Sonja Mongar on Writing Cora Paul Back into History

What happens when one forgotten diary, a trunk full of artifacts, and decades of research bring an erased woman’s story back into view?

In this episode of Armchair Historians, I’m joined by writer, teacher, and my former multimedia writing mentor, Sonja Mongar, to talk about her powerful work on Cora Paul — a real woman whose life unfolded between Victorian expectations and modern independence in the early American West.

Sonja shares how Cora’s 1907 diary, family photographs, postcards, and inherited objects helped her reconstruct a life that had long been reduced to family judgment and silence. We talk about erased history, women of the West, family archives, intergenerational trauma, creative nonfiction, and why telling these stories matters.

We also discuss multimedia storytelling, the power of preserving history outside traditional gatekeeping institutions, and how personal artifacts can open a window into the past.

If you love hidden women’s history, family stories, historical research, and the messy, human truth behind the archive, this episode is for you.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Cora Paul and the idea of the “New Woman of the West”
• Erased and marginalized histories
• Diaries, postcards, photographs, and family archives
• Women’s lives in Montana in the early 20th century
• Multimedia storytelling as a form of historical preservation
• The tension between academic history and lived history
• How personal history can become public history

Links & Resources:

• Sonja Mongar’s website: sonjamongar.com
  
  
• Sonja Mongar on Facebook: facebook.com/sonja.mongar.96
  
  
• Missoula Public Library Family History Writing Contest: missoulapubliclibrary.org/family-history-writing-contest
  
  Sonja mentions that her Cora Paul piece is slated to appear through this program; the library says qualifying submissions are published online and uploaded to the Montana History Portal. 
• StoryCorps: storycorps.org
  
  

Books Mentioned / Related Reading:

• Bone Deep in Landscape: Writing, Reading, and Place by Mary Clearman Blew — University of Oklahoma Press
  
  

About Cora Paul:
Cora Josephine Paul was born in 1893 and her life story, as reconstructed by Sonja, traces a path from Chicago to Montana ranch country and later to an indepe