LibGuides: History Unbound: Local History Lesson Ideas

Southern Tier (GST & BT BOCES)

Create Timelines

Have your students use a simple, free tool to synthesis their research and tell a story in an interactive, chronological way.

Timeline JS is an open source tool created and hosted by Northwestern University Knight Lab. It is particularly useful to visualize how events fit within a historical timeline - what events overlap, what events were happening concurrently, and how the general zeitgeist may have affected a particular historical period. They can also be used to capture an individual's lifetime or the key points of a specific set of circumstances.

The tool allows you to add in images, video, sound, embed webpages, or focus on text. You create a timeline by adding information to a Google Sheet that is formatted according to the Timeline.JS Template, choosing your style options through the Timeline.JS page, and viewing your timeline through the provided link.

TimelineJS

Create Story Maps

StoryMapJS is a free tool to help you tell stories on the web that highlight the locations of a series of events. It's from Knight Lab, just like TimelineJS. Your students can use this tool to present what they've learned about historical events.

StoryMapJS

Finger Lakes (CO & TST & OCM BOCES)

Historical Markers

Historical markers are not always what they seem. They can be misleading or outright wrong, and traditionally, there has been very little oversight or fact-checking involved. Contemporary markers sponsored by the Pomeroy Foundation do require primary sources and careful review, but the same cannot be said of markers from the early 20th century. Can your students tell the difference?

NOON Historic Marker Project
The Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (around Syracuse) have been working to highlight and address the misleading markers in their region.
Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779
Andrea Lynn Smith is a professor in Pennsylvania who has studied the Sullivan Clinton Campaign and its historical markers. This book delves into the use of commemorative markers for a destructive, scorched-earth campaign.
In Conversation: Dr. Andrea Lynn Smith
This Zoom-based interview with Andrea Lynn Smith talks about settler-colonialism, memory and forgetting, and place-loss.

Northern Catskills (DCMO & ONC)

Smith & Telfer Photographs

As with any great set of photographs, this collection is rife with possibility.
* Ask each student to choose one of the 300+ images. Have them write a paragraph about the picture, requiring a tie-in to research in a newspaper database like nyshistoricnewspapers.org. For example, if they chose a photo of a building, can they show a Google streetview of the current building? If they chose a circus performer, can they find a circus program from a similar year and a similar county fair? If they chose a portrait, can they find any information about the individual from familysearch.org or a book?

Cooperstown, NY panorama from hillside
For younger learners, look at this 1860 photo of Cooperstown.
* Why did the village develop this way? Why are houses close together? What were early residents looking for when they settled here?
* What structures do they recognize (e.g. churches)
* What geography do they recognize?
* Compare to a map of a similar time period. What streets are they seeing in the photo?
* Try to figure out where the photographer was standing in other pictures of early Cooperstown from the Smith & Telfer collection.
* Compare to the modern village. What's changed? What was added and what was lost?
Crowd at the county fair watches a horse jump from a high wooden structure into a pool of water
In a 1908 local fair, a crowd watches a horse jump into a pool of water.
* Ask students to identify what they're looking at. Is the horse voluntarily jumping?
* Compare to modern state and county fairs. How are animals treated? Talk about the ethics of using animals in entertainment.
Mrs. Browning's Baby and Nurse
This 1867 photograph features an identified white baby and an unidentified black woman, the child's nurse.
* What year do students think this is from? What else do they know about the 1860s?
* What do they think is the relationship between these two people? Why would this portrait include the nurse but not Mrs. Browning herself?
* Why do we know the identity of one person and not the other? Talk about limited options for people of color, even in New York.
School Class
This 1880 photo of a schoolhouse in Otsego County shows children ages 5-14 or so, some without shoes.
* Ask children to compare this image to their experiences as students. What's different and what's the same?
Women pose in a hop field during harvesting
Otsego, Madison, and nearby counties were very successful at growing hops. The area near Cooperstown was known as "hop city."
* Ask students about hops. What were hops used for? Why would an industry like hops growing have collapsed in the early 20th century?
* Who worked as hops pickers? What can students find out about the crop season?
Williams Market Storefront, Main Street
Use this 1932 image of the Williams Market in Cooperstown to discuss the Depression and the value of currency.
* In 1932, what were the prices of products? Are they products that kids today would want or recognize (e.g. catsup, prunes, and taffy)?
* What was available to average people in Cooperstown, and were the prices affordable?
* What else do students know about 1932?
* Where was Williams Market located? Can they use the newspaper database or other resources to figure out the building that Williams Market was in?

Eva Coo in Oneonta

Milk Strikes

Henry Wilcox, Farmer

Murder Pamphlets

Murder Pamphlet Collection from Fenimore Art Museum
Murder pamphlets describe a crime and were sold as a novelty. These murders span the state and a century. Compare the pamphlets' popularity to modern podcasts and true crime books.
Assign each of your students a different trial.
* Have them present the trial story.
* Do they think it was a just and fair trial? How was the accused treated by the pamphlet?
* Can they find any other information in newspaper databases?
Full text versions of murder pamphlets
16 of the pamphlets are available in their full text.