CAVALIA, N.D. — For more than 30 years, Matt Werven has been connecting with people in the area and talking about their lives and experiences. After more than 700 interviews, he received a state award for his work.
“I didn’t expect any compensation,” he said.
Warven, a Cavalier, was awarded the 2023 Local History Excellence Award for his work conducting hundreds of interviews throughout his career. He accepted the award at the Pembina County Historical Museum from State Historical Society Director William Peterson during the Pembina County Historical Society’s annual meeting.
The interviews he recorded were digitized and donated to the SHSND for public viewing, with the caveat that the interviews would not be made public until the person interviewed had died.
“They kept their word,” Werven said. “I just love the people there. They make me feel happy.”
Interviews began in 1985, with Werven interviewing people born in the 1920s and 1930s to talk about their pioneer experiences. As the years went on, he talked more and more with people born in his 1940s and his 1950s. While some biographies focus on war stories, Werven is more interested in the experiences of people who lived through the Great Depression, drought, and periods in history without electricity or plumbing.
He has a few stories that still stick with him, most of them what he calls the “Undertaker” stories. Among them is the story of a man who was unfairly blamed for a woman’s death, a woman’s body falling off a wagon on the way to a funeral home, and then a family member carrying her husband’s body from the second floor down a flight of stairs. There are stories that I had to let go. . A woman accidentally poisons the children she was babysitting with a can of poisonous peas, and a young girl gives her new white dress to another little girl to wear at her funeral.
“(People) told me a lot of bad luck stories because it wasn’t funny on days when they ate an ice cream cone or something good happened,” Werven said. “They tried to tell me about the hard times and what it was like and what it was like.”
He continues to give interviews and says this is a piece of history he might never have known if he hadn’t sat down and talked to people. He says now someone can listen to the stories of their grandmothers and other family members and find out what they had to go through and how they lived. I did.
“It’s very educational,” he said. “All this knowledge, all that[people]did, would have been in vain.”
Not only was Warben’s work recognized on the day of the award, it also became his own story in the form of a 1948 UTS Minneapolis Moline tractor that his family donated to the Pembina County Historical Museum. Mr. Werven rode his tractor from Pembina County to Bismarck to participate in the 1989 North Dakota Centennial Parade.
Werven said he didn’t think he would be able to participate in the parade because he was calling people to register after registration had closed. However, then-state Rep. Sebastian “Buckshot” Hofner had declared the Minneapolis-Moline the Centennial Tractor, and since Werven revealed that was exactly the tractor he planned to take with him. , were allowed to participate in the parade. He’s glad the museum accepted the tractor.
“They took it out and put it in front of the museum,” he said. “I’m so glad they did that. It was a really fulfilling day.”
Otto just graduated from the University of North Dakota and is a reporter for the Herald.