Tom Ryan doesn't believe in "navel gazing."

The head of Lancaster County Historical Society since 1997, Ryan, 54, believes local historic events need to be connected to the larger stories of American history.

"We become irrelevant if we are focusing on history that's isolated from the fabric of American history," he said. "If we can't connect local history to major themes, like the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, then we aren't doing our job; we're just navel gazing."

With the recent merger of the historical society and Wheatland, the home of President James Buchanan, its neighbor on Marietta Avenue, that philosophy will only be strengthened.

"I think Lancaster is a lens through which we can understand how (Pennsylvania) developed," Ryan said. "And now with Wheatland, we have a national story."

Ryan will be CEO of the newly formed organization, which has a whopper of a name — LancasterHistory.org: Lancaster County's Historical Society and President James Buchanan's Wheatland — but will be known as LancasterHistory.org, which is, of course, also the name of its Web site.

He'll oversee a budget of just less than $1.5 million.

"We'll have archivists and librarians and curators who all add value to everything that has been going on at Wheatland for decades," Ryan said. "And the director of Wheatland, Pat Clarke, has a deep grounding in Buchanan and the mid-19th century."

The neighbors have always shared grounds for the annual Civil War encampment on their combined 10 acres. And last September, the two organizations held a joint seminar about reassessing the Buchanan presidency and the political crisis of the 1850s.

"We had more than 240 people attend that scholarly symposium," Ryan said. "That, in some ways, pinpoints to the future and the kind of things we will be doing together."

In the dozen years Ryan has been running the historical society, he has worked to make it less insular and open it up to the community.

"We began a series of collaborations that now involve more than 20 partners," he said. "Right now at the Lancaster Bar Association there is an exhibit on the history of law in Lancaster County. We've done the history of Temple Shaarai Shomayim, Central Market, Trinity Lutheran Church."

The historical society also has an array of educational programming, lectures, symposiums, films, research courses, exhibits and school programs.

But its core is devoted to research materials. And it has plenty. So much, in fact, that Ryan says the society is out of space.

The building is filled with county records (more than 600,000 from the county's founding to the early 20th century), family histories and manuscript materials, such as wills and estate inventory.

Ryan said 35 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry in some part to Lancaster County. No wonder the society has members from 46 states.

"Genealogical resources have always been a major thrust for the historical society," he said.

When Ryan came on board, the historical society had about 1,000 members; now it has 2,500, with 500 coming from Wheatland. He will now oversee 20 employees.

"We've changed from being a well-run small historical society to a professionally staffed, first-rate historical society," he said.

Ryan can thank his wife of 24 years, Tracey Weis, a history professor at Millersville University, for his decision to follow a career in history.

He was a social worker who had minored in history at College of the Holy Cross.

When Weis went to Rutgers to get her Ph.D., Ryan began volunteering at the nearby Newark Museum, which has a strong collection of American decorative art.

He was bitten by the history bug, and when Weis got the job at Millersville, Ryan decided to go for his master's and Ph.D. through a special program at Winterthur Museum in Delaware, which houses one of the largest collections of American decorative arts in the country.

He originally wanted to do his dissertation on the Hudson Valley, where he is from, but his wife suggested, with two young sons (Michael, now 20, and Tuck, 14) in tow, he might want to research something closer to home.

"I became enamored with the work of (Lancaster portrait painter) Jacob Eichholtz, and the doors of the Lancaster County Historical Society opened up to me," Ryan recalled.

That was in 1995. Two years later, the executive director position became available.

"I saw a lot of potential here, some of it realized and some of it waiting to happen," he said.

The merger with Wheatland, he said, will make that potential bigger.

"I think, together, we'll be able to do a lot more for the community."

E-mail: jholahan@lnpnews.com or call 481-6016