Keynote Address: My Experience Doing Local History

Carleton Mabee, Professor Emeritus of History, SUNY New Paltz

I am pleased to be speaking at Deyo Hall - that is, Solomon L. F. Deyo Hall. He was the chief engineer for New York City's first subway line, the IRT. I have the honor to live in Gardiner in the old farmhouse in which he grew up.

I am speaking today about my own experience doing local history. I do not pretend to know how similar my experience is to that of other local historians. Also I do not suppose that my experience should be recommended to others. I believe there are many ways of doing history, suitable for different persons, different situations.

Whatever topic I choose to delve into very far, I find that I can easily become obsessed with it. Blindly, I may become obsessed with a subject whether there is a natural popular interest in it or not, whether abundant sources are available or not, whether it has already been considerably studied and written about or not, whether I have experience to qualify me for dealing with the subject matter or not. Because of my inclination to become obsessed with historical topics, I cam make mistakes. I once spent several years studying a topic quite closely. I had interviews with more than one hundred informants about it. I eventually abandoned it, deciding that antoerh subject would be more suitable for me.

Once I have fastened onto a topic, I am likely to wake up during the night, and mull over it, consider what I want to unt for about the topic, and make notes. When I get up in the morning, I am not likely to spend time considering what I want to do. I am ready to move ahead, I am ready to hunt for this or that information, or write this or that. I work unreasonable hours. I work at it even though I know it is not likely to pay my expenses of travel, buying books, copying, keeping a computer going. I work without expectation that I will be paid for my time as well as if I worked as a counterman at McDonalds. The danger I am likely oto run into is not that I might not spend enough time on my history subject, but rather the danger is that I might not spend enough time on other aspects of my life.

Because I seem to develop such passion for doing history, in some ways I may lose myself in it, but in other ways I may not. I still have my own point of view, my own conception of what matters and what does not, my own biases. I like to recall Margaret Mead's advice to anthropologists, face your own feelings about what you find in your work. Dont' bury them, bring them out. They may help you. They may show you what your own biases are and what to guard against. They may show you what is significant.

When I choose a topic, I like to make it not narrow, but large, if I can. When I gather information about a topic, I like to cast a wide net. When I play with the subject itself, I like to look for broad meanings.

If for example, I am following the story of a particular family that operated an old mill, as I recently have, I want to know the role of their women, their relation to their employees, their relation to their land, their relation to their whole community, schools, churches, other businesses. I want to know how typical they were or not for their age.

If subjects seem cut and dried, they will not likely arouse my curiosity. The will reduce my interest, cut my energy. But if a subject turns out to have puzzling aspects to it, it becomes more intriguing. When I run into puzles, then I find myself more completely enlisted in the hunt for answers.

For example, describing the history of the Smiley family in running of their hotels at Minnewaska and Mohonk, is OK. It has its interest up to a point. But when I ask, wh did the Smiley hotels at Minnewaska disappear and the Smiley hotel nearby at Lake Mohonk survive, then I have a complex, hard-to-answer question, and I am challenged. Then I am really drawn into the search for information and understanding. Or when the town of Gardiner was created in 1853 - it was created to a considerable degree out of the towns of Shawangunk and New Paltz. Ok. But why was it named after Addison Gardiner, a lieutenant governor of the state, who had no known connection with any of these three towns? Trying to answer that is worth concentrating on. I still have not answer it well. Or why did Sojourner ruth, who spent many years as a slave in New Paltz, never learn to read and write, bright as she was? And why, even as she herself remained illiterate, did she allow her three daughters also never to read and write? Those are questions worth my time. Or during the great depression of the 190s, what impact did Father Divine have on Ulster County? Father Divine was a black, the leader of a largely black religious cult, a socially radical cult, based in Harlem. Divine acquired his first property in Ulster County, a farm, in New Paltz in 1935, and by two years later had at least 22 properties in Ulster County - farms, resorts, restayrants, gas stations, grocery stores, which sold their produce and services at prices less than competitors. Besides delighting consumers, and appalling competitors, what effect on the region did Divine's movement have?

I like to question. I like to question sources. I think it is wise to assume that any source could have errors in it - any kind of source at al. However, I find it is not fruitful to question all the work that has gone on before you - it takes too much time to check on everything. But I like to question where I have reason to be doubtful. When I heard that the Gardiner school - now the Gardiner town hall - was originally a one-room school building at another location and was moved two miles by rolling it on logs to the new site, I realized that the story enhances the romance of that building. But I found that the story was based on a clipping that said it was proposed to move it on logs. That made me suspicious. Did they really move it or just talk about it? After some hunting, I discovered that for years the people concerned had bickered over what to do about it, as people do today, and in the end they did not roll the old school building to the new site, but built a new school at Gardiner.

As I do local history, unlike some of my associates, I do not first gather information over a long time and only then set about using that information to write. I tend to search and write at almost the same time, continuously mixing the two. Writing tends to make clear to me what I know and want to know. It clarifies what I want to emphasize and what my next steps in research should be. It suggests ramifications I wish to follow up on. It helps me organize. I think it helps preven me from having writier's block - something I doubt I ever had.

