Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with Derek Kane O'Leary, author of Archival Communities: Constructing the Past in the Early United States

What inspired you to write this book? 

I came late to history, in a sense, having never taken a traditional history course before I started my PhD in History at UC Berkeley. Archives, or the Archive, which I suddenly heard everyone around me talking about, seemed distant and daunting to me. More than the specific items I might find there, I wanted to know what these places were, who built them, how they developed, what they did–and to share part of this larger story with other readers who are fascinated by how history is constructed. Amid our most recent national debates about how we should preserve, interpret, and respond to our complicated history, I also hoped to show that contesting the past and what it means for the present has been there since the beginning.

What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book? 

Gathering archival materials was often a very local undertaking within the early U.S., leading individuals to empty out their household collections and copy inscriptions from local graveyards. But it was also a sprawling international process. Individual collectors, historical societies, and governments in the U.S. looked to Europe in particular–from Scandinavia to Spain–for documents that could authenticate their own nation's history, as they imagined it. I hope readers will be intrigued by this broader Atlantic panorama and the array of individuals and materials that moved across it.

What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book? 

I did a good amount of the writing and the bulk of revising after transitioning away from a formal academic job. Without the familiar scholarly community and breaks between semesters, I really wasn't sure if it would be possible. With the guidance from wonderful mentors, work shopping by great friends, and UVA's support, I was happy and grateful to find that it is. I do encourage fellow historians pursuing other career pathways to consider publishing if the idea moves them.

What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?

Doing archival research about people doing archival research–or, to quote one of the wonderful undergraduates at Berkeley, "wow, that's pretty meta"--can yield anecdotes that are a bit close to home. Around 1840, John Romeyn Brodhead was funded by New York to gather copies of documents related to the state's colonial history from archives in the Netherlands, Britain, and France. When he finally gained access to a key British archive, he wrote, "Joy, gratitude, sorrow for my having been ‘dis’ contented and ungrateful before, overcame me by turns, and I had to lock my door, but anyone should interrupt my flood of tears….I consider this hour the brightest in my whole life. " I've never felt quite so happy about a research breakthrough, but I think a lot of historians can relate at least a little bit.

What’s next? 

I'm excited about a new project about child star, playwright, and generally fascinating figure John Howard Payne, as well as the biography of his "Home, sweet home," perhaps the most popular song of the nineteenth century. I think his life and song can help tell the history of the emergence, expansion, and transformation of the U.S. as a global actor over the course of the nation's first century.