History majors partner with Fort Hill Cemetery for historical capstone project
Photo by Ariel Hensley.
On the last Sunday of October, a casual stroll through Fort Hill Cemetery led to more than what one might expect to find. Each year, the history capstone class collaborates with Fort Hill Cemetery to present a walking tour of specific graves researched by students.
Dr. Randy Wood, department chair of history, political science and humanities, believes this major-specific project intriguingly incorporates Lee University’s service-learning values.
“The capstone project ties in very closely to what it means to research history, study history [and] present history to the public,” Wood said. “It does all of those things in just one service project, and we usually have between 200 and 300 people from the community come and take these tours. So, it's a great way for the Cleveland community to feel served by Lee students and by potential history teachers.”
This year’s theme for the project was prominent mayors from Cleveland’s history. Wood explained this project to be a taxing process for students, yet rewarding for both them and the community.
“These are characters from the past in Cleveland that aren't necessarily that famous, so there aren't going to be books about these people,” Wood said. “They can't just google and find information about these people. They have to dig in the archives and read newspapers and things like this.”
The process starts with assigning each student a person to research. The students then visit the history branch of the public library to search for any information on their character that may help them form a biographical outline.
Senior history education major Annabelle Jones believes the best part of researching this project is the history and interesting tidbits about her character.
“It's really fun just doing the research part of going through it,” Jones said. “When you finally get a lead on something, like it mentions that he was a mayor during these years, [I think] maybe I can check the papers during those years and specific things and just following [that lead] until [I] get some information.”
Senior history education major Laurel Jackson also participated in the research and found her experience to be one she will take with her even after completion.
“I think sometimes with larger history projects that are not local, it can be very overwhelming [because you don’t know where to look],” Jackson said. “It's very personal, and so I think that's been really cool to be able to feel like I know them simply from being able to look at things that are just very, very real.”
Both Jackson and Jones found themselves enthralled in their research, not wanting to leave once they got into the grit of the information even after 12 or more hours were put into the project.
“It’s fun though because you just really get into it,” Jones said. “It’s like, ‘I don’t want to leave because I’m finding all of these things and now I have four books spread out.’”
For more information about the annual Fort Hill Cemetary tour, contact Dr. Randy Wood at rwood@leeuniversity.edu.
