Time in Place, Place in Time: How History Connects People to Place in Hillsborough, NC

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Who is the researcher?

What connects people to the past?
It might be family history, or history of your ethnic group or church.
It might come from living in a historic house, or simply from living in a historic town.

I'm interested in discovering what connects people to the past here in Hillsborough.

Every place has a unique set of characteristics that gives it a "sense of place".
In Hillsborough, history is part of this sense of place.

My heartfelt thanks go to those people who participated in this study.

Below are links to the completed chapters of my dissertation.  If you are interested, I invite you to read and comment on my work.

Chapter 1: The Importance of History in Hillsborough

Chapter 1 introduces Hillsborough, sets the scene and describes the study.

Chapter 2: The Intersection of People, Place and History: Background Literature

Chapter 2 discusses the work of other scholars on the topic of the relationship of people to place and place history.

Chapter 3: "And Who Do You Belong To?" Fieldwork in a Small Southern Town

Chapter 3 discusses the methods used in this study and the problems and opportunites of doing research in a town so small that "you don't have to put on your turn signal because we know where you are going."

Chapter 4: The History of History in Hillsborough

Chapter 4 discusses how the view of history within Hillsborough changed as a result of national changes in attitudes towards history, and as a result of two waves of incomers to the town:  in the 1960s and the 1990s.

Chapter 5: Building Relationships with Place: The Role of History

Chapter 5 discusses the ways that people build personal relationships with place and place history.  It contrast the experiences of insiders (born to the town) and incomers (new to the town).

Chapter 6: Responsibility to Place and Time

Chapter 6 discusses the role of history in responsibility to place.  It begins with two case studies, one of a resident who built a house here, and one of a business owner.  Also included in this chapter is a discussion of the role of Hillsborough's Historic District Commission in the defense of place.

Chapter 7: Transformation of Place

Chapter 7 examines the role that the emergence of Occaneechi identity played in the transformation of Hillsborough's historic sense of place

Chapter 8: Conclusions

Bibliography

I interviewed approximately 30 people for this study.  To really tell the whole story I would probably need to interview four or five times as many people. 
 
You can email me with questions or comments at:

Links to Hillsborough websites

Town of Hillsborough Homepage

The Voice of the Occaneechi People

Alliance for Historic Hillsborough

Trading Path Association

CDWarren's studio page