If you’re a tad anxious that a month and half from now, come the end of this America250 year of exhibitions, public storytelling of both famous and little-known New Haven tales and achievement might wane — well, dear friends, not to worry. That is the engaging message of Jennifer Coggins, Mi chael Morand, and about 100 of their friends, aka, The History Stewards. Morand, in addition to being the city’s historian, is the director of engagement at Yale’s Beinecke Library. Coggins is that institution’s community engagement archivist. They are also both members of The History Stewards — an informal group of happy, dusty archivists, preservationists, and librarians across local history organizations large and small citywide. Formed back in 2024, the Stewards include staff and volunteers associated with a wide range of organizations, from the New Haven Free Public Library to the Yale libraries to Lost In New Haven to the Ethnic Heritage Center; and from the New Haven Museum to the caretakers of Evergreen Cemetery and the curators of exhibitions on the Harlem Renaissance created at ConnCORP. All told, thus far, there are about 110 people on the History Stewards roster, Morand said. “We’ve got people from old and large institutions and new ones,” he said. Beginning in 2024, they have been facilitating a series of four-times-a-year informal meet-ups for preservation and history mavens to share a meal, a libation, and talk history, exhibition ideas, mylar boxes, how to preserve difficult stuff, archive, and problem-solving shop talk across a wide range of subjects. From these meetings have emerged “lots of informal connections,” said Coggins, who also runs public community workshops on preservation techniques for groups at the city library branches and other venues. Among the most frequent interchanges Coggins said she recalls from past gatherings are “conversations like, ‘I know exactly where you can find . . .’ That is, one professional helping another with a source, a clue to hard-to-find items, an approach.” “No one place holds everything,” added Morand, who said he himself is deep into the planning of an exhibition next year on aspects of the eternal town-gown theme in New Haven. “We [at the Yale libraries] have boxes and boxes, by way of example, from the Redevelopment Agency. The New Haven Museum has the photographs, and Southern has the papers of [Mayors] DiLieto, Harp, and DeStefano. So if you want to do New Haven history, it’s much more robust, and that’s true of many subjects.” To that end, said Coggins, after the first meeting in 2024, she and the New Haven Museum Whitney Library’s Emma Norden created a first-ever New Haven Archives Directory, in PDF format, and available to anyone. More collaborative tools may follow. “You can do it,” Morand added, “here in New Haven because none of these [institutions] are more than 20 minutes away from each other.” The meet-ups have taken place at a museum or organization on the occasion, for example, of an exhibition, or, in the case of the centennial of Frank Pepe’s, at significant history locales in New Haven, such as that storied Wooster Street eatery. Michael Dimenstein, the president of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven and regular among the Stewards, told the Independent: “As a lifelong resident of the area, it was exciting to discover a diverse community of history nerds who are proud of their work and willing to share their organizations’ holdings and stories with others committed to keeping history alive and making it accessible.” The idea of such professional informal gatherings is not new, and, of course, local history has long been practiced by both professionals and volunteer groups in the Elm City. While the gatherings began in 2024, the History Stewards are taking the connectivity occasioned and accelerated by America250 one step farther. Morand pointed out that many of the major exhibitions of the last year — like “New Haven’s Unfinished Revolutions” at the New Haven Museum, will continue beyond America250, as he put it  into “America251, America252,  America253 . . . “ “We’re truly hopeful about local history,” he added. Through the meetings most participants have gone to a place “they’d never been to before,” said Morand. That was the case with Coggins herself. Although a long-time archivist at Yale’s manuscript division before moving over to the Beinecke, she had never been to the Evergreen Cemetery, where so many notable New Haveners are buried. Now she has. For New Haven Free Public Library Reference Manager Seth Godfrey, the opportunities of the Stewards turned out to be not only professional but personal. “The quarterly meetings,” he wrote in an email, “have been a plus for us to promote all the great resources of our Local History Room. “On a personal note, it has even sparked an interest in my own family’s history as we have been in New Haven since 1905 via Brooklyn via Poland/Lithuania. I always say we’re ‘Jewish Pilgrims,’ although we didn’t come on the Mayflower.’” “I don’t think there’s going to be a let-down,” concluded Morand. Future connecting plans include a Google group, and the meetings, growing more and more popular, continue four times a year. The next meet-up locations will be at Albertus Magnus College, Connecticut State Community College/Gateway, and at Southern. By press time, there was no official word whether the historians, archivists, librarians, and preservationists have been keeping an historical record of their meetings. Click here to read the New Haven Archives Directory put together by the Stewards. The post The History Stewards Have New Haven’s (Way) Back appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less