When most people think of history, the first elements that usually come to mind are dates.

However, Charles Stephen Gurr, Ph.D., a Schley County native, put the element of people in history, namely Schley County’s history, at the 14th annual meeting of the Ellaville-Schley County Chamber of Commerce Friday. The event was held at the Schley County High School cafeteria.

Now retired from the “paying side” of history, Gurr said he likes to volunteer his time at museums in the Gainesville area, where he and his wife Rebecca Miller Gurr, also a Schley County native, live. As part of his volunteer work at the museums, Gurr pitches the concept of history to young children, and he teaches history at an institution similar to the Elderhostel in Americus.

“Everytime I teach history, I talk about Ellaville and Schley County,” Gurr began, in putting places and faces to the unique history of Ellaville and Schley County.

“It’s part of my person,” Gurr said of the county’s history. “I ended up being different because I came from Ellaville.”

Gurr said you can tell the history of a person, place or thing by three things: maps, calendars and telephone books. Then, he threw in high school yearbooks.

Gurr said when someone looks in the phone book, they learn surnames, locations, changes in streets and highways. Maps can tell where a place is, in relation to other areas, and someone can tell what life is like in that area.

“The younger generation’s history will not be the same,” Gurr said. He added that when he deals with youth, he tells them that everybody’s got a “history.”

Gurr also said that certain items can be used to tell stories from history. He gave the example of the museum in Gainesville that uses items like old plows, frying pans and horse bridles to tell the story of what life was like for the early settlers of North Georgia.

Then, Gurr showed a series of slides, beginning with the house he and Rebecca Gurr own in Ellaville. The slides included Ellaville sites such as the Confederate monument in the City Park, the old Saturday Snacks booth and the Schley County Courthouse, where he remembers old men playing checkers.

Gurr holds a membership on the Georgia Historic Trust, and he said the solution for old buildings is not always to put government agencies in them. He said sometimes it is better to “tear it down.”

But, he said a building that is a landmark — namely the Schley County Courthouse — should be preserved in a “good way” for everyone.

In conclusion, Gurr said, “Ellaville’s history may not be famous, but it’s all I got and it’s who I am.”

Gurr received degrees from Georgia Southwestern College and Peabody Teachers College. He received his doctorate in history from the University of Georgia (UGA), and he has written a biography on the life of Steadman Sanford, a former UGA president.

He and his wife have four sons and two grandsons.