CELEBRATING
LIFE BY COMPARISON
The Evolution Of An Exhibit
By Kevin Kooistra-Manning, Deputy Director and Community Historian, Western Heritage Center, Billings, Mont.
"You know Teddy [Cousin] is fond of good butter and good coffee - two things that one only meets with out here, in his dreams. But after all we only enjoy life by comparison. I really think it does not make much difference where or how we live providing we get used to it." - Parmly Billings (Billings, Mont.) to his mother, Julia Billings (Woodstock, Vt.), July 7, 1887. (Billings Family Archives)
(Sounding Board, November 2002) A yearlong exhibit at the Western Heritage Center, "Life by Comparison: The Stories of Frederick and Parmly Billings," explores the personal lives of our town's namesake, Fredrick Billings, and his son Parmly.
Frederick - president of the Northern Pacific when the railroad platted the town of Billings, Mont., in 1882 - invested in the nascent city. After retiring to his model farm and family estate in Woodstock, Vt., Frederick sent Parmly to oversee his business interests in Billings. The exhibit is the core element in our celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Western Heritage Center and the 100th anniversary of the Parmly Billings Memorial Library, the Romanesque sandstone building that houses the museum. The Museum Loan Network's support greatly enriched the exhibit through new discoveries and the inclusion of artifacts, letters, and photographs loaned from the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park and Billings Farm and Museum in Woodstock.
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| A view from the exhibit: Parmly Billings' trunk, c. 1875. It is likely the trunk he used when going to preparatory school as a youngster. (From the collection of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Photo courtesy of the Western Heritage Center) |
The MLN travel grant and the opportunity it provided to visit the Billings home in Woodstock completely reshaped our original plan for the exhibit. During our week in Vermont, we discovered a wealth of artifacts and archival documents from Parmly's sojourn in Billings. Our new partners in Woodstock suggested we explore the often strained relationship between the wealthy 19th-century capitalist and his free-spirited son.
We specifically targeted artifacts and heirlooms that would compare life in Billings with Woodstock during the 1880s. The family's words, gleaned from letters, diaries, and speeches, dictated the content of the exhibit. The implementation grant made it possible to borrow artifacts - ranging from Parmly's childhood books and Frederick's briefcase to items from the Vermont farm industry of that era - that helped bring these two names to life in our community's history.
Jim Cockey, the composer who traveled to Woodstock with us as part of the MLN-American Composers Forum pilot program Museums, Composers, and Communities, encouraged us to take note of musical references in the family archives. Soon we were collecting sheet music from both museums, with the idea of using local talent in Billings and Woodstock to record the material. More than 400 people participated in the creation of this exhibit; many of them were the musicians, vocalists, and choirs who recreated the period music, including a brass band rendition of "Yankee Doodle," Crow Indian drum music, and Parmly's favorite hymn. (Patrons can enjoy these "Music as Artifact" pieces in an enclosed sound room within the exhibit and on the Web at www.ywhc.org/Billings/music1.html.)
The experience of hearing that music led one visitor to remark, "There was a moment in the music room where I imagined myself transported back to the 1880s, sitting in the parlor of the Billings family home, enjoying their music."
The exhibit continues to enchant the people of Billings with the story of a man who left the East to carve out a name for himself in what was then a western outpost. The title of the exhibit was inspired by one of Parmly's quotes that said that the comforts of home, notably absent from the rough prairie town of Billings, were just a matter of "life by comparison."
In response to Parmly's often witty accounts of life in early Billings, one local resident wrote, "Your comparison of a very successful father and his son, who was sent to boarding school and then ultimately to Billings, which he found boring, leads me to this modern possibility: That Billings, now sandwiched between two Wal-Marts and perhaps still lacking the good breads and seafoods of more major cities, might still be viewed by certain 25-year-olds, who may have been deposited here by successful captains of industry from the East, as a windy, dry land, void of industry, where a young person, such as Parmly, would still have to fight his way by the gambling halls to find the church. At least our sewer system is better now."
The new partnerships have broadened our perspectives. While we became acquainted with Frederick's vision for the conservation of the Vermont landscape, those in Woodstock learned more about the family's experiences in the West.
"When [I'm] asked in Vermont to describe who Frederick Billings was, I resort to a kind of shorthand," says David Donath, director of the Woodstock Foundation. "'He was a conservationist and a transcontinental railroad builder. You know, Billings, Mont., is named after him.' So we were excited when the Western Heritage Center contacted us about a new exhibit about Frederick and Parmly Billings. Frederick would be very pleased with the transcontinental vision that it represents."
The exhibit created an opportunity for community participation, an experience that promises to be memorable beyond the life of the yearlong exhibit. The energy of the new partnerships between the museums of Billings and Woodstock has rippled out into the community. Musicians we worked with have started performing together on a regular basis, and the challenges of the project prompted the recording studio to invest in new technology specifically designed for remote field recordings. Visitors have remarked on how much they've learned about our town's namesake. Audiences at lectures and outreach programs have laughed at Parmly's letters, reflected on family anecdotes, and lined up to thank the museum for bringing the stories of Frederick and Parmly Billings to life.
Read Lori Gross' discussion with Banfield, Cockey, and Frank.