Local history

“ American local history should be studied as a contribution to national history. This country will yet be viewed and reviewed as an organism of historic growth, developing from minute germs, from the very protoplasm of state life. ”

“ To these observations on the question of enlarged plans for local societies, we venture to subjoin the further inquiry, whether most county and town societies might not, with incalculable advantage, combine with
historical research the study of science, art, and natural history? Every locality already has its military, fire, debating, literary, social, or charitable society. It is incredible that there should be so few simply for the pursuit of knowledge to the acquisition of which all men are so naturally impelled and in which they manifest so deep an interest. ”

“ Many things connected with the history of our towns and villages have to be passed over in an ordinary school history reader. In the following pages an attempt is made to call attention in simple language, very broadly and generally, to connecting-links with the past in our towns and villages. There are many relics and customs yet remaining in many places, which, with a little care and attention to local circumstances, may be made helpful in teaching history, so that it shall be something more than a collection of names, dates, battles, and lists of eminent persons. ”

“ The field is a broad and inviting one. The early annals of every locality possess a peculiar charm for its own people, while they furnish something of interest to the people of every other locality. The conductors of this Magazine invite the aid and co-operation of every person interested in the development and preservation of local history, and shall rely in a special manner upon the friendly offices of Historical and Pioneer Societies. ”

“ Such a historic region, dominating the world, is formed by that epoch of English history, to which the studies have been devoted, whose results I venture to publish in the present work: its importance is as great where it directly touches on the universal interests of humanity, as where, on its own special ground, it develops itself apart in obedience to its inner impulses. To comprehend this period we must approach it as closely as possible: it is everywhere instinct with collective as well as individual life. ”

“ Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at all, among those who look upon education as something more than a commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more widely than is thought. ”

“ Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise these as we are accustomed to do in history? Witness the Classical, Mediaeval, and Renaissance types to which historic cities preponderatingly belong, and within which we group their varied individualities, as after all of comparative detail. ”

“ WE cannot study the history of a single town without acquiring a certain knowledge of the towns around it, for the character of one set of people was formed and influenced by that of another, and the land on which cities are built is often in itself an explanation of their past. ”

“ Plain history in fascinating guise is so rare a gift to the per- functory seeker for knowledge that attention must be called to a charming new book, 'Old Colony Days,' written in the sprightliest of easy styles for young or old, and displaying the high lights of the history of the New Eng- land colonies. ”

“ And it was by agricultural and social changes in the villages that the way was prepared for the great industrial revolution, or more properly, evolution, which is the underlying fact of the history of English towns, especially during the last two centuries. ”

“ It was so near many of the interesting things that men had read about in history and geography, but never, for the most part, expected to see—so full of historic associations and traditions that one could forget for the time the dead cities, villages, and men strewn over other parts of France. ”

“ Viewed merely as the latest scene of migration of European races on a great scale, America has much to disclose in illustration of primitive history. There we see the land cleared of its virgin forest, the soil prepared for its first tillage, the site of the future city chosen, and the birth of the world’s historic capitals epitomised in those of the youngest American commonwealths. ”

“ Strong in their guilds and associations, in touch with each other and with the world by the constant travel of merchants and craftsmen, the towns became not only centers of wealth, but also the bearers of progressive thought, of art, of mental enlightenment. ”

“ And thus the church, the school-house, industry, which pushed back idleness and its brood of vices, simple agricultural ways, the absence of city sores, and the rugged, conscientious pursuit of wholesome livelihoods in largely ventilated spaces, all concurred to hand up the Colonies along the unplanked roads of the age, to the outstretched hand of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Boys and girls among Southern bayous should be taught the traditions of their region, of the Indians and Creoles who made history there when that section was a province of France; while along Northern lake and inland river are tales of forest folk, of pathfinder and black-robed message bringer, of knights of the Old World come to seek fortune in the New, that are a part of the heritage of every youth living there. ”

“ Within this vast empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical conditions, into which American colonization has flowed, and in each of which a special society has developed, with an economic, political and social life of its own. ”

“ These foundations consist of artifacts, implements, customs, habit patterns and institutions produced and developed in numerous scattered localities by groups of food-gatherers, migrating herdsmen, cultivators, hand craftsmen and traders and eventually in urban communities built around centers of wealth and power: the cities which are the nuclei of every civilization. ”

“ If those of us who have been insisting on the importance of our own region are led at times by the enthusiasm of the pioneer for the inviting historical domain that opens before us to overstate the importance of our subject, we may at least plead that we have gone no farther than some of our brethren of the East ”

“ We have traced the broad outlines of the development in regions of exceptional fruitfulness of the first settled village communities into more populous towns and cities, and the growth of the village shrine and the village medicine-man into the city temple and the city priesthood. We have noted the beginnings of organized war, first as a bickering between villages, and then as a more disciplined struggle between the priest-king and god of one city and those of another. ”

“ There is no single point in all mediæval history of more importance than the manner in which the towns assumed their municipal form; and none in which the gradual progress of the popular liberties can be more securely traced. ”

“ Younger towns, towns which are rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory of persons still living, grown to a greatness which this generation contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied by awe and anxiety. ”

