While much of humanity is busy using FaceApp to see how they’d look in the future, other people are trying to look into the past. But when a city’s history isn’t well documented or organized, it can feel almost as imaginary.
Chris Parsons, an associate professor of history at Northeastern, knows this firsthand. When he asked his students to locate the first church in Boston, Massachusetts, they all ended up in different places.
According to Parsons, this is because public historians have placed more emphasis on the Revolutionary War than on the founding of the place where it started, a city with a rich history but a lack of signage to show it. It was this that motivated Parsons to begin The Birth of Boston, a project that reintroduces long-forgotten people and stories into the historical landscape.
