‘You don’t know until you know’
Area woman aims to put focus on local history
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Most people know more about national occurrences than happenings in their own backyard, but local history is just as important. Emmy Varner is trying to change that.
"They don't teach local history in school. Maybe because I am so immersed in Trumbull County, but I have been so impressed with the breadth of your local history. I feel there's an emphasis on the Underground Railroad. The Trumbull County Historical Society is really involved with that. I believe with local history, you don't know until you know," Varner said.
As part of her assignment with Trumbull County Historical Society, she writes the newsletter of all the historical society events and helps nine of the 30 other historical societies with cataloguing and organizing their collections, exhibit work and helps with their websites. She also works at other historical sites in Ashtabula, Geauga, Mahoning and Portage counties.
She is in the area as part of the Ohio History Service Corps, which is a division of AmeriCorps Ohio. It is a service organization with members who have history expertise that provides help to nonprofits with various projects to better serve their communities.
"There are 10 of us serving in Ohio. We each have a region. I spend half my time at my host site, which is Trumbull County Historical Society and the other half at other historic societies in the area," Varner said.
She grew up in rural Lancaster County, Pa. The area is known for its large Amish population. Initially, she planned to have a teaching career like her mother, but changed her mind once in college.
"I went to Messiah University. It is 20 minutes outside of Harrisburg. I switched my sophomore year to public history, but I kept the education minor and I picked up a minor in creative writing. I thought 'I like history' and public history is an interesting way to do that because there is still an aspect of teaching to it," she said.
While at the university, she held a number of internships and part-time jobs, including in the college's archives and library, at a natural history museum and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.
As a public history major, her career path can lead to museum work, archival management, developing programs for historical organizations and writing for historical journals.
The May 2025 graduate is acquiring experience in all aspects of her major while working at the TCHS.
"Trumbull County Historical Society has so much good knowledge. I am constantly learning from them. When I came here, I did not know how to write a Collections Management Policy (CMP), which says how you are going to care for your collection and what you are going to accept and what you are not going to accept at your historical site," Varner said.
After graduation, she decided to travel, but gathering work experience was still on her mind.
"I think I filled out the application for the Ohio History Service Corps at the Barcelona Airport. I was there with college friends. We took a two-and-half-week backpacking trip to Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Greece and Italy," she said.
Varner explained her path to become a member of the Ohio History Service Corps.
"It is an interesting process. You apply to the program in general and Betsy, the coordinator, is in charge of the program for Ohio. If she accepts you, then she sends your application to programs that she thinks will be a good match. The organizations reach out to you if they are interested. You do a first interview and if they are still interested, you do a second interview. Then, they offer you the position or not," she said.
After seeing the nonprofits that were interested in her, Varner hoped that the Trumbull County Historical Society would choose her.
"There were a lot of reasons that I was interested in them, but it seemed like they had so much going on and I really appreciated that because I like to stay busy. I like to do a variety of things because then you are never bored. I wanted to learn how to do things as well and, as a historical society, they are constantly adapting and they are even building the new (science fiction) museum. I was interested in that as well," she said.
She interviewed in July and received her approval for TCHS in early August. Her service corps assignment is for one year and ends Aug. 31.
Having real world experience in her major helped Varner realize she chose the correct career path. Working at TCHS, she expressed her enthusiasm in all aspects of public history that she has learned.
As for her future plans, they're still very much up in the air but she said she's planning on either doing another year of AmeriCorps or getting a job and then going to get her master's the following year with a program that will allow her to work in a museum, archives or other historic organization.
Outside of work and researching interesting historical topics, she said she likes to read, run, plan trips and work on perfecting her chai recipe.