“I selected my study because it is where I work and I love what I do. Being a local historian is a tricky business because for most people local history doesn’t matter much, while for others it holds great and sometimes preconceived notions of what the past was. In my study I am surrounded by the quick and the dead: I have pictures of my family who are scattered around the globe, and I have pictures and records of the dead: those who once lived here. My interest has always been to recover the lives of those ignored by history: the women, those who were immigrants, African Americans, people of various ethnicities. My study is not tidy as it holds many different projects: there is the history of blacks in Tompkins County, a bit of genealogical work about my family, the history of those groups who came to the county and were received, often, without kindness: the Irish, blacks, Hungarians, Jews—those considered “other.” I have research materials here also of the first overland train that took families from St. Louis to Oregon in 1842, led by a very unsavory man who lived in Lansing, a movement generated by the man for whom Parker Place in Ithaca is named. I have the makings of many other histories of those who lived, worked, went to school, played or prayed here, people who allow me to live in a world of many wonders.These people are very much alive in my study so here, I am never lonely. My wish is that I get their stories right and tell them with honesty and empathy.”
