National History Day and the Power of Place: Researching the History of Your State or Community

Abstract

While serving as a judge at the 2011 Maryland History Day competition in the junior individual exhibits category, I encountered a strangely familiar but unconventionally shaped exhibit. As I approached the table on which the project sat, I quickly recognized that the exhibit was in the form of an obelisk mile marker from the National Road, the first major highway in the United States. Unlike the stationary tri-fold exhibit boards, the obelisk rotated in a full circle, with each of its four sides revealing an element of the exhibit and advancing part of the student’s thesis. During the judges’ interview, I learned that Isabella Pannone, the Washington Middle School eighth-grader who developed the project—“The Debate over the National Road: The First Road that America Built and the Road that Built America”—chose this topic because she lived along the National Road in Allegany County in western Maryland and was curious about the road’s origins. Isabella explained that the markers that her exhibit modeled dotted the landscape in one-mile intervals along the road that she traveled daily, yet most people in her town gave little thought to the road’s historical significance (Figure 1). Her curiosity led her to research the origins of the National Road and its impact on the politics and economy of the young American republic. She visited multiple historic sites and museums to access relevant sources, and she photographed the physical remnants of the road’s early history in Allegany County. This student’s efforts in diligently researching an institution critical to the economic development of her community and her state earned a special prize for a project on Maryland history at the state competition. Upon returning to Allegany County with prize in hand, she received an additional honor from the staff at the Queen City Transportation Museum, who asked to exhibit her project in the museum’s gallery (1). Each year, hundreds of thousands of secondary students (grades six through twelve) from across the United States participate in National History Day (NHD), a competition in which students, working individually or in small groups develop a research project on a topic of their choice that relates to a designated overarching theme. Students can choose from several interpretive media to present their research and thesis statements: papers, exhibits, documentaries, websites, and living history performances. Any topic from the dawn of human history to the twenty-first century is fair game, assuming the participant can frame it within the annual theme. When choosing a research topic, some participants, like the Allegany middle schooler I encountered at Maryland History Day, look to familiar landscapes, historic sites, and cultural institutions for inspiration, and explore the history of their state or community. As an educator and archivist at the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), I interpret Maryland’s rich history and work to connect the public to the objects, documents, and historic sites that represent the state’s past. One of my principal constituencies is secondary students and social studies teachers. I especially enjoy my role in supporting National History Day and working with teachers and students who choose to explore topics of state and local history using resources at MdHS. In this article, by sharing my experiences