Helene Stratman-Thomas

[b]Helene Stratman-Thomas[/b] (13 May 1896, Dodgeville, Wisconsin — 11 January 1973, Madison, WI) was an American folklorist and phonographer who worked at [url=https://discogs.com/label/513968]UW-Madison[/url] in various roles between 1930 and 1961, including the [a=Pro Arte Quartet]'s business manager, and best known as the head of the [b]Wisconsin Folk Music Project[/b] in the 1940s. She was an avid genealogist and the [url=https://discogs.com/artist/6871389]Daughters of the American Revolution[/url] member. Helene grew up in a predominantly Cornish town, exposed to various folk genres since early childhood, from German songs to English "game sounds" and Welsh hymns. Stratman-Thomas earned her degree in business management from the [l=University Of Wisconsin], spending the next eight years employed by the Minneapolis investment firm before she returned to UW-Madison and acquired a Bachelor's and Master's degree in music. She joined the University's faculty in 1930 as a music theory lecturer and women's choir conductor. In 1940, professor Leland A. Coon (1892—1980) invited Helene to join a government-funded "Wisconsin Folk Music Project," established in partnership with [l=The Library Of Congress] three years earlier to capture and preserve the state's diverse music traditions. Stratman-Thomas embarked on her first journey to collect folk records in the summer of 1940, followed by another trip in 1941 and 1946, after the Second World War. Stratman-Thomas recounted her travels in the [l=Wisconsin Public Radio] series and subsequently toured across Wisconsin with a cycle of lectures.