Archives West Finding Aid

Barre Toelken Directed the Fife Folklore Program at Utah State University from 1985 until retirement in 2003. Toelken was born in 1935 in the Quabbin Valley of western Massachusetts, where as a member of a large, extended family, he was immersed in strong traditions of folk music and material culture. Encouraged by Mormon missionaries, Toelken relocated to Utah in 1953, and enrolled in the Forestry Program at Utah State Agricultural College (USU). Although he never embraced the Mormon faith, Toelken found the western setting of Utah's mountain valleys and deserts to his liking, and after changing his major to English, graduated in 1957.

Ever the activist, Toelken reportedly ran afoul of college administrators for his efforts to promote equality and justice, particularly among the campus's growing International student population. When the college rejected his application for graduate studies, Toelken accepted an offer from Washington State University to pursue a master's degree in English literature. After completing his studies in Washington, Toelken entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon, eventually settling on the study of ballads. His interest in folksong gradually extended to the study of folklore, generally, as he noted in 2003 that he may have always been a folklorist. "I always sensed that knowing the customs and ways of people was important. I somehow knew that even when I was a kid. Our family had singers on both sides, and I grew up singing whaling and sea songs. I also came of age in a working environment full of traditions…" The Quabbin Valley had been appropriated by the state for a water reservoir when Toelken was just a child. The episode had a lasting effect on him, and he decided to "always strive to commit to memory as much of what was traditional and customary in any culture I encountered--before the memories were all gone."

Toelken would spend the next two decades in Eugene as a faculty member at the University of Oregon. The draw to return to Utah, however, was strong, particularly given his relationship with the Navajo family of Yellowman. Following his graduation from USU in 1957, Toelken had travelled to southeastern Utah in hopes of cashing in on the uranium boom that was then underway. He contracted pneumonia, and was rescued and nursed back to health by the Navajos. His esteem for Navajo culture, and his sensitivity towards Navajo belief would exemplify much of the balance of his long and distinguished career as a folklore scholar.

In 1985, the Toelken family, Barre and Miiko, who had married in Springfield, Massachusetts, during a time when Utah law prohibited inter-racial marriages, returned to USU, to Utah's mountain valleys and deserts, where they currently live in the community of Providence.