just happened to see this obit. in todays Washington Post

Helen Carter

Country Singer

Helen Carter, 70, who played Autoharp, guitar, accordion, piano and mandolin and who sang with the seminal country music group the Carter Family, died June 2 at a hospital in Nashville. She had been hospitalized for most of the past year with stomach ailments.

Miss Carter, with sisters June and Anita, had performed for years in the show of country star Johnny Cash, June Carter's husband. They were the daughters of Mother Maybelle Carter, who with her cousin Sara Carter and Sara's husband, A.P. Carter, helped launch the country music industry in the 1920s.

Carter Family standards include country music classics such as "The Wabash Cannonball" and "Wildwood Flower." The three sisters continued the family act in the 1940s with their mother, who died in 1978.

It is always sad to see another piece of history pass on.The Carter Family played such a large part in the development of 'country' music and have become synonymous with certain songs and styles.

....in 1978, when Mother Maybelle died, I was at an open stage in Bethesda, MD, the night the news came out, and a fellow from Baltimore, Ron Penix, came over and got onstage and played "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"....on one of Maybelle's autoharps which he had acquired from her a few years previously!! There was not a dry eye in the place...I have an old autoharp of that style, and I shall be tuning it up and playing the song later today...perhaps others will join me in their own way....