How My Personal Interest In History Was Developed and Some of the Various Ways We Learn

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash  

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

IN THIS BLOG POST I share various ways people learn about history by reflecting on my own experience.

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I once read that by fifth grade children begin to understand that history is a time continuum. There is a more developed sense of past, present and future in a fifth grader than a pre-schooler. That is, this is the age in which they can grasp the idea of a Revolutionary War not being recent but long, long ago.

My own sense of history came earlier than that though. My parents used to take us the the Museum of Natural History when we were growing up in Cleveland. The dinosaur skeletons were evidence of a period of time before human history. There were also evidences of an expanse of time before I came along. Natural history museums seem to be an effective way to place ourselves in the stream of time, even for younger children.

In the summer before kindergarten my parents enrolled me in art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Part of that experience involved being introduced to art, but also to history. One Saturday we went to the Medieval period and studied (looked with awe at) the detailed decorative etchings on the armor knights that wore. For our assignment that day were were to draw the initial of our first name with leafy vines weaving around the letter the manner that many of the pictures that period appeared. I still remember making a forest green capital E. 

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Topps Civil War Cards taught us about history.

Books were an invaluable tool for learning history for me. I loved reading biographies, and have since learned that biographies are one of the best ways to learn about the events and people that came before us and the places they occupied in the larger scheme of things. Our elementary school library had a whole series of biographies that I devoured in fourth grade. A biography of the early American explorer Zebulon Pike was one of the books in this series that I especially remember, possibly because his name was so unusual and interesting.

Fourth grade was also the period when I took an interest in the Civil War. The classroom had a very large American Heritage book about the Civil War, with maps and troop movements depicted in illustration, and plenty of photos -- no doubt by Matthew Brady and others who chronicled this period.

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New Jersey

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

In 1964 our family moved to New Jersey. From 1964 to the 70s my family lived in Bridgewater, which was a spreading patchwork of developments typical of Suburbia, with no downtown. Our house was in a new development just off Washington Valley Road which ran North through the valley from Pluckemin up through Martinsville and beyond. 

Washington Valley got its name from having been used by the Continental Army under George Washington for two years as a means of spying on British troop movements in New Brunswick. The Continental Army was encamped further North in Morristown but Colonialists would use the valley to conceal their movements from the Brits who were on the East side of the ridge.

This valley ran between two hills which were the first ridges of the Watchung Mountains. Not far from my house was a spot called Washington Lookout where the revolutionary soldiers under George Washington's command would sit and count the number of campfires that burned each night in New Brunswick. One fire represented ten British soldiers. In this manner they would know the strength of their adversary.

The Presbyterian church we attended in Pluckemin had tombstones from that period, including a Major or Major Colonel. All of these things give one a palpable sense of history being associated not only with people but also places.

Team Teaching Junior Year of High School
Our family chose Bridgewater for our new home not because of the history, but because it had an excellent school district at the time. My junior year in high school our history teachers took an interesting approach to teaching. We had three teachers with a much larger classroom combining two or three classes. 

The approach they took was to teach American history not in the glamorous manner of earlier years, but with an eye to revealing other facets of our history. We learned the human failings of our presidents, the problematic and even wrong-headed behaviors our country engaged in. (eg. Trail of Tears, slavery). We studied the Mexican War from the point of view of the Mexicans.

I do not believe this was an anti-American indoctrination, but an effort to view history from a more mature lens, that issues are complicated and our actions might color the way others perceive us.

Minnesota: 1982 to Present

Mural at the AICHO, downtown Duluth

Where I live now since the 1980s is in Northern Minnesota. I found it surprising how different the history here is from New Jersey. Though New Jersey once belonged to the Native peoples there, in our modern times I saw literally zero signs of that having been the case, other than a few rivers named after tribes that were there. (eg. Delaware, Raritan) When we moved to Duluth the Native peoples are a visible part of our culture, and the past history is in the very near past.

Minnesota became a state in 1858, which doesn't feel that long ago. My great great grandmother, who died in 1955 when I was 3, had been born in 1852. The Presbyterian church in Duluth first began having services in 1862, in the home of a man appointed by Abraham Lincoln to give 40 acres of land to anyone who would work it.

In Southwest Minnesota that same year, government agents had been starving the Native peoples whom they had corralled on reservations. Without an advocate, some took matters into their own hands and a conflict arose. The journalists writing about what is now labelled the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 wrote scathing stories the produced fear in the readers and escalated tensions that resulted in a gross miscarriage of justice. 

It's not my purpose to get into all that here. Rather, the point is that "ancient history" in this region is just a few generations back, and very fresh in some minds. 

Other events remain even more vivid. The fire of 1918 took out all the old growth trees here in the area I live. The Spanish Flu followed on its heels. A terrible lynching two years later left scars that remain fresh.

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SUMMING UP
There are all kinds of ways to learn about history. Books and school studies contribute. Museums are similarly instructive. Learning about the places we live is surprisingly fascinating. Many Americans live in the vicinity of Civil War battlefields. Much can be gleaned by visiting these places. When our family visited Gettysburg, the names Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge took on a whole new meaning.

Another way to learn about the past is to study our own genealogy. The places our relatives came from, the ways they survived, the hardships they overcame--or were crushed by--can be highly informative and even motivational. 

And then, for those who have access there's the History Channel as well as programs like those series produced by Ken Burns. History is really all around us, if we would but pay attention.

In Closing

"History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club." --John W. Campbell