Writing Local History
For the past twenty years Mae Silver has been writing local history. As she moved around in her life, she was always in a place that had little or no written local history. In her view, local history is important because it helps to anchor people with their environment, place. It helps to define a person. She is lucky, she says, because local history is always around her regardless of where she is.
She started with Lucky 130, a San Francisco streetcar history that highlighted the national trend when streetcars all over were trashed in favor of cars. That never happened in San Francisco. The result is a splendid fleet of the city’s international streetcars, one of which is Lucky 130. This story was little before Mae turned it into a book, Lucky 130.
While the many titles show Mae’s local history writing, she also wrote for journals and newspapers. A list of her books, many of which Amazon carries, shows how her writings traced her many places that led her to Jacksonville, Florida.
Along the way Mae found a partner, Chris Carlsson, who has edited and crafted her many books for you to read. Hurrah!
