Generated by CoPilot 16 March 2025 Why Preserve Stories? Have you ever casually said, “when I did . ..” and your children looked at you and said, “Huh? you did what?”  When this happens to you, it is time to record the story. Thirty or 100 years from now, that story will mean much more to your descendants than any family tree you create. Inland Empire Students at Music Sessions, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, 24 July 1949, p. 24, col. 2-3. If you think, “Someday, I will write a family history,” but you go right back to researching the marriage date of third Cousin Mary Missing, within five minutes the incident will have flitted from your mind. Kevin Kelly admonishes us to write down the idea within five minutes before it is gone. My list of experiences, events, and incidents is getting really long, so I have decided to get started so that my descendants will have SOMETHING. The summer of 1949, my mother attended a short course at the University of Washington to prepare her ...

At one point in my life I did post-graduate work at the University of Montana in Missoula. I decided to do a research project on the History of Music in Missoula, 1865-1890. I spent one summer reading microfilm of Montana newspapers to find not only the occasions that mentioned music, but also to determine what was being performed and by whom. After the Civil War, there was an influx of southern men to Montana Territory looking for gold. Mining camps sprang up all along the rivers that flowed out of the Rocky Mountains and these migrants brought with them the culture of their Appalachian heritage. An article in the newspaper, whether from Virginia City, Missoula or Anaconda, might read, "We were entertained on Saturday last by music performed by the sheriff, the barber and other members of our community, playing on their fiddles, banjo and mandolins. Community inhabitants filled the saloon and expressed their delight." A few inches down the page, there might be another articl...