Any experience with historical societies?

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Rimes
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Location: Michigan

Any experience with historical societies?

Post by Rimes »

I only became interested in local history this year, an interest that admittedly has become somewhat obsessive. I was inspired by the Charlotte spreadsheet on this site to do my own listing of addresses in my area. This has involved going to the library and looking through old city directories, phonebooks, and newspapers. It also has involved physically visiting certain streets, photographing certain buildings and areas (even a few empty lots that might someday get built up) and writing down every building's address number (and if there is no number on the building, doing a check online or in the current phone book for the address number).

I still have many questions about certain places in my area, wondering about when certain buildings were built. And seemingly the only way to have my questions answered (when the answers aren't available at the location itself or on the internet) is to keep going to the library and digging through the old newspapers, city directories, etc. and hoping to eventually hit paydirt.

Because of this passion, my friends have suggested that I get in touch with one of the local historical societies. I have yet to do so, however, because I don't really know much about them, and also because I'm afraid of getting involved with something that doesn't really have much to do with the semi-recent (20th century) past that I'm most interested in. Whenever I've seen mentions of the historical societies in the newspaper, etc., it's usually about hosting tours for the public or having bake sales and other fundraising efforts, stuff that is a little more social and seemingly less about the history that I'm interested in.

What do you think? Has anyone here gotten involved in a local historical society? Was it a good, helpful experience in adding to one's knowledge, or an irrelevant social exercise?
rich
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Post by rich »

You seem to be talking about historic preservation (doument and preserve architecture) rather than the sort of things that historical societies do (make histories, preserve artifacts & documents). The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has local chapters is a good place to start and it publishes a monthly magazine, Preservation.
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Dave
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Post by Dave »

Local historical societies can be very helpful. You never know when they might be able to put you in touch with someone with the same interests as yourself or have information you may need.

Not all "historical societies" are limited in their scope as Rich suggests. Some are very active in preservation as well as research. Some are a good deal more focused on geneaology.

Another thing to consider is that the historical society may have more reference material than the regular library. For eample, the Richmond Public Library has city directories dating back to 1908 with some years missing. The Virginia Historical Society has them dating back to the 1800's, and not limited to one city. Another example is that the VHS is the repository for a lot of other historic information - the corporate records of Best Products is one example I can think of, and they have some interesting pictures of Sanitary Stores in their collection. The Library of Virginia (state library) also has a lot of good stuff, like information on Pender's.
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