How do I get Terminal to remember previous commands after closing window in SL 10.6.8? Any way to enable scrollbacks after you quit the window? Even if the app itself is still running, closing the window and opening a new one doesn't work.

I am SURE it used to work on my old Mac, but I simply cannot find an option in preferences anywhere and Google is not my friend.
I had the same issue on my new Mac, when I checked the history file ~/.bash_history I discovered that it was owned by root. I run sudo chown username .bash_history, now when I reopen terminal my history is preserved.