Trella Romine: Public Historian of Marion County

Both through & beyond her formal roles with the Marion County Historical Society, Trella Romine was Marion County’s original public historian. From penning massive history volumes to rescuing Caledonia’s Bowstring Bridge from its first home in Espyville to researching & erecting Ohio Historical Markers across Marion County, Trella Romine worked tirelessly across the the last five decades of her life to make Marion County’s cultural and natural history accessible to everyday people. Trella went on to become President of today’s Ohio Local History Alliance (then known as the Ohio Association of Historical Societies & Museums) — working to grow capacity for local history organizing across the state. For years, her prolific local history column, Day Before Yesterday, ran in the Marion Star; & her work organizing the Caledonia Call newsletter in the 1990s helped keep local history alive in her adopted hometown of Caledonia. The vibrancy of our contemporary public history landscape owes much to Trella’s dedicated organizing, & her insistence that history be shared to help inflect critical decisions about how we steward our futures.