Grandma Mary Hill (Audio)

In 1988, Stevan Arnold recorded his grandmother, Mary Eslie Hill (1899-1996) talking about her family photographs and her memories of her family history. Mary was not the youngest of her siblings, but she lived the longest. I remember visiting her house in Iowa with my father the summer before I began graduate school (1990), and Mary was remarkably independent and a wonderful storyteller. She was still making quilts, and while they weren't as elaborate as the ones she had made in years past, they were better than any quilt I ever made. She also had a vast collection of hand bells and owl figurines, both of which she claimed she had started collecting by accident, almost as a joke. The apex of the collection was a small hand bell in the shape of an owl.

I am working on uploading a complete soundfile of the first session by father made with Mary. In the meantime, here is short clip of her describing the day her younger sister Helen was born in 1905.