Historical Research Observations

I spent Good Friday--a beautiful, sunny, Michigan day--locked in the basement of the Manistee County Historical Museum, working on my National Register nomination. The box of research that was supposed to make my life easy this semster is still among the missing, so I tried to recreate as much of it as I could in 8 short hours. Sitting cross-legged on a rickety old chair with my laptop playing jazz softly in the background, I read through 80 years of building information for Manistee. I found out a lot about Portage Lake in Onekama, where my great grandfather once ran a boat livery, and about the businesses that started up in the downtown area of Manistee and were then rebuilt after numerous fires, but house information was scant. I even found an article about my brother's building on Taylor Street, which was an auto place even as early as 1916. Still, not much about the houses on Cedar St. and the people who lived in them. I could get frustrated and quit. I could...but I won't. Instead I'll relate a little of what I learned from my experience at the Museum.

For one thing, after seeing the basement of the A.H. Lyman Company, the site the Museum calls home, it's obvious why the curator can't find the box of information I need. I don't know how he finds anything at all. Nothing is cataloged really, except in his mind. It's amazing that he can find as much as he does, but that doesn't really help this poor researcher. I walked briefly through his "stacks". Shelves upon shelves of old photo albums, books, boxes of papers. It's an historian's dream and nightmare all rolled into one. The collection is amazing, but darn near impossible to use.

I also learned that local historical societies, at least this one, are much more lax in almost every aspect. I'm used to the Chicago Historical Society's rather imposing set of rules, no big binders, no bags, no pens, no food or drink, no photocopying things printed before 1900. There were no such rules at the Museum. I could photocopy whatever I wanted, though I was careful not to damage anything as I did so. I was allowed to have my bag with me and to use a pen to write. Heck, the other researcher with me in the basement on Friday was slurping happily on an open mug of coffee while reading papers from the 1800s! Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.

I think the most important experience though was merely going there. I had been to the Museum numerous times over the years. I looked at all the old stuff and marveled at it, but I never stopped to ask questions about any of it. Now I'm questioning...I'm putting the puzzle together and trying make it make sense. Names that had only been the names of streets to me as a kid now have lives, faces, and business, pasts, presents, and futures. They played intricate roles in creating and building the community I'm proud to call my home, each in their own way. It's unbelievably exciting to see the puzzle come together. Of course, then again, I'm a history geek and I enjoy that sort of thing :-)