Cameron Scenna

My major project, the final form it has taken, is a newsletter with a series of character profiles which cover both the ‘Lovedale’ school and the individuals involved in its inception. The sources that this project has drawn upon, are exclusively primary resources taken from archival research through the medium of newspapers sources as well as government records themselves accessed, more or less exclusively, through ancestry.com.au.

This project was undertaken at the bequest of my liaison with the Canada Bay Heritage Society (CBHS), Lois Michel, who sought to find more information about the Lovedale schools due to its importance in shaping local Concord history, and its relevance in shaping future schooling in the local inner west area. What we sought to create, through our correspondence, was a piece of socially accessible information that could be easily viewed and processed by local patrons of the museum that Concord hosts. It has occurred however, that correspondence between myself and this society has been lacking in the closing weeks of this project. Nonetheless, the research I have undertaken has allowed me to produce an accessible piece of information that I believed was best to be presented in a newsletter format – given that the society itself has a newsletter already running, and thus is the most familiar to them. Additionally, a short series of character profiles, from the limited information available, will be presented within the newsletter itself as Lois was keen on unveiling a little more about those involved in the early stages of this school.

In the beginning of this project, I had the intention of providing a socially accessible piece of local history that while being informative, provided a space in which to address certain theoretical questions that are pertinent to my own historical studies and which would carry on to themes that I intend to take up during my honours year in 2016. I found however, a number of things. Firstly, that archival research is deceptively difficult, specifically when the information that one is seeking out is not ‘nationally’ relevant, and is rather microscopic in its impact and historical legacy. And secondly, that while I don’t believe I have succeeded in synthesising this theoretical and practical task, I believe that inherent within the work that I’ve produced, is a topic that I believe must be addressed by historians, and those of us who perhaps operate within institutions that exist independently or outside of local historical bodies, of whom do not give importance to local identities and historical narratives. The latter of these is partially a question of time and resources, historians do not have the capability – as of yet at least – to address all forms of historical narratives, for their existence is seemingly infinite. Yet choice, in as far as what is chosen to be studied, is a relative concept, and E.H. Carr’s [1]insightful understanding that historical narratives only gain or lose their importance on the basis of what historians deign to be important, is relevant to this topic. Lovedale is unimportant to non-localised histories because the theoretical framework in which history is contemporarily framed does not make it so and thus the question remains, if a certain group identifies with a narrative of local history, does this lessen the importance of this narrative? Or is this facet simply relative, its importance determined in relation to a grander narrative of development, or whatever other narrative end one wishes to offer.

The importance of Lovedale is subjective, a facile statement one knows, but a proposition that, as we have seen throughout this semester, holds true for all histories. What space Lovedale does occupy in the minds of the CBHS is relevant to its own self-reflective understandings of itself, and of its member to themselves. It plays a part in identity formation that is independent – in part, although it must be stressed, not entirely – to larger structures of thought that galvanise, prioritise and shape other stratums of identity narratives; be they national, ethnic or otherwise. Localised histories are, in this regard, democratising,  in as much as they stand as “signifying practices” that allow a citizenry the ability of “decoding messages about the past”[2] that are specific in their context and that work to deconstruct the generalisations that may be applied in historical narratives who contain a more ambitious aim or larger scope. These, the latter, are studies which subsume self-reflectively understood­ narratives within a larger narration at the cost of local identities and local histories. A topic that we have revisited periodically, but that was touched upon most pertinently in Week 5; local histories are important for historians because historical actors deem them to be important. I follow the same line of thinking that David Carment does within the Australian context, in that “an understanding of local history allowed Australians to answer fundamental questions regarding the nature of life and who they were.”

This is a topic I have been anxious to revisit throughout this semester, for I believe it raises challenges to the work that historians engage upon, more broadly at least. This topic has formed the cornerstone of many debates throughout this semester in class too, and our readings upon local histories in Week 5 addressed this point with more specificity than at other times during the semester. Local histories are about “placing life experiences in a meaningful social context,” in as far as meaningful relates to local actors empowered to present a narrative that is of equal importance to larger narratives. Importance however, is once again a subjective term, and to prioritise one over the other does affirm the similar problem addressed by Carr, we have simply changed what is being prioritised. I believe this to be a problem of structure, institutional and discursive, and is not to be addressed here. But nonetheless, in researching Lovedale, I have come to see that there is something to be said for the emphasis on local histories, as they are inherently more democratising than national or likewise generalising structures. While this point takes its leave from Foucault, I believe it to go further. I hope that this project leads one to ask as to the importance of history of ‘larger’ narrative breadth, given that importance is self-reflective and not dependent on ‘truths’ for their importance of identity formation. In this regard, Le Goff,[3] Confino[4] and Winter provided me with important theoretical insights, as did Nora[5] – in his own reactionary way – along with Marcel Proust in his novels.

