2019
The Sweet Sound of Family History
September 2019


“The Sweet Sound of Family History,” Liahona, September 2019

The Sweet Sound of Family History

Image
dulcimer

Illustration by Carolyn Vibbert

On a visit to my daughter in Kentucky, USA, I discovered an old Appalachian musical instrument called the mountain dulcimer. I was teaching some of my grandchildren to play music and found it is easy to learn to play simple melodies on the dulcimer. This portable and easy-to-store stringed instrument makes for fun family music while we sit around the campfire or at home.

One afternoon my daughter and I went to see if we could find someone who built dulcimers. We found an elderly man who lived in a little cabin on a country road. He built mountain dulcimers and had the perfect one for me.

Over the next few years, I learned to play and taught several of my grandchildren to play as well. I wanted to give each grandchild a dulcimer, but buying 17 of them would be expensive. So I decided to learn to build them myself.

I began by researching the history of this uniquely American instrument. I found that an instrument similar to the dulcimer, called a scheitholt, was probably brought to the United States in the 1700s by German or Scandinavian immigrants. At about the same time, Scotch-Irish immigrants also played the scheitholt. As time went on, people began to create modified versions of the scheitholt, which eventually became the mountain dulcimer. I also found that the name dulcimer is derived from the Latin dolce melos, or “sweet sound.”

Imagine my surprise when later, as I was preparing family history stories, I discovered that some of my mother’s mostly German ancestors and my father’s Scotch-Irish ancestors had played the mountain dulcimer! I was amazed that, generations later, I had discovered the instrument and had been teaching my grandchildren how to play it! What a wonderful musical connection between me and my ancestors and descendants! I am grateful for family history work, which has helped me appreciate my ancestors and feel a connection with them through the sweet sound of the mountain dulcimer.