Please describe your professional background.
My name is Christian Overland, and I am currently the Ruth and Hartley Barker Director and CEO of the Wisconsin Historical Society, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. I am a historian, and for the past 32 years, I have worked in museums and history organizations such as The Henry Ford, an internationally recognized cultural destination near Detroit, Michigan, Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts, and the Minnesota Historical Society.
Throughout my career, I have always been interested in the democratization of history for everyone. How do we share great stories that connect people to the past in a meaningful way? How do we pursue the idea that history has a purpose? How do we use history to inspire people to build a better future, and how do we understand our ancestral pathways that have defined who we are today? These are some of the questions I am personally interested in and have considered often throughout my career.
Please describe the story behind WHS.
The Wisconsin Historical Society was founded in 1846, two years before Wisconsin became a state. The motivation was to create a repository of North American history, especially as Western migration of the United States was growing.
Since then, the organization has expanded beyond a state museum and now has twelve historic sites and museums, a headquarters that houses our library, a state historic preservation office, an archives reading room as well as a state archive preservation facility that holds our national repository of collections. Even though we are called the Wisconsin Historical Society, our content ranges from North American history and international history as well.
To this point, we have one of the largest and most significant collections of American history, second only to the Library of Congress. We have the second largest collection of American newspapers in the world. We have a press that publishes 15 to 20 titles a year. In terms of genealogy, we are one of the five largest repositories of genealogical resources, with books, databases, and maps from all over the United States. Additionally, we have Martin Waldseemüller’s world map, drawn in 1506 and published in 1513, which is the oldest surviving map in the world depicting North America.
Our social justice collections include a major manuscript, archival and artifact chronicling the American Civil Rights movement. We also have industrial manufacturing collections including the Singer Sewing Machine and McCormick-International Harvester archives, and other holdings from every region in the United States and a few other countries as well.
How do you go about democratizing history?
Part of the issue today, as far as democratizing history, is creating access to it. The academic community certainly knows of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s collections, but we want to make them accessible to everyone on the planet.
Lyman Draper, our first director, amassed a collection that is well-known to historians because of its breadth and depth of early American history with manuscripts penned by some of the founding people of our nation, such as Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, and many others.
Another important aspect of our collection is how it connects to everyday life. For us, the idea of democratizing history has a lot to do with creating digital access to relevant information, and making collection items viewable and, more importantly, digitally portable so that the collections, stories, and knowledge are available to anyone, anywhere.
We believe that if we connect people to the stories of the past, it will inspire them to build a better future. I think at this point in history, sharing our past and present experiences and learning from them is highly beneficial as it gives people and their families a better understanding of where they came from and how our ancestors contributed to today’s society and culture.
Using DNA technologies and digital collections together is a terrific opportunity for people to learn where they came from and the stories of their past. There is also an ethical obligation to use these technologies responsibly so audiences continue to trust our organizations and use access to facts, data, and evidence that is relevant and authentic.
How does WHS help its members with family history research?
One of the things that the Wisconsin Historical Society has focused on creating access to is genealogy and family trees. We have a full-time genealogist and other full-time staff in our reference library as well as archivists who manage those genealogical collections.
We place an emphasis on teaching people how to use our collections effectively. We regularly host global webinars for those interested in general genealogy and family research, and webinars for studying the genealogy of specific ethnic groups such as German, Native American, and Jewish.
An important point about family history is that when people understand where they came from, they become more interested in how they got here and how that ancestral pathway emerged. When people engage with history by researching their own ancestry, it becomes a personal experience. History feels more relevant when there is a personal connection to it. When people engage with history by researching their own ancestry, it becomes a personal experience that we hope creates meaningful memories for a lifetime.
Scientific history, environmental history, or medical history, such as the global pandemic that’s happening right now, are important things that we need to document, organize, and steward as we move forward.
During the global pandemic, we added a journaling project where we have put out calls throughout the world for people to send us their journals that describe what they have gone through. We believe that is an important perspective for people in the future.
We learned at the beginning of the current pandemic that in our 1918 pandemic collection, the voice of everyday life was missing. We have the records of public health boards and newspaper articles, however, the voice of the citizens suffering in that pandemic was absent. We believe that documenting the stories of our people living through this era will be important and relevant for their females and others in the future who wish to understand how we solved problems in this era and learn from our experiences.
What are some differences or similarities that you found between the 1918 pandemic and the current one?
One connection between the 1918 influenza pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic we are experiencing today is the use of social distancing as well as using face masks to prevent transmission. A difference is that today we have widely available vaccines to prevent COVID-19, although access to them varies from country to country.
