USA @ 250 and New York: Discovering Local Stories

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This article originally appeared on the Albert Wisner Public Library website.

The 250th celebration of the nation comes with new challenges to expand and deepen the narrative, and a recent guide can help researchers discover those previously hidden stories in their communities. “USA @ 250 AND NEW YORK: DISCOVERING LOCAL STORIES” is a web guide with suggested research strategies and resources for finding locally connected primary sources. It is hosted by the Albert Wisner Public Library and can be found at https://guides.rcls.org/250/.

Says the site’s editor, Sue Gardner, “We have a unique opportunity for this celebration— so many documents that were inaccessible during the Bicentennial are now available online, there is a wealth of materials to search from home. No researchers have ever had that ability before.  We wanted to help those in New York’s towns and villages bring their forgotten local Revolutionary war stories to light. You won’t believe what people who lived right in your community experienced, what events happened.”

One of the key research areas is the untold story of the local militia units.  In every community, a few served with the Continental Army, but many, many more served with the militia. They had shorter enlistments in order to provide for and protect their families.  Although “part time”, they travelled far and wide and participated in major battles and served at strategic locations. Their contributions are largely overlooked or dismissed, to this day.   Their pension applications are a rich mine of information, since they seldom had paperwork to prove their service and had to rely on their own memories being supported by others, to try to get a pension.  These applications are one way to uncover eyewitness testimony about major events that usually has been below the radar.

Gardner is the author of Pure Necessity: Revolution at Warwick, the result of 20 years of research by the Friends of Hathorn historical society to find the forgotten Revolutionary legacy of Warwick, in Orange County. She is Deputy Historian for the Town of Warwick, local history librarian at Albert Wisner Public Library, and a member of Orange County’s Semiquincentennial Commission.  She can be reached at warwickhistory@gmail.com