Returning to my project however, the Lovedale project was undertaken at request, yet I sought to use it as an example of local history that is question raising, rather than question answering. Information of Lovedale was limited to begin with, and while I’ve been able to retrieve information that the society was unaware of, all of the information is publically available and thus not necessarily original. In finality, a further point that I wish to touch upon, is one which was raised by David Watts in Week 8 on ‘Decolonised history,’ namely; who can do what history? Mike touched upon this as regards his own research into early-era U.S. and his examination of a certain local Native American tribe as it related to his own topic of interest. May we, those who are not local, engage in historical work that is not ‘local’ itself to us? What limitations does this impose, is it cultural in nature, ethnic, geographical? While it may indeed be cultural or ethnic, there may be something to be said of translating histories of a foreign culture into a domestically coherent narrative. This however smacks of cultural imperialism, and thus perhaps is an untenable possibility. Nonetheless, these are questions that go beyond my scope here. I simply sought to raise them in the hope that a discussion will be begun, be it in my own mind or elsewhere, that seeks to answer these questions. My time with Lovedale was informative and shaping, and being exposed to these local histories bequeathed unto me a sense of perspective of where I myself stand. I believe local histories to be important and ‘freeing.’ They provide important context to social groups who perhaps feel alienated from other historical narratives that do not address localities, and in as much as this  is what my project has taught me, is what the purpose of this project has come to mean to me, and hopefully, the Canada Bay Heritage Society.

— CAMERON SCENNA

Bibliography

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 28th March, 1829). 

“Young Ladies at Lovedale.” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 12th May, 1909). 

M. Shaw. Concord Jubilee: 1883 – 1933 (Sydney: Canberra Press, 1933). 

The Australian (Sydney: 12th June, 1829). 

The Australian (Sydney: 12th May, 1829). 

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 23rd July 1829. 

“John Croaker of St Lawr Thanet bach & Sus Kidder Kemp of Leaveland sp, at L. 27 July 1811.” Ancestry.com.au.

“England and Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892: John Croaker.” Ancestry.com.au

“1828 New South Wales, Australia Cencus (Australian Copy): Susanna Kidder Love.” Ancestry.com.au

New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825.” Ancestry.com.au

“Australia Death index, 1787-1985.” Ancestry.com.au

“Australia Census Report, 1828.” Archives.com.au

“National Gallery of Australia; Joseph Lyett’s “Kissing Point.” Nga.gov.au

“Lovedale views; Photographic scrap-book; commenced November 26th 1857.” Acms.sl.nsw.gov.au

“John Croaker, Transportation” in England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892.

Ancestry.com.au

“Susannah Kidder Love, Arrival Ship, Elizabeth” in 1828 New South Wales, Australian Census. Ancestry.com.au

“Susannah K. Croaker, “On board the Elizabeth, Sydney Cove. Her Letter Acknowledged” in New South Wales Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825. Ancestry.com.au

“John Croaker, Request for Wife and Children to be Victualled from Stores” in New South Wales, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825. Ancestry.com.au

“John Croaker, Request for Conditional Pardon for” in New South Wales, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825. Ancestry.com.au

“John Croaker, Absolute Pardon” in New South Wales, Australia, Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, 1788-1870. Ancestry.com.au

New South Wales, Australia, Record of Appointments to Government Offices, 1814-1825. Ancestry.com.au

Australia Marriage Index, 1788-1950. Ancestry.com.au

Australian Convict Transportation Registers – Other Fleets & Ships, 1791-1868. Ancestry.com.au

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842. Ancestry.com.au

England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892. Ancestry.com.au

1828 Census of New South Wales.  Ancestry.com.au

Australia Death Index, 1787-1985. Ancestry.com.au

NOTES 

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[1] E.H. Carr, What is History?  (London: Penguin, 1961).

[2] Jay Winter, “Film and the Matrix of Memory,” The American Historical Review 106 (2001), 863.

[3] See Jacques Le Goff,  History and Memory, tran. by Steven Randall & Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia Press, 1992) and Jacques Le Goff, “Mentalities: a History of Ambiguity,” in Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Methodology, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

[4] Alon Confino, “The Local life of Nationhood: Germans as Heimat, 1871-1990,” in Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2006).

[5] Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7-24. 

Cameron Scenna, "History and the Public," History Matters, (26 October 2015)