As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, residents work to keep the stories of their towns —some more than 200 years old —alive through a patchwork of local historical societies.
For the volunteers who run these societies, the dramas of the deceased can become immersive: History is not abstract. It is a stagecoach inn where travelers once carried news from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It is Honus Wagner’s baseball bat, still handed to visitors in Carnegie. It is the cemetery in Evans City where “Night of the Living Dead” helped invent a new genre of horror.
In towns across Southwestern Pennsylvania, local historical societies are working to preserve a record of day-to-day lives: how people traveled, worked, played, gathered, and made meaning in communities shaped by war, industry, sports, migration, and pop culture…