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Doing Local History in Indiana
A Conversation with Linda Lou Rippy, Charlotte Sellers, and Joseph L. Skvarenina
| In 2003, when the Indiana Magazine of History surveyed its over 8,000 subscribers about their historical interests and reading habits, three out of every four respondents expressed a desire to know more about local history activities around the state. The following year we published David Vanderstel's interview with Sal Cilella and Reid Williamson about the activities of the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) and Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. In a letter to the editor published shortly thereafter, IUPUI history professor Robert Barrows pointed out that since Cilella (now chief operating officer of the Atlanta Historical Society) and Williamson (now retired) directed "the two largest and best-endowed historical organizations in Indiana, they are automatically unrepresentative of the state's public history community writ large."1 This roundtable conversation seeks to follow up on readers' interests, and to extend the conversation about public history begun at the state level, by hearing from Hoosiers practicing history on a local scale. |
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In the fall of 2006, IMH assistant editor Keith Erekson hosted an online conversation with three local history practitioners from around the state—Linda Lou Rippy of Plymouth in Marshall County, Joseph Skvarenina of Greenfield in Hancock County, and Charlotte Sellers of Brownstown in Jackson County. An edited transcript of the conversation served as a jumping-off point for a discussion at a session held at the February 2007 meeting of the Indiana Association of Historians in Bloomington. The energy and enthusiasm proved impossible to transcribe, but some of the questions raised and solutions proposed in that setting were appended to the end of the transcript. The full transcript was then sent to three historians interested in local history who work in different places throughout the country: Rebecca Conard at Middle Tennessee State University, Jannelle Warren-Findley at Arizona State University, and David Glassberg at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. |
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What follows here are the edited transcript of the conversation with local practitioners, and the subsequent reactions and reflections from those outside the region. We hope that these remarks will serve as another installment in an ongoing conversation about the varieties and significance of local history work in Indiana and the nation. |
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PERSONAL AND AUDIENCE INTERESTS | |
| IMH: Why don't you begin by describing what you do and why you are interested in history? |
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| JOSEPH SKVARENINA: I am a professional fundraiser at the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis as well as the official Hancock County Historian (since 1991), a former president of the Hancock Historical Society, vice president of the Riley Old Home Society, and a current member of the board of the Shirley Historical Society. I have written a great deal on Hancock County and Indiana history, including copy for Black History Notes and Traces, and a column on local history for the local newspapers since 1978. I have just finished writing a history of Emmaus Lutheran Church in Fountain Square, and I am currently working on the history of Mt. Lebanon United Methodist church in Greenfield.2 I participate in many local festivals, and have also done presentations at Leadership Hancock County and for the Indiana Historical Society's speakers bureau. |
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