By Arthur Foulkes
TERRE HAUTE — More than 50 people were seeing visions and hearing voices from the past Thursday afternoon at the Indiana State University Cunningham Memorial Library.
Wabash Valley Visions and Voices, a local history preservation project based at ISU, celebrated its fifth anniversary with presentations, music, food and historical drama.
“If we fail to document our own history, what are the people of tomorrow going to know about us?” asked Cinda May, project manager for Wabash Valley Visions and Voices. The project collects original photographs, documents, oral histories and other historic materials relating to the Wabash Valley. The project partners with dozens of Wabash Valley organizations, including museums, libraries and civic groups, to collect and preserve historic materials.
“We have received some really remarkable things” from people in the Wabash Valley, May said of contributions to the project’s collection. Researchers, historians, students and genealogists can use the Vision and Voices Web site to search a large database of original source material, she noted.
A few of the partner agencies with Visions and Voices include the Clabber Girl Museum, the Eugene V. Debs Museum, the ISU Folklore Archives, the Lost Creek Grove, Preservation and Restoration Foundation, Sisters of Providence, the Town of Seelyville, the Coal Town and Railroad Museum in Clinton and the Vigo County Public Library.
Among Thursday’s presentations, David Watkins, a retired member of the ISU music faculty and a 40-year member of the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra, played piano pieces with direct ties to Terre Haute and the Wabash Valley.
Among other pieces, Watkins, with the assistance of his wife, Nancy, played “I’m Gonna Float My Boat Right Back to Terre Haute,” by Malcomb Scott and “Queen of Terre Haute” by Cole Porter.
Visions and Voices also presented a video excerpt of an oral history interview of Dorothy and Geneva Ross about the village of Lost Creek, which was settled by free black people around 1830 in north eastern Vigo County. In the video, the Ross sisters tell of attending school in the mostly black rural village in the 1930s. They also talk about taking Sunday rides in their father’s car and working on their family farm and the household garden.
In another presentation from the Vigo County Historical Society’s “History Living” program, an actor portrayed historic Native American chief Tecumseh, whose brother led an attack on Fort Harrison. He spoke to the audience about the clash of Native American societies with European settlers. Another actor portrayed Col. Francis Vigo, an Italian fur trader and supporter of the American Revolution, after whom Vigo County is named.
“There’s one thing I want you to remember,” the actor portraying Vigo told the audience with an Italian accent. “It’s Vee-go, not Vigh-go.”
For more information on the Wabash Valley Visions and Voices project, see the organization’s Web page at visions.indstate.edu.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
