Wyoming State Historical Society updates
June 22, 2020
The Wyoming State Historical Society is a non-profit, membership driven organization that encourages the study of Wyoming History.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a number of their summer events have had to be cancelled or postponed. Here are cancellations with updates on rescheduling:
- May 25th Grand Opening of the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois
- The Family History Conference scheduled for late May in Salt Lake City, Utah
- The Society’s 20th Trek, hosted by the Crook County Historical Society, scheduled for June 13th will take place in 2020
- The Lincoln Highway Conference scheduled for June has been postponed to 2021
- 67th Annual Meeting of the WSHS will take place September 11-13
The Society announced the 2020 recipients of its Lola Homsher Research grants. This year they awarded a total of $6,942 to people doing research projects on Wyoming history. One of the recipients was Jocelyn Moore of Pinedale, who received a grant for $1,413 for research relating to the Civil War Cavalry in pre-Territorial Wyoming.
The Wyoming State Archives and State Museum, the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center, and the Wyoming State Historical Society are working on a project to document the COVID-19 pandemic experience in Wyoming. Are you keeping a journal, diary, or doing a blog about your experiences during the pandemic? Are you making masks, doing craft projects, struggling with having kids at home and homeschooling? These organizations hope by documenting people’s experiences now they can give clues to future historians about how we coped, communicated, and got through the difficult times.
If you are writing down your thoughts, they ask if you would consider donating a copy to the State Archives or American Heritage Center. If you reflect on social media, use the hashtag #Covid19WY so they can pull together all the tweets and posts later. That includes Instagram photos of empty streets or teddy bears in windows.
Why is it important to preserve these memories? Because while things are happening we sometimes don’t realize we are making history now. Recording these things while they are fresh in our minds will help future generations learn how we dealt with the day-to-day struggles of the unfolding events. Just as many people today are learning about how the world struggled with the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918 through personal stories, photographs, official accounts and newspaper articles of the time, future generations will learn about COVID-19 through the breadcrumbs of historical documentation recorded now for people to read about in the future.
For more information or to offer items, please contact Kathy Marquis, State Archivist, href="mailto:kathy.marquis@wyo.gov">kathy.marquis@wyo.gov, Jennifer Alexander, Wyoming State Museum Collections, jennifer.alexander@wyo.gov, or Sara Davis, University Archivist at the AHC at sarad@uwyo.edu. Digital memories can be sent directly to the Wyoming State Archives via their website at www.wyoarchives.org and click on the COVID-19 donation link.
For more information about the Wyoming State Historical Society, contact Linda Fabian, PO Box 247, Wheatland, WY 82201, linda@wyshs.org, www.wyshs.org.
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