The casefile research that we conducted in class was a very
interesting and honestly entertaining assignment that helped us dive deeper
into the lives of the common people during the 1800s and 1900s. I like the idea
of this because so often we talk about the famous people during these times and
while that’s really cool its not really related to most people since not
everyone is famous. So looking to see how people lived and what would happen to
just ordinary people is an approach that was really unique and interesting for
me and I really look forward and hope more teachers did something similar to
this in the future. On the first case file I spent a good deal of time doing
research on the prohibition era in American history and some of the people that
were put in jail for doing various things with alcohol that ranged from selling
to smuggling it in major cities.
In my second casefile I got the
opportunity to research my own family and that was so much fun because I got to
do it with my parents and they had a good time doing it too. Me and my parents
spent the large part of a Sunday just looking through old documents of our
family members and they were able to remember things about their past and tell
me some really awesome stories as well. One of the really cool facts I was able
to find out was my great great grandfather on my mom’s side was actually
president of Dominican republic for only a month because of a revolution. He
was also the vice president before that but when the president was assassinated
he had to step in but would resign shortly after since the rebels were
overthrowing the government.
If it wasn’t for the super good
websites such as ancestory.com and others I wouldn’t have been able to find all
of those documents and other pictures from not only those famous people’s lives
but even yearbook pictures of my parents from the 70s and 80s which is amazing.
This type of advanced research helps people like me get more of an
understanding of how people lived and not only that but be able to get a feel for
where they were in life and how they were reacting to the historical events
that were happening around them even though they were totally oblivious to them
at the time, it’s all raw and authentic reactions which is priceless. I would
say all in all this was a very useful assignment that really helped my skills
of research and being able to look things up and find small details that
connect to a bigger picture.
