Local history engages us. It helps explain where we came from. How local communities experienced change allows us to understand larger themes of history. Local evidence enriches a story.  A map of mills and homes expands our understanding of economic opportunity. Letters between local activists deepen our vision of democracy and public life. A drawing of a community leader expands our view of race and freedom.

Through the Windows on History community service-learning projects, Emerging America helps teachers and students across Western Massachusetts seek out and tell their own local history and relate those narratives to national history. These online accounts tell about real individuals who lived at turning points in American history. They come alive through compelling narrative and engaging primary sources. Windows on History projects model the use of local history to support exemplary history lessons. 

(South Hadley middle school students demonstrate to second graders their web site and a model of a 19th century canal system.)

The stories on this site invite comparison between one another, with the stories of your own town, and with the national narrative. As each fragment of local history reveals the economic and political context in which it takes place, it illustrates significant ways that American institutions of freedom, democracy, and opportunity have endured through change.