History and Community: Being a Historical Detective

(It is a good idea to take the time to do this lesson before your students read Chapters 3 and 4 in the text and before using any of the documents/lessons from Students on Site: Ypsilanti.)

Guiding Questions

What is history?  What are the tools historians use to learn about a community's past?  Why do we learn about the history of our community?

Goals of the Lesson

Students should learn that historians use documents from long ago to understand how people lived in the past.  There are documents about Ypsilanti's past that the students can use to find out about the history of their community.  Students should become acquainted with these types of documents.  They should become familiar with a timeline—spatial representation of time progression.

Vocabulary

• primary sources
• documents
• research

Tools

• A blank timeline (1800-the present) that reaches across the room.
• Documents printed from Students on Site website (or viewed online by students):
  • "Horseshoes/Carriage Work next to Ypsilanti Auto Parts" (1920s ??)
  • "Carriage and Bicycles" (1897)
  • "Elementary Classroom, (1908)"
  • "Ice Cutting" (1915)
  • "Store Interior with Boy" (early 1900s)
  • "Union Seminary Building" (1856)
• Blank paper for students to draw their own timelines.

Activity Part I

1. Open lesson with a discussion of what history is, and how historians use "tools," drawing from their reading of "History Close-Up."  Look at the pictures on page 38-39.  Ask the students what items they can identify.  What other kinds of documents from the past can tell us how people lived long ago?  Make a list:
   • Photographs/drawings
   • Letters
   • Journals
   • Newspapers
   • Maps
   • Books
   • Official papers—birth certificates, deeds to land or even school attendance lists.
2. Because they are from the past, they are called primary sources.  Documents are first-hand sources of information on how people lived long ago.  When we read history in a history textbook, this is using a secondary source.  A writer or historian is telling the story from the documents.  Break students up into groups and give each group a picture from the online archive to study.  Ask them "What does this picture tell us about the people of long ago?  Does it tell us anything about Ypsilanti?"  Give each group a few minutes to look over the picture.  These are some good pictures to download and print from the online archive:
   • "Horseshoes/Carriage Work next to Ypsilanti Auto Parts" (from probably around the 1920s).  What does this picture tell about the way Ypsilantians traveled about 100 years ago?
   • "Carriage and Bicycles" (1897).  Here are some people out for a nice carriage ride and bicycle ride. Encourage students to look at the dirt road, bicycles and clothes to find differences then and now. Ask them if they go ride their bikes for fun like these women.
   • "Elementary Classroom" (1908).  Ask the students if they see any differences between their classroom and the classroom in the picture. What are the kids wearing? How are they sitting?
   • "Ice Cutting" (1915).  Have students guess what these men are doing. They are cutting ice on the Huron River in the winter, so Ypsilantians will have ice through the year. There were no freezers to make ice, so it was cut from the river and stored underground to be kept through the year. Check out the train running by the river.
   • "Store Interior with Boy" (early 1900s).  Taken in an Ypsilanti grocery store probably around 1910-15. You can draw attention to the small stove in the back to heat the store, the fruits and vegetables in the front (bananas hanging in the back), cigars in the case, canned goods on the shelves. Is this what a grocery store is like today? Check out what the boy is wearing!
   • "Union Seminary Building" (1856).  This is a drawing of the high school or the "Union Seminary" for the 1856 county atlas.  Photography (invented in 1837) was relatively new and used mainly for studio portraits.  See if the students can pick up that this was drawn before photography was widely used, and that school buildings were important community landmarks—they represented how much the community valued education.
3. After visiting each group and giving information about their picture, have each group bring its picture, or primary source, to the front and present what they learned about Ypsilantians a long time ago.

Activity Part II

1. Put up a timeline on a paper strip running across the blackboard, or draw one on the blackboard.  Place 1800, 1900 and 2000 at equal intervals on the timeline, leaving ample space on the ends and between the years.
2. Go through Chapter 3: "Understanding Timelines."  (the second page with the instructions) to show decades and centuries.  Use a yardstick and map out a century in decades.  Ask the students how many centuries the timeline covers.
3. Mark the current year.  Ask the students what year they were born in.  Put these years on the timeline.  Next add important historical dates such as:
   • 1776.  Declaration of Independence was signed
   • 1823.  settlers first came to Ypsilanti
   • 1837.  Michigan became a state
   • 1890.  the Water Tower was completed.
   • 1893.  Automobiles were invented (and a big cyclone hit Ypsilanti)
   • The year your school was founded.
4. Return to the pictures in Activity #1.  See if the students remember any of the information they learned about Ypsilanti long ago, including the approximate date of their picture.  All of the pictures were from about the year 1900, expect the 1856 drawing.  You can add things like "people bicycled for fun," or "both cars and horses were used to get around" "ice was cut from the river—no freezers" to the timeline.
5. Have students draw the timeline of their own lives, using a mark for each year.  They can put on it the special events in their lives such as birthdays, vacations, when they got a pet, or when they moved to Ypsilanti, as well as other events of local or national significance they can recall.