I suppose we all had different experiences in local history courses. I took a
community history seminar and devoted time researching the life of Edward
Harvey Davis, a Brooklyn transplant to California in 1887. Davis rose to fame in
the museum world for collecting ethnographic artifacts for the Heye Foundation
and shipped entire train carloads of materials to New York. His grand
daughter shared a trunk full of diaries, photographs and let me peruse family
materials. I did oral histories, traveled the mountains to meet with his relatives
and researched magazines, newspapers, and old legal records. It was quite an
experience and served as a good foundation for the work I now perform
professionally.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.