Carla, Ed, and I were finally about to meet with the pastor this weekend. We also met with Bob C., who is heavily involved in both the church and the Washington neighborhood. Bob was able to provide us with information about the actual neighborhood, such as that the local development committee had been dissolved. Unfortunately, we had less time to discuss the church and its actual position in the community other than the fact that some local boys play basketball on the hoop in the church parking lot. We go back Tuesday, so we hope to have a better idea of our service options after that date.
One thing we did receive while visiting the church were pamphlets on its history. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at them yet, but they should aid us in compiling the church’s history. The church also has two filing cabinets full of documents that should also be a major help.
I’m aware that we may have an overload of information and will be unable to include it all, but I trust that we will be able to find a good topic to focus on for the church’s history.
Thinking about the history of the church got me interested in the history of my hometown. Currently a suburb of Chicago, it lays 25 miles from the city. It got it start when the train line decided to build a track through it.
Now here I’ve read differing accounts. Some people claim that wealthy Chicagoans who were tired of the city decided to settle there and it prospered from there. The more interesting account claims that the people who first settled it were actually tuberculosis patients and those with illnesses trying to get away from the polluted air of Chicago.
I can see why the town wouldn’t want it published that they were founded by a group of sick people. That would bring a much more negative image to the city than “a bunch of people wanting to get away from the hustle and the bustle of a dirty city.”
Though this information wouldn’t be easy to find, I can think of several ways I could acquire it. The first thing I could look at would be church records or town records from when the town was first founded. The best records to check would probably be the death records. (Morbid, but true.) The town also has a historical society, so I’m positive I could find records there. If I could find any firsthand accounts or diaries, this would be a large help, as well.
The town didn’t have a hospital until 1904, but I would assume there would be a doctor, so I could look for those records as well. In the 1940s, a formal sanatorium was built in the town limits. Though it has been torn down, the area it was in also contained records. Also, the foundation that built the sanatorium is still in existence, so I could ask them for help as well.
I think it will actually be very difficult to find out the truth concerning whether or not people came to the town because of illness. Because the town might have taken awhile to file records properly, it might be difficult to find the actual records. Also, if the doctor didn’t have records or something happened to them, this would greatly diminish my chances of being able to find the answer to my question. Also if the records have been damaged or were improperly documented, this also might impede my search. There’s also the chance that some of the people who lived and died in the town would have their death records elsewhere. If this is the case, I could try to find who lived in the town and where they were at the time of their death. This would take a lot of work, but I could try.
Because it is the history of a town that I would want to sound credible, my writing would be formal. I would most definitely need a large amount of sources and footnotes. This is not a large topic, so it would probably be just an article, not a large book. I would write the article for an audience who was completely unaware of any of the history of the town, because very few people actually know the origins of the town.
I don’t know anything about the church like I do the town in which I live, so I think starting by reading the documents we have access to will give us some kind of topic to focus on that will make our search much easier. Although, the history of a church is much more focused than the history of an entire town or city, so this will already be much easier than if we were doing the entire Washington neighborhood or Dubuque.
Hopefully, I'll be able to write an interesting and accurate history!
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It sounds like your town has a lot of history. I am interested in my hometown history as well. I think it would be neat to learn about. It seems like I am related to more people than others in my community and so I think it would be interesting to find out who found my hometown and where my family came into the picture. Since your hometown is a suburb of Chicago I would assume it is much larger than my hometown of a little over 2,000 people though. I bet the history of your hometown is a lot more complex than you would think. You talked about writing an article if you were to write about your “local history,” because you do not think it is large enough for a book. I bet if you really set your mind to it, you could write a book on it.
ReplyDeleteI think the style of writing you talked about was very appropriate. I chose informal writing because my topic was quite different from yours and it just seemed more appropriate. I also think your concerns were very valid. I do not know if you had these concerns before you did the reading but I thought about a lot more as I read Kammen’s article. I don’t seem to take into consideration a lot of the problems I am going to run into in various situations until someone else points them out for me. I seem to be getting that feeling a lot, but I guess it is not a bad thing as long as I learn something from the situation.
Kelli and I talked earlier tonight about our church history and we too feel like we are going to have a lot more information than we need. After looking at last year’s projects, we feel like we are going to have way too much information about the church to narrow it down to one or two poster boards. I think we might have to make our topic less broad. I don’t know that I understand our project fully though, and my opinion on the amount of information we have might change after I find out more about the project.