In America, the idea of social distancing was once discussed using a different term: quarantine. It was commonly understood during the 1918 pandemic that isolation was a way to prevent the sick from infecting the healthy. There was a framework of public health boards put in place from the state level down to county and local municipalities, and they figured out that the flu was spreading along key transportation routes like train lines and rivers; any kind of mass transit pushed the flu to spread.
With the rise of COVID-19, we began to explore connections to the previous pandemic to help the Wisconsin Department of Health Services navigate the situation with relevant historical context. We found there were a few spots along the highway system where people stopped for gas and food that had a similar impact on community spread as hotspots along major transportation routes during the 1918 pandemic.
Masking in 1918 was just starting to be done too. Back then, it was influenza. We did not have antibiotics and viruses were not being detected. The electron microscope came out in 1932 and became a commercial product only years later.
In the 12-15 years following the 1918 pandemic, we started seeing an increase in medical innovation which contributed to the growth of our collections. What the Wisconsin Historical Society is collecting now is relatively similar, but we are collecting materials that are representative of the incredible medical advancements made since the last pandemic. This includes prototypes that medical companies like GE health have designed for face protection in hospitals, testing kits, antigen kits, medical protocols, and oral histories from doctors. The 1918 pandemic and our era are currently similar, however, we have not successfully emerged from this pandemic and future historians will have better context to address this question.
What’s your take on platforms like Ancestry or Family Tree DNA as a way to understand history?
We have partnerships with a few companies specializing in family history and DNA analysis. We work with Ancestry.com and other companies to digitize and democratize our genealogical collection which includes death certificates, marriage certificates, birth certificates, and state licenses for different trades and professions as well as archive holdings. There is also a lot of data available about people and their occupations in census data, petitions, and in our state and county materials. In the United States every ten years, the census records what people are doing, describing their lives, their households, and their interests. We’ve moved to digitizing these records in partnership with companies in the family history space to make them more readily accessible.
As I mentioned, the Wisconsin Historical Society has the oldest surviving map of North America in our collection. We also have 27,000 other maps in our collections. It would be terrific to re-analyze these maps in partnership with companies that are working with DNA tracing. Imagine, if you get your DNA tested and find out your family can be traced to a specific region, wouldn’t it be fascinating to look at maps and other collections that were used throughout history to help pinpoint the movements of your ancestors?
By learning about history through the lens of genealogical research, people can gain an understanding of their ancestors’ individual points of view and an overarching worldview. As I mentioned, the Wisconsin Historical Society has an expansive collection of newspapers, and this is another resource that can help illustrate what life was like for previous generations.
To summarize, DNA analysis can reveal a lot about family history, but it presents an incomplete picture. The Wisconsin Historical Society’s collections reveal context that allows people to explore history beyond their genetic lineage. By combining DNA analysis with information preserved in our historical collections, a more complete picture of family history emerges.
How would you advise people to preserve their genealogical findings and stories, and create something tangible that they can pass on to their grandchildren?
In our webinars, our experts frequently talk about how to properly preserve genealogical content. People often have their own research materials and come to us for information about how to preserve these records both digitally and in a 3D format. We regularly respond to questions on how to store historical materials so they are intact and accessible for future generations.
Another concept that is prevalent in the digital age, in addition to DNA analysis, is self-publication. We connect people to resources so they can create their own family history books. Our historiography framework allows people to compile their research to create a personalized history. We have over 40,000 family history books in our collection and this is a practice families have followed for centuries. People can access our Research Your Family History department at Wisconsinhistory.org.
How do you envision the future in terms of historical preservation?
One future-looking aspect of historical preservation going on today is the collection and retention of building plans for new and existing structures, including those that are located underwater and underground. We are geo-locating and documenting shipwrecks in the Great Lakes and land-based structures, and in the future, researchers will be able to look at this information to understand more where they came from and discover the places where their ancestors lived, worked, and worshipped.
For us, putting together that next piece is a big deal, and we can do it because of technological advancements that have transformed our geo-location capabilities. The Wisconsin Historical Society is ahead of the curve on digitally documenting the historic preservation of places. We have been prototyping a beta model and now we are ready to start thinking about how we can use that model in other interfaces.
We are developing a digital asset management system, which is essentially a clearinghouse where massive amounts of geolocation data are organized and then made accessible to the public. Once we build our data into those systems, you will be able to search the data and build your family genealogy for your profile. If you find stories and places that trigger your curiosity and you want to know more, you will be able to drive over and see those places with your own eyes. I think the future is about bringing those different methodologies together so that they are relevant and easy to use.
We are also building a new museum in Wisconsin that will focus on preserving and sharing North American history and incorporating community stories that connect to the present. Stories that are from the community and for the community. Again democratizing stories will increase the public’s knowledge of history and that will have profound societal, cultural, and economic benefits. I think this is the future work of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
