Local History

Local History is the perfect venue for a case study approach to illuminate larger issues in any field, but particularly in history. Please be aware that case studies do not necessarily claim typicality, which is something many historians misunderstand. Instead, they simply say that “this is the way it worked in one particular place.” Case studies therefore encourage looking elsewhere to see how the same circumstances worked out and examining how place, and the human agency within that particular set of circumstances, changed the outcomes. Thus case studies reveal what the social sciences miss, that particularity is just as important as universality, possibly even more so. Below are links to documents I’ve used in exploring case studies in the localities of interest to me.

Census Documents