PROCESS USED FOR RESEARCHING T45 HISTORY
Allen McBroom, Scoutmaster
If you're interested in researching the history of your troop, the process we followed in developing this history might be of value to you.  A lot of our sources will be specific to our troop, but you should get the general idea of the process we used, and this may help you in your search.  The process described below is in no particular order, though the first step is finding out when your troop began. Feel free to write Webmaster@BSATroop45.Org if you have any questions about writing your own history, or if you have any suggestions or information that would help us in this process.   
Establish Initial Charter Date:  This was pretty easy.  A phone call to Lori, our council registrar, placed the date as April 1, 1952.  This saved us all sorts of work, and gave us a starting point for future research.. 
Talk To Your Scoutmaster:  Find out all the names he knows of previous scoutmasters (the older, the better).  These people tend to keep souvenirs, and those might include photos, event programs, etc.  Mrs. Leota Cardwell was married to Dr. Joe Cardwell, one of our SMs in the 1960's.  (Moms save everything.)  She had lots of photos from her son David's scout years, and some event programs.  
Start A Contact List:  Make a list of who you have contacted, their phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses, and the outcome of that contact.  A three ring binder or an MS Word document would be appropriate for this. You want to be able to share this info with select others at some point.  A sample entry might be "Joe Smith, member around 1974, called at home 662-555-1212, Jan. 15, 2004.  He'll look for old photos." Be sure to update Joe's note after you talk to him again. There are two good reasons for keeping this list. First, after you talk to eight or ten people, you won't remember who's supposed to be getting back to you, or who has turned into a dead end.  Second, you won't always be the one who keep the history, and the next historian needs to know who you've contacted and the outcome,  so they won't be duplicating your efforts.  
Ask Questions. Don't Be Shy:  Ask around and see who used to be in the troop, and write the former scouts letters, call them on the phone, and/or send them emails.  Ask to borrow Court Of Honor programs, photos, etc.  Be prepared to scan the items, and return them ASAP.  The moms of former scouts are more likely to have mementoes than will the actual scouts.  (Moms save everything.)      
Arrange the Data By Years:  This makes it easy to see the thread of continuity from one year to the next.  Being able to identify one scout in a group photo may be all you need to place the photo in a narrow range of years.    
Visit Your Local Newspaper:  Newspapers love their archives.  Once you have the starting date of the troop, you can search for your troop's history in the pages of old papers.  Brian Hawkins, editor at Starkville Daily News, told me they lost a lot of their archives in a fire some years ago.  However.... he also pointed me to the MSU library where all the old Starkville papers were stored on microfilm.  (Take a roll of dimes; it costs ten cents to make a microfilm copy.)  The Starkville News (before 1960 it was a weekly paper, not a daily) has a lot of scout coverage on Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, and Girl Scouts.    A regular column called With The Scouts appeared every week or so starting about 1953, and a weekly column called Girl Scout News appeared at least by 1952.  Most scouting events, including Boards Of Review and Courts Of Honor, got front page coverage in those days.
Visit The Pushmataha Museum At Camp Seminole: This is the mother-lode of information.  Mr. Donald Ellis (aka B3AR, pronounced 'Bear') is the museum curator, and he has accumulated history from the 1930's forward.  Camporee documents, Council Banquet programs, photos, etc. in the museum contain a wealth of information unavailable anywhere else.  Possibly (probably) the greatest source of history in the museum is B3AR himself.  He has a trove of history in his head, and is an invaluable resource.  The way you research this museum is "just get started".  Pick a place, any place, and start looking,  Go slow.  Tell Mr. B3AR what your interest is, and he'll point you in the right general direction.  If you're outside the PAC, ask around at Roundtable to see who is the "history person" in the council. 
MSU Special Collections This is a gold mine of information if the scout or scouter ever attended MSU.  One phone call to Special Collections (where all the MSU publications are kept) turned up contact information on two "mystery" scoutmasters.  Five minutes on the phone is a whole lot better than hours of staring at microfilm!
Be Patient:  This process takes time.  As hard as it is to believe, a lot of former scouts don't really care one way or the other about helping out with your research project.  A lot of scouts didn't keep anything from their scout years after they got married and moved several times.  When all else fails, talk to the moms of some of the scouts. (Moms save everything.) Just one scrapbook page can put you on the trail of several good leads.
Start With What You Can Verify:  Newspaper articles and council documents are "good history".  Personal memory is "shaky history". This is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  With jigsaw puzzles I always start with the edges because they provide a reference point for everything else.  Start your history with verifiable data, and then use the "shaky history" to fill in holes when it fits against all the verified data.
Give Credit, And Provide Reference Sources: Give credit to your sources for what they provided, and identify each history item with the source.  A year down the road you won't remember "good history" vs. "shaky history", but a glance at the source will tell you if you're looking at the edge of the jigsaw puzzle or one of the middle pieces.  
Realize The History Never Ends:  As long as your troop exists, the history of the troop will continue to grow.  Take steps now to preserve that history.  Save photos from trips, identify the people in the photos, save event programs, record rank advancements, save your annual charters, etc. 
Make The History Available To Others:  In T45, we've put our history on our website, but we could have just as easily put it in a paper format and shared it at the Scout Hut.  Make it accessible to others so they can enjoy seeing where the troop has been, and so former scouts and scouters can have the opportunity to fill in the holes in your troop history.  You never know when someone who reads the history might be holding one of the edge pieces.