if there are any for these city blocks? Many of you have already tried you hand at the Sandborn maps - don't give up too soon. The census will probably be one of our best sources for thinking about the neighborhood as a whole entity and looking at change over time. Who wants to dig into that for the final project?

It is fun to be part of a class where, even as a professor, I don't know what the outcome will be of our research! Happy hunting.