A name change is afoot
At our annual meeting in May of 2025, the society’s board and membership voted to change the name of the “Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society” to “Oakland County Historical Society”. We also voted to amend our bylaws to reflect the change.
We made the decision to change the name for a couple of reasons, first and foremost that the new name reflects our mission more fully than the old name.
We don’t limit our historical reach to the “pioneer era” of the county’s history – our county is 200 years old, after all. A lot of history has been made here: our name should reflect that long history of people, places and events.
it’s shorter. Do you have any idea how fun it is to say “Good Afternoon, Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society” over and over again as we answer the phone? Sheesh.
For some of our membership and the general public, the word “Pioneer” seems to imply that the only important history of our area is the period following European settlement. But we know the true pioneers of our area are the indigenous people who lived here before then. People have been here for a very long time – thousands of years.
The society has changed its name before: We were founded as the Pioneer Society of Oakland County in 1874. Later in the 19th century (or maybe early 20th), the name was changed to the “Oakland County Pioneer Society”. In 1945, as part of purchasing the Pine Grove property from the Wisner family, it changed again when the Oakland County Veterans Foundation merged with the Oakland County Pioneer Society to form the “Oakland County Pioneer and Veterans Historical Foundation” (that’s a mouthful). And in 1962, the society took the name “Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society”.
The change won’t be immediate: there’s paperwork to file and we’re not going to waste already-printed materials with our old name. It’ll be gradual, but you’ll start seeing it more and more as we go along.