“ Fifty years ago, wolves and bears, and buffaloes--twelve years ago even, the great movement had not begun--and now, every week, a new town!--the new nation spreading, spreading over the open land, irresistibly, silently ”

“ The genesis of local government in Western hamlets is very simple. First comes the settler who, ax in hand, clears the ground for his humble dwelling, and plants whatever seed he has brought with him. ”

“ The purpose of the joint authors in offering a new work on American history is “to present in a comprehensive and carefully proportioned narrative an account of the beginnings of the national existence and of the successive stages in the evolution of our distinctive national qualities and institutions.” Colonization, 1607-1697, forms the subject matter of this first part, which is divided into four sections: “Population 66and politics,” “War,” “Industry,” and “Civilization.” ”

“ Summary.—All towns and villages in England have a history. In every case there is a special reason why that town or village grew up in that particular place. In trying to find out how this came about we learn a great deal of the history of the past, shown in old names, old buildings, old manners and customs.
CHAPTER II
MEN WHO LIVED IN CAVES AND PITS
1. Man is a very ancient creature. It is a curious fact that we have learned most of what we know about the earliest men from the rubbish which they have left behind them. ”

“ Local traditions, not unworthy of attention, have been gathered in the desolate palaces and historic sites where every peasant is an oral chronicler, full of spirit-stirring recollections of the past. ”

“ Yet the very existence of these magnificent monuments of the past means that in the old days the towns in which they were placed were not only centres of population and of wealth, but had also prestige enough to draw men’s eyes towards them. Their very peace and cleanliness to-day means that the life of the nation is eddying round other centres. ”

“ When we visit the ancient homes of these great societies we are impressed by their magnificence and interesting associations. Portraits of old City worthies and royal benefactors gaze at us from the walls, and link our time with theirs, when they, too, strove to uphold the honour of their guild and benefit their generation. ”

“ To the European visitor a colonial city of fifty thousand inhabitants is just a third-rate town and nothing more. To the pioneer who has seen it grow from a handful of tents and shanties, the prosperous streets, roomy villas, and comfortable cottages represent victory—the triumph of his race in their battle with emptiness and desolation. ”

“ There are in the city most of the orders and societies found in other large towns; as, the Knights of Pythias, Ancient Order of Druids, Improved Order of Red-Men, Knights of the Red Branch, Champions of the Red Cross, Crescents, Irish 217Confederation, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Caledonia Society, Society of Pacific Coast Pioneers, two Turn Vereins, Miners’ Union, Printers’ Union, and several similar societies. ”

“ Accordingly in these vast regions, which have never risen above the Stone Age of themselves, the same stage of civilisation which in the old civilised lands belongs to a grey, immemorial, prehistoric period, here stands in the broad light of historic times. ”

“ Each town was really a self-sufficing entity, both materially and intellectually. The modern idea of a town is that of a mere local aggregate of individuals, each pursuing a trade or calling with a view to the world-market at large. ”

“ AUTHOR, ANTIQUARIAN STUDENT, AND POLITICAL REFORMER Among the names of those who have done most, by untiring, laborious search among old parish registers, etc., and dusty old records, to bring to light interesting social ordinances, details of ancient parish government, and gems of Norse literature and archaeological research, there have been none in the last century who have by patient work attained more knowledge of their country's inner history than Mr. ”

“ In these and other astounding developments of the era we cannot but mark the transition stage from a colony to a nation, from a collection of humble towns and hamlets to a cluster of cities commencing to take rank with the world's important centres. ”

“ The rapid settlement of the country, the improvement in civilization, which has come through the multiplication of large villages and of cities, the general facilities for obtaining education, such as exist in no other country, have{248} made ours the land above all others in which generations may rise rapidly from the social position of their ancestors. ”

“ That which had been one widely scattered and loosely connected people had become divided into many distinct communities, each with its own government, its separate historical traditions, its local prides and local antagonisms, its more or less definite and sharp-cut national consciousness. ”

“ They were industrious, as your nation is; their land has been covered with cities and villages, well-cultivated fields, blessed with the richest crops, and crowded with countless herds spread over immense territories, furrowed with artificial roads; their flourishing cities swarmed with artists, and merchants, and workmen, and pilots, and sailors, like as New York does. ”

“ Every group of human beings, every town, every nation, leaves to posterity some record of its civil life and of its customs, according to the degree of civilisation in which it lived. These records come down to us preserved in rocks and stones, in{4} hieroglyphics, in Runic characters and in Greek and Latin inscriptions, in lines upon parchment and in rustic dwellings. ”

“ At first sight it would seem natural to suppose that where a race had long possessed the outward means and form of civilization,—a race among whom great military and civil establishments had been founded, who had clustered round provincial cities, the seats of a powerful government, and whose ports and harbours had been the scenes of active commerce,—there need be little question as to the origin of towns and cities among those who conquered and dispossessed them. ”

“ The beginning of history, as of geography, lies in the child's foundations of experience. In the country village he sees the church, possibly some old cottages, or an Elizabethan or Jacobean house near ”

“ Two thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The world has seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to be empires, and which, half a century ago, were known only as remote and unexplored wildernesses, are now teeming with population, and prosperous in all the great concerns of life; in good governments, the means of subsistence, and social happiness. ”