Local, County, and State Histories
Local histories are a literary manifestation of an American
self-consciousness and have been written and read since William
Bradford set down his account of the establishment of Plymouth
Plantation. Significant contributions to the genre were made after the
centennial and again in the 1930s, when the Federal Writers'
Project produced the first uniform series of state histories. The
field has recently been enlarged by the many state and local histories
that were written to commemorate the American Revolution
bicentennial. Traditionally, the field has been dominated by amateur
historians, but since World War II professional historians have
contributed increasingly to the monographic and periodical literature that
constitutes local history.
The Local History collection at the American Antiquarian
Society encompasses more than 55,000 volumes published between 1821
and the present. Local histories published before 1821 are part of the
Society's Dated Books and Dated Pamphlets collections, and
many rare examples of local history are shelved in the Reserve
Collection. It is among the largest and most frequently used resources at
the Society, and is the one collection that best reflects the
Society's national scope, for it includes works of all fifty states and
for thousands of their constituent counties and local
communities. The collection is shelved alphabetically by state, with
statewide
histories followed by alphabetic arrangements of county and
then city and town histories. In addition to the straightforward
histories, the Local History collection includes narratives of
description and travel, gazetteers and dictionaries of place
names, bibliographies of local imprints, institutional histories,
biographical encyclopedias, and genealogical records that
include vital and census statistics, abstracts of wills, and
transcriptions of cemetery inscriptions. Also in the Local History
collection
are the publications of such state and local historical agencies
and societies as the Essex Institute, the Pennsylvania German
Society, the South Dakota Department of History, and the Society of
California Pioneers.
Some uncataloged materials are also part of the
collection. For example, the Society's "Worcester Collection" includes a
large number of uncataloged, books, pamphlets and clippings
relating to the city. (These materials were organized in 1979-80 with an
accompanying checklist.) More than 900 periodicals such as the
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Chronicles
of Oklahoma, the Dukes County Intelligencer, and the Atlanta
Historical Journal are also shelved with the Local History
collection.
Because of the number and variety of works that fall under the
heading of local history, there is no standard reference work
for the field. However, since the category of regional, state, and
local history is one of the six sections included in
America: History and Life (Santa Barbara, 1964-), this online
resource is an invaluable source for local history
periodical literature. Another useful reference source is the
eight-volume Bibliographies of New England series. Prepared
by the Committee for a New England Bibliography and published between
1976 and 1989, this series represents a recent and successful
effort to extend bibliographical control over the vast resources of this
region printed from the earliest time to the present. The
bibliographies contain entries for both monographic and
periodical literature in the areas of political, economic, social, and
intellectual history. Entries are alphabetical within a
geographical framework; works relating to the state as a whole or to
several counties appear first, followed by works relating to single
counties, and then by those relating to cities and towns. The
project, whose institutional home since 1989 has been AAS,
remains alive through the on-going preparation of a ninth volume
containing addenda. A third reference tool is A Bibliography of
American County Histories (Baltimore, 1985), compiled by P. William
Filby. It lists 5,000 county histories published to date and includes
information about reprint editions and separately published
indexes. This information is of particular importance to AAS because
the acquisition of indexes makes any of the originally unindexed
histories even more valuable to scholars, genealogists, and
staff alike. And the addition of reprint editions to the collection
allows the originals to be withdrawn from circulation and preserved
as examples of American printing history.
- Doris O'Keefe, Senior Cataloger
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A selection of local histories
Folding map included in Edward Stiff's Texan Emigrant (Cincinnati,
1840)
Landmarks of Old Prince William
San Francisco
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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