This past week, GCSU history students connected with Milledgeville community members at a History Harvest at Allen’s Market as a part of the Collecting the Past project, a three-year federally funded initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 Students who are a part of Stephanie Opperman’s HIST 4010 class, Local History, are researching people and places in Milledgeville that have helped to shape the community, specifically during the time Flannery O’Connor lived in the area.

“The Collecting the Past project is a three-year federally funded grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and we are in our third year of it right now,” Opperman said. “The goal of the project is to record oral histories and collect community memories related to Milledgeville in the time that Flannery O’Connor was writing most of her stories here, so that would have been in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”

In previous years, Opperman’s course paired students with community members who either knew O’Connor personally or had studied her, turning their interviews into podcasts. This semester’s course focuses on sites in Milledgeville that were significant during O’Connor’s lifetime.  

“We know a lot about Flannery O’Connor,” said Jessia McQuain, the programming coordinator for the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities and interim coordinator of the project. “We’ve got this huge amount of scholarship. There’s a society dedicated to her, there’s an institute dedicated to her, there’s a museum dedicated to her but we know that her writing was so informed by the colorful, vibrant life of Milledgeville.”

Each student has selected a location in the Milledgeville area to research and then found local community members to interview about the history of the site. Topics include a variety of buildings and landmarks including the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Allen’s Market, Lake Sinclare and Memory Hill Cemetery. 

“Our biggest goal is to try to connect the students with the community members and let them do the majority of the interviews as a way to have engagement with community members,” Opperman said. 

Eowyn Agullo, a junior history major, chose to deepen her understanding of Milledgeville’s history while also connecting with its residents.

“I was really excited to not only find the more famous stories but to learn more about personal stories that exist in local history,” Agullo said. 

Agullo’s research focuses on the Sacred Catholic Church, where O’Connor, a devout Catholic, attended daily Mass until the end of her life. Though the church has been a part of Milledgeville since 1974, Agullo noticed in her research that nearly every other church in the city has a published book about its history in the Mary Vinson Memorial Library, except for Sacred Heart. 

“I think it’s really important to reveal these stories and personal memories because they get into a deeper sense of daily life,” Agullo said. “We can always find estate sales, taxes, and other information, but getting the personal narrative of who really went there and who made an impact on the community is vital, and I think it’s good to share.”

According to Opperman, these oral histories are a valuable resource, one that can be quickly lost if not properly collected and documented.

“With oral histories and especially with community memories, a lot of time if they’re not documented in some way, there’s lost when the person passes away,” Opperman said. “I think everyone has their own unique set of experiences and memories and recollections that are valuable to students, to professors, and to the history and the future of a region.”

Opperman also emphasized that the project is intended to create open-access resources available to the public, allowing anyone to learn more about the history of Milledgeville.

“Whether that’s maps or podcasts or just a database of these recordings, this is something that all of the community members can then access and hopefully use and benefit from,” Opperman said. 

There will be another History Harvest event on April 12 from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the ArtHealthy Festival on campus.