Bellingham Historic Neighborhoods Internship Resource Page

History 494--Winter and Spring 2008

Contact:  Chris Friday, Department of History, Western Washington University  (360) 650-4862

Use the links below to gain a greater understanding of each neighborhood and the resources available for doing research.  Keep checking back to this page as materials and links will be added on a regular basis.

Links within this Site

(Regularly Updated)

Local Resources CRM&Preservation Census Resources
     
     
     

Local Resources

Lettered Streets Neighborhood:

York Neighborhood:

South Hill Neighborhood:

City of Bellingham:

Whactom Museum of History and Art

Bellingham Public Library

Washington State Archives Northwest Branch, Bellingham, Washington

Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Washington University

Huxley College Map Library, Western Washington University

Cultural Resource Management and Historic Preservation

Some Select Links

 

Architectural Styles of America --links to photos and descriptions of many different building styles.

Cultural Resource Network--Listing of jobs, announcements, and other issues.

Bureau of Reclamation Cultural Resources Management--an example of one government agency

Cultural Resource and Heritage Management Firms and Subcontractors Worldwide via archaeologyfieldwork.com--self explanatory.
 

ArchNet - Cultural Resource Management:

What is Cultural Resource Management and what are Cultural Resources? via the Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University--a good, succinct introduction to the topic.

Anthropology: Cultural Resource Management via Binghamton University Library and Graduate Program in Cultural Resource Management--Links to:

Preservation Directory.Com--an online resource for historic preservation, building restoration and cultural resource management in the United States & Canada.   Stated goal is "to foster the preservation of historic buildings, historic downtowns and neighborhoods, cultural resources and to promote heritage tourism by facilitating communication among historic preservation professionals and the general public."

National Trust for Historic Preservation--an online resource for historic preservation.  "The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to saving historic places and revitalizing America's communities."

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation--advises the President and Congress on critical issues related to historic preservation, especially related to federal programs and grants.

National Park Service--National Register of Historic Places--a site dedicated to listing properties as historic places with good informational links on the program and "how to."  Also an important link to various state historic preservation offices.

 Census Resources

A Note on Federal Census Resources:  The federal government conducted a census of the population every tenth year since 1790.  The decennial Manuscript Schedules of the census of the population, to be distinguished from the published reports of the Census Bureau, include a great deal of data on individuals that can be very useful for social historians who want to develop an understanding of the demographics of a particular place in "snapshot" form once every ten years.  For privacy reasons, the manuscript census (original census as taken by enumerators with all the raw data) is not released until 72 years have passed.  Thus, the most recent census available is for 1930 with the 1940 census to become available in 2012.  (Other schedules include assessments of agricultural and industrial activity that may be useful to social history researchers, but the focus here is on the population schedules.)

The censuses are invaluable to researchers and are available to researchers in several "brick and mortar" locations as well as websites.  In Bellingham, census records for Whatcom County are available at:

Federal Census records are also available through a number of websites, but most often these require subscriptions (though researchers may find that the "free trial period" is sufficient to meet their needs).  The online census records are set up to search individuals, but in many cases with a little extra work researchers can do broad surveys of districts.  Some sites do have transcripts of the census, but those are currently limited to specific sites.  Some common examples of these different online sites are:

For Whatcom County, Bellingham, and specifically for the Historic Neighborhoods project, we hope to build a database for each of the neighborhoods, but electronic or web-based databases have not been systematically built yet.  Therefore, our researchers will have to muddle through microfilm reels (real or virtual) to build the databases.  To that end, I have provided the call numbers for the microfilm in Western's library for some of the relevant census years, excel spreadsheets designed for each census year, PDF worksheets for each year, and for the 1920 and 1930 censuses I have attempted to pinpoint the specific enumeration districts relevant to each neighborhood.  (The censuses are organized by state, county, city, and then enumeration districts with households the final subdivision on each page.)  In this way, the database will provide at least a sense of what each neighborhood and nearby areas were like demographically.

Finally, researchers should realize that the censuses are problematic, even if useful, historical documents that reflect the social and cultural order of a given year.  I have provided several readings that offer an analysis of the social and cultural meaning of the census.

Manuscript Federal Population Censuses:

Select (very select!) Reading List on Issues Pertaining to Census Research: