Practicum Project

As you all know, I've been working on my practicum project from graduate school for quite sometime. Thursday is the big night, and I pray that it is successful! Wish me luck!

"Welcome to Dwarf, Center of the Universe!" I must've read that sign a thousand times as a kid, but only lately have I developed an appreciation for and a deep love of my hometown in Southeastern Kentucky. For my practicum project, I wrote a creative non-fiction book of short stories from my family's past. As a public historian, this is the type of work I want to do. My goal is to be a contract historian, researching local history and writing about it in traditional and non-traditional ways. In addition to the collection of short stories, I also developed a lesson plan directed toward elementary teachers for a oral history writing project.

The inspiration for this project came from a foodways assignment in our oral history class in fall 2010. For this foodways project, we were to interview a member of our family regarding a family recipe. We then took the information gathered from the interview and wrote a short narrative to share with the class. I interviewed my Mommaw, Alice, for this activity and her tale of making popcorn balls captivated me. The story gave me insight to her childhood and what life was like in Appalachia in the 1930s. She told me of how the family grew its own popcorn, traded cornmeal for molasses, and churned milk into butter--the milk of course came from their cows, Blackie, Daisy, Mott, and Alice. Yes, Mommaw had a namesake and it was a cow!

From this assignment, I knew I had landed on something special and decided to do my practicum project on other such family tales. Not only had my oral history class been influential on deciding my project, by the end of the semester, I was a full-fledged oral historian...well, mostly. I also read Kyvig and Marty's Your Family History, which gave invaluable insight on conducting family history projects. Armed with a digital camera and my copy of Sommer and Quinlan's Oral History Manual, I was ready to head to Dwarf to collect some oral histories.

Dr. Bailey has always told us to take classes purposefully, so with the idea of this family history project in mind, and the thought of becoming a contract historian looming, as well, I signed up to take historical editing, the history of Appalachia, and local and regional research for my last couple semesters in the program. Knowledge from all of these courses helped me along the way as I worked to complete my project.

I began the project by researching my family genealogy, which, by the way, is not as easy as those Ancestry.com commercials make it out to be--you actually do have to know a little about what you're looking for! I searched census records, birth and death certificates, military records, and cemetery records. Along the way I discovered the my great--times 6--Papaw, who was the first Cornett to settle in Dwarf, served in the Revolutionary War. I even found and transcribed his war pension. Each discovery helped me piece together the narrative of my family.

The works of Lynwood Montell and Peter Crowe helped me determine an approach to writing. Each of these authors used local history research and oral histories to develop the stories presented in their novels. Additionally, I turned to Kentucky writers, and fellow Appalachians, Gurney Norman and Crystal Wilkinson, for examples. These writers used personal experiences and family stories as a basis for their writing. By studying these authors, I began to see that I could contribute to this canon of work. Not only was my audience my family, but my audience could extend to those interested in Appalachian culture. By telling the story of my family, I also told the story of the region. This was a very empowering discovery.

Our culture in Appalachia has made us a hesitant and at times self-deprecating group. Take for example my Great Uncle Roy. When asked if I could interview him for the project,  he said, "You sure can, but I ain't going to have anything interesting to say. I ain't a war hero. My life history ain't important." But it is, you see! He told me wonderful stories! The story of a people was validated by a story of one and vice versa. You want to know about the history of coal mining in Southeast Kentucky? Well, go talk to my Uncle Roy. He lived it. From seeing family members crippled by work in the mines, to using his daddy's mine number to pay for a trip to the movies, to fighting alongside family members to protect our land from coal barons. His life story tells the history of a region.

As Kyvig and Marty explain, family history projects give you the opportunity to show your family, and yourself for that matter, that their experiences are historically valuable. And, to steal from oral historian Paul Thomson, through this experience, you are able to show ordinary people that history need not be irrelevant to their own lives. To me, this is what being a public historian is all about--connecting history to people!

Freeman Tilden said that as interpreters of  history we should have a love and a passion for our project, whatever that project may be, and that whatever we write with enthusiasm will be read with interest. By now, you've probably picked up on the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience I had working on my practicum project. I can only hope that my enthusiasm is also reflected in my writing.

Paying homage to the inspiration that got me going on this project, I wrote a lesson plan for elementary teachers for an oral history writing project. The lesson plan follows standard education guidelines for Kentucky and can fulfill both social studies and writing requirements. I hope that by showing students from an early age that history can be from the ground up, you can spark an interest, make a connection, make history a personal journey. You can show students that history isn't just about dates, wars, and rich old white dudes. History can even be made in the head of a holler in Dwarf, Kentucky, Center of the Universe.