Writing Local History - a Pierce County author featured on website

We've all seen it happen. Year after year you drive by an old house or barn, still standing its ground as development encroaches, and then it one day it's gone and a strip mall takes its place. And what about that neighbor in his nineties who spent his entire life in your community and could tell a million stories, if anyone cared to listen? He'll be gone one day too, and with him the eyewitness account of maybe a century of experiences, changes, and perspectives. We all see it happen, but few of us do anything about it. I look around Tacoma and see history everywhere, much of it threatened, and I wonder how much will survive. The saddest part is that most of the time we don't even know what we've lost until it's too late.

An enthusiastic local historian named Lawrence "Andy" Anderson hates to see those kinds of things happen. He grew up in logging country, near Graham in rural Pierce County, Washington, surrounded by history. When he played in the woods as a boy he could still find what remained of pioneers' log cabins, and even as a boy he appreciated the what his older neighbors knew about the past. As a young man, Anderson realized the old folks who remembered would soon be gone so he began to seek them out and record their stories. They shared photos with him, opened up, and brought local history to life with their rich and vivid memories from those times.

The result was his book, "In the Shadow of the Mountain - A History of Early Graham, Kapowsin, Benston, Electron, and Vicinity." It's filled with photos, carefully researched and documented, well written and entertaining to read. I'm one of the lucky people with a copy because now even the second printing is sold out. I'm pestering him to publish a third. But every one of us is lucky that this important piece of Washington history exists at all. If Anderson hadn't decided to take on this project decades ago, when those interviewees were still alive, maybe no one else ever would have, the opportunity lost forever. To many of us Anderson is a hero.

Are you curious about your community's past? Did you ever have the urge to write about local history? Maybe your own family has been in one place for generations and your connection to that heritage inspires you to preserve it. If so, you might want to read an article I wrote based on an interview with Anderson, and recently published on a website called Neighborhood Life This website's growing number of readers appreciate it as an important source of helpful information, ideas, and discussion for anyone who wants to improve the quality of life in their neighborhood. My article, called "A Closer Look at Home - Thoughts on Writing Local History" can be found listed first on the "Features" page, and is also directly linked to from the Home page. It offers all kinds of good advice on writing local history. By reading it you can benefit from the experience Anderson gained through many years of work.

Quoting from the article, he says, "Writing good local history requires nothing less than total determination and passion in pursuit of the subject." If you think you can meet those requirements, consider this important endeavor. As in the case of Anderson's book, maybe if you don't do it, nobody else will. Please have a look:
Neighborhood Life

Note: The photo at the top of this page is a snapshot of my great-grandparents' homestead in Alberta, Canada and the photo in the still life below is of a huge tree stump on Vashon Island, taken by Albert Therkelsen. Neither exists today.

Broken Branches in the Family Tree

What a strange week I've had, one filled with family ghosts from a century ago. Their words, deeds, thoughts, and even a photo showing the face of a key player in a dramatic tragedy, someone I'd never seen, appeared with ease. It was as though they'd all been waiting for me to come along to release them and let them tell their stories. So fresh and real is the presence of my ancestors right now, that time means nothing.

It's a long story, one I plan to write a book about. It all began with some tattered and incomplete newspaper clippings discovered after both my grandparents were dead. I thought it had ended with me on my hands and knees looking for, and finding, my great-grandmother's unmarked grave. But no. The mysteries remained. Yet in less than a minute of looking at microfilm in the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Room, I'd found another lengthy article and the complete versions of the rest. My family's tragedy made the news in Tacoma for weeks in that certain year. Those discoveries, along with others at the court house, and on the internet, especially in the Washington State Digital Archives, led to many more. All will become additional chapters in the family saga.

I sat in the library that day with a new friend and fellow researcher, Northwest author Lawrence D. "Andy" Anderson. I'd purchased his amazing book, "In the Shadow of the Mountain: A History of Early Graham, Kapowsin, Benston, Electron, and Vicinity," almost two years earlier. Now some strange coincidences, and a mutual acquaintance, had brought us together. Because of his interest in the area in which part of the story occurred, and having been caught up in the intrigue, he kindly offered to educate me on archival research. I showed him an old group photo I knew nothing about and he recognized three people in it. Now he's in deep, as excited as I am to uncover more information.

Today I called my mother's elderly first cousin on the East Coast. I've been keeping her abreast of these developments, since her father and my grandmother were both innocent children living out this drama, orphaned when their mother died. She told me a story I'll never forget. One day, when her parents were newlyweds, someone knocked on the door of their house on Vashon Island, here in Washington. Her mother opened it to find one of the people involved in this family story standing on the porch. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me," he said. She screamed. Her husband ran to her side but the man was gone. The next day they received a telegram saying this person had died, in New Jersey, just before he appeared to them.

I might have been more amazed had it not been a week full of these kinds of revelations. After Andy and I spent the day at the library, I came home obsessed with it all. I thought so much about my great-grandmother, whose high-collared dress and Gibson Girl hairdo frame a beautiful face with haunting eyes, in an old portrait I have. She seems to speak to me. I asked her to lead me in the right direction. Little did I dream I'd learn so much in one week, how many clues would fall into my lap. That night, just before bed, I realized something that stunned me; out of 365 possible days of the year on which I might have researched her life, that day, was the anniversary of her death. I hope she'll soon rest in peace.

Copyright 2009 Candace J. Brown