Micro History

I recently switched to the new OCA website and took advantage of the free courses to help students navigate the new website and provide advice, suggestions and ideas for studying. When working my way through these courses I came across an interesting article about Micro Histories, these are recorded events of small insignificant moments mostly of or about people of no significant historical status. An example was a surviving legal document hundreds of years old of a women who had been a wet nurse and claimed that she had caught syphilis from a child she had been nursing. This type of history describes the world of the normal every day and a snap shot picture of the ordinary folk.

In my local churchyard stands a forgotten tombstone, often buried under undergrowth that tells of the tragic death of one of the church’s flock. This as I see it is a typical example of Micro History, hiding in plain sight.