In my writing, I try to avoid academic jargon. I try to avoid any currently hip language, or any currently politicaly correct language. I avoid specialized language that might prevent the ordinary reader from understanding what I am saying - that is, if it seems necessary to use some specialized language, I try to explain it on the spot. Writing about the NY City aqueducts that were built through this region, I used the term jumbos - in the tunnels. I explained that it means a movable carriage platform, on which the workmen stood for drilling.

I look for patterns in history. Particularly I look for narrative. I put this before that, I say this leads to that, this evolves into that. I look for comparisons that help to sharpen thought: I might compare one town with another, one inventor with another, one enterpisewith another, one social movement with another, one period of history with another. Looking for patterns, for narative,for comparisons, means that when I write I select, I leave out a lot. I may oversimplify. I need to be careful that what I am saying, if it is not the whole story, is at least representative of an aspect of the truth.

I find that having roots in the local area I am sudying, can help. In writing about the Hudson valey, while I was not born in this area, and did not grow up here, I have ancestors who did. In writing about Lake Minnewaska, it was important for me that my parents, though married in Cambridge, Mass., came to Lake Minnewaska for their honeymoon. In writing about the region at large, it has helped that I taught at New Paltz College, that I have boated on the Hudson and the Wallkill, hiked in nearby mountains, belonged to several regional historical societies. Such connections have helped me in my feeling of identification with the region, have helped me to care about its history, and enhanced my drive to push ahead in studying it.

Such connections have also helped me to know where to look among the almost limitless possibilities for information. It has helped me to know when to go to the Huguenot Historical Society for help, when to Elting [Memorial] Library, when to the New Paltz college library, when to the Newburgh Library, when to other hsitorical societies, libraries. Such connections have helped me to find persons with long memories, to locate old newspapers, and old photos, and help in interpreting them. Doing local history is likely to make you dependent on a large number of local people and institutions.

On the other hand, it seems to me it is better not to be overwhelmingly immersed in the region you are writing about. For the sake of balance, I try to stand off a bit from the region I am studying. I want to be capable of being critical, having tensions with it. Being critical of the region is OK, having tensions with it I believe is OK, having biases about it is OK, but I just want to recognize my criticism, my tensions, my biases, face them, and have a certain restraint about them.

Yes, I am conscious of a need for balance in writing local history, or any kind of history. For example, I know there is absurdity in history, chaos, and exploitation, and horror. But I do not intend to report history as primarily negative. I do not mean to be like the dramatist Samuel Becket who presented life as absurd, empty, without meaning. I do not want to be like the choreographer Merce Cunningham who presents dance in the form of chaos and says that is life. I am not lie the artist Robert Smithson on display at the Dia Museum in Beacon who piled broken glass on the floor in a heap and called that art. I want to be aware of the absurdity and chaos and injustice and brokenness that ther is in history, but I also want to see human potential, to see that of God in everyone, to see opportunity, and struggle, and fulfillment.

In writing about the Wallkill Valley Railroad, I did, with some misgiving, include at some length an apalling story of a murder in the Goshen railroad station. A president of the Wallkill Railroad murdered a treasurer of the Wallkill Railroad. I also presented the story of an accident on the Wallkill rail line near Montgomery, when an excursion train, carrying camp meeting passengers, was corssing a small bridge and the bridge collapsed. About 250 passengers in three cars tumbled down an embankment, injuring a large portion of them. But I also presented joyous stories of the railroad - of farmers shipping out their produce by railroad, of school children traveling to school, of families on their way to a circus.

In telling the story of the construction of the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, I included a report that when a be piece of steel was being lifted by a crane, it fell, causing a workman to jump into the Hudson to get out of the way. He was never seen again. In telling the story of the Maybrookrailroad yard, I explained how an Italian immigrant, working a mechanical worm to life coal from a coal pile, caught his sleeve in the worm. His arm had to be amputated. But I also tell of the pride which railroad men took totheir work, and how many of them guided their sons to follow them into railroading.

In writing about the history of Gardiner, I sometimes presented accidents, and fires, and decay, but I also celebrated farming. I presented photos of farmers a hundred years ago feeding chickens or cutting hay, and did so not ironically, not belittling what they were doing, but celebrating it. In writing about slavery in the region, I intended to make clear its horror, but I was pleased that I was able to present Sojourner Truth as arising out of that horror, and becoming a powerful voice for change. In presenting Samuel F. B. Morse as a patriarch living is Poughkeepsie on an estate overlooking the Hudson, I tried to make clear that I admired him as a philanthropist, but I did not hide that he used his considerable influence to encourage opposition to President Lincoln and toleration of the Confederacy.

But how much detail, how much space, do I give? What is significant and what is not?

Balancemay be of many kinds. In each project I undertake, the problem of balance may present itself in a different way. Balance is naturally elusive. But for me, it is important to struggle for it.