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Border to Border
For over two decades, volunteers from across Montana registered
local quilts as a part of the Montana Historic Quilt Project. The
quilts chronicle Montana's history over the last 150 years, telling
the stories of statehood, the struggle for women's suffrage, two
world wars, the Great Depression, as well as the recent past. This
highly illustrated book showcases the Montana's best, most unique,
and most interesting quilts and describes the life and times of the
extraordinary people who made them. Border to Border: Quilts and Quiltmakers of Montana is an invaluable addition to quilting
literature and to Montana history.
- Over 150 rich, full-color photography of quilts
- Over 50 historical photographs
- Authentic, well-researched histories of individual quilts and quiltmakers
Excerpt:
(from foreword)
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Border to Border: Quilts and Quiltmakers of Montana is the
culmination of the efforts of dozens, probably even hundreds, of
quilters dedicated to preserving Montana's quilt legacy. Although
they might not have known it, the Montana Historic Quilt Project
volunteers were making significant contributions to the study of
history by tracking folk art objects made traditionally by women. We
tend to think that historians spend all of their time researching in
the archives, pouring through boxes and boxes of written records.
But increasingly scholars who study the past are looking at the
things people made as well as the writings they left behind.
Folklorist Henry Glassie, one of the earliest proponents of this
type of research explained the value of including everyday objects
in our study of the past: "Few people write. Everyone makes things.
An exceptional minority has created the written record. The
landscape is the product of the divine average." In other words,
history becomes more democratic, more inclusive, if we look at
things made by normal, everyday people.
In this context, quilts are extremely valuable because they have
traditionally been made by women, a group that for a long time was
left out of the study of history. Even if women left behind fewer
written records than men in the past, looking at quilts allows
scholars to trace changing technologies, aesthetics, and cultural
values over time and to add women back into the story of American
history.
I appreciate quilts for the contribution they can make to our
understanding of American history, but in the process of researching
and writing this book, I came to love Montana's quilts not because
of their larger meanings but simply because they offer a starting
point for telling individual stories. Ordinary Montanans did as much
as the prominent ones to shape the history of the state, and their
stories deserve greater recognition. In little snapshots, quilts
made or brought here by everyday folk tell the story of Montana that
you never fully understand when you read about Lewis and Clark,
General Custer, or the Copper Kings. |
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Montana Place Names Among
Montana's most enduring legacies are the names assigned to her
geographic features and places found on the state map. As long as
humans have inhabited Montana they have named places. While the past
two centuries have changed the way people live in Montana, the names
given to rivers, mountain ranges, cities, and towns have persisted.
Montana Place Names explores the origins of more than 1,000 Montana place
names, drawing upon the knowledge of Montana Historical Society
historians and the expertise of local historians from across the
state. This new publication includes both geographic features,
selected historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic
Places, historic photographs, and maps. The authors' extensive
research illuminates the stories behind the names of places that we
call home.
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Since the early nineteenth century, explorers and surveyors placed
names on their maps of the region of North America that would become
Montana Territory in 1864. Among the earliest mapmakers, Lewis and
Clark arrived in 1804 -1806, David Thompson of the North West Fur
Company followed shortly. Geographic features dominate those maps,
especially rivers and mountain ranges. Father Pierre DeSmet, a
Jesuit missionary, arrived on the scene in the 1840s. The first
towns appear on Walter W. DeLacy's 1865 map, commissioned by the
first Territorial Legislature. In just over half a century the
Montana map sprouted hundreds of new names, created by hundreds of
thousands of homesteaders who poured into the state seeking cheap
land. The railroads promoted homesteading and offered up a wide
array of names, some associated with railroad executives but others
plucked off a world atlas, such as Sumatra and Malta. Between 1900
and 1918, Montana's population more than tripled, but drought during
the 1920s and 1930s prompted a mass exodus from eastern Montana, and
the current Montana highway map reflects the steep decline in
population; hundreds of towns have disappeared reflecting a shift in
the state's economy from mining, timbering, and small farms to a
service economy and much larger farms and ranches served by regional
commercial centers.
This new traveler's guide explores the origins of more than 1,100
Montana place names, drawing upon the knowledge of Montana
Historical Society historians and the Society's extensive collection
of historic maps and newspapers, as well as the expertise of local
and county historians.
Montana is a vast landscape, its history and significance unknown to
many, both to the native and the interested tourist. Clues to the
meaning of the past can be found in the names that grace the
contemporary Montana highway map, and this guidebook strives to
illuminate some of the mysteries. The following entries document the
names as we currently know then, and whenever possible, include both
the history of the present name, as well as any and all previous
names. |
