The researcher’s journey has been an essential and defining piece of The Martindale Sisters project. It would be unfair and inaccurate to exclude the researcher because of her role as interpreter, storyteller, or even taking on the Greek Chorus task of explaining or commenting to the audience. So much of the sister’s story is revealed not only through what they write about, but also through their handwriting, which brings another dimension to the researcher’s experience and quickly becomes an irresistible draw to return to the collection over and over. As expected, vivid emotions are expressed through content, and they are also translated visually through sometimes drastic handwriting shifts.

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The collection is organized, sometimes loosely, by the person writing the letter. At times a single event has been interpreted or told by at least two different family members either writing to each other, or to someone outside of the family circle. In order to make sense of such an event, the researcher has the task of consulting various folders in different boxes in order to connect what are, at times, fuzzy and unclear dots. It is very easy to find yourself becoming deeply involved while trying to interpret what exactly happened by searching for reactions to letters, criss-crossing across family members or friends, or doing some additional contextual reading in order to decipher what it all means.

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The historical era that the sisters were living in is also an important factor for the researcher to consider. Their lives, dreams, disappointments, and achievements did not happen in a vacuum, and our background reading has been an invaluable tool to understanding their world. Despite the approximate 100 year time span, we can identify universal themes and struggles that young women of that time would still have today: unequal pay, single motherhood and poverty, domestic violence, non acceptance as equals in certain professional fields, to mention a few. The glass ceiling that these sisters were trying to break still exists today.

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Below are images of Kaya Deer-in-Water, the great grandson of Henrietta, and grandson of Bonno Hyessa and Charles Eastman. Kaya contacted Special Collections in August 2015 when the digitized finding aid of the collection led him to Murphy Library.  We immediately seized the opportunity to communicate with him via email and Skype, and finally had the immense pleasure and honor of meeting him when he returned to La Crosse in April 2016 for his first look at the Katharine Martindale Family Papers.