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By Root 401 0

hoboes, or the cultural bias underestimating women’s physical and mental strength. Helga recognized the strength she and Clara possessed as they forged their way across the land; this heightened her awareness of what women could do. Beyond individual efforts, though, she saw the essential force of communal strength. Walking though Colorado and Wyoming, where women had won the right to vote, and through America during the election fervor of 1896, awakened Helga to the possibilities for significant political change when people unite together. Ideas matter, as do cultural norms and legal structures, affecting both individuals and the nation she loved. This freed her to become actively involved in the suffrage movement, even when her daughters disapproved, and to believe that this nation should and would open full citizenship to women. Her grandchildren missed a rich vein of wisdom when they did not get to hear how she approached life’s challenges, and her active belief in what can be called the art of the possible.

The gathering and sharing of the rag-rug remnants of our family’s lives gives a gift to the next generation, a community of memory in a highly mobile world. Through developing written and oral histories, creating scrapbooks, telling stories around a dining table or campfire, displaying photographs and making videos, every family can weave an enduring rug of memories. Capturing the hopes, challenges, actions, disappointments, successes, pains, and joys inherent in every family gives children roots and wings. Other cultures practice the art of storytelling. In the Masai tribe in Kenya, for example, when a person dies, the greatest gift one can give a grieving person is to come and tell a story from the loved one’s life. A collage of memories grow, giving the heart solace and healing, and the stories go on for generations. Remembering the past, telling the children the stories of parents and grandparents lives, can prove to be a pivotal resource in a young person’s life, as Doug Bahr recognized in remembering his great-great-grandmother, Helga.

My hope is that Helga’s story, once shrouded in silence, now can be linked with other voices to contribute to a fuller American history and to contribute to a growing dialogue on the causes and costs of silencing the story of a life.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Thelma Portch, first interview by author, Almira, Wash., 1984.

2. Ibid.

3. M. Cummings, The Lamplighter (1854; reprint, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 6:104.

4. Thelma Portch, second interview by author, Almira, Wash., 1986.

5. Darillyn Bahr, “Coast to Coast,” School Research Report, Wilbur, Wash., 1977.

6. T. Portch, second interview.

7. T. Portch, first interview.

8. Ibid.

1 | ON FOOT TO NEW YORK

1. “Tramp to New York,” Spokane (Wash.) Daily Chronicle, May 4, 1896, p. 2.

2. Ibid.

3. “Coast to Coast,” Minneapolis Times, June 2, 1897, p. 5.

4. “On a Long Walk,” Idaho Daily Statesman, June 5, 1896, p. 3.

5. Ibid.

6. Letters from the Thelma Portch Collection. These include 1893 letters to Helga from her children, some undated letters and notes, and notes from Helga giving the date of Henry’s death.

7. “Are Walking for Wages,” Walla Walla Union, May 17, 1896, p. 4.

8. Nels Siverson, neighbor of the Estbys at Mica Creek, oral interviews, 1986, 1993. Nels’ father, Martin Siverson, was Ole’s best friend. Nels had been told the story by his father who had watched them start their walk from Mica Creek.

9. “Are Walking for Wages,” Walla Walla Union, p. 4; “Two Women’s Long Tramp,” New York Herald, December 23, 1896, p.10; “From Spokane to New York: Two Women Tramps,” Lebanon Daily News, December 19, 1896, p. 1.

10. “Women Walkers,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 2, 1897, p. 4.

11. “The Story They Told,” San Francisco Examiner, December 23, 1896, p. 4; “A Long Journey,” Fort Wayne Gazette, November 19, 1896, p. 1; “Women Walkers Reach Plymouth,” Plymouth Republic, November 19, 1896, p. 6.

12. “Women Pedestrians,” Daily Sun Leader, August 27, 1896, p. 4.

13. “The Estbys Reach