Our mission at the Minnesota Historical Society is straightforward—to preserve, share, and connect our history with Minnesotans and others both today and into the future. The organization does that in many ways: through our exhibitions, Library, historic sites, publications, and educational activities. Our permanent collection is at the core of everything we do at MHS.

With the goal of documenting the history of Minnesota and to tell the story of the people who call it home, each year the Collections department acquires thousands of items for its permanent collection.

We put together this current exhibit at the James J. Hill House to demonstrate the range of our collections.  Selected by Collection curators and staff, nearly all of the items in this exhibition were acquired in the last two years. Together, they demonstrate the depth and breadth of our collecting activities. From a 4,000 year-old prehistoric tool found in a northern suburban city park to campaign buttons for the latest Minnesotans to run for president, we aim to provide insight into the cultural, political, and social history of the state.

To see the exhibit, please visit the James J. Hill House. The show will be up until June 17, 2013.

To learn more about our collections, visit us at www.mnhs.org/collectionsupclose.

In February of 2013, the Minnesota Historical Society’s Manuscripts Collections acquired this letter written on February 23, 1850 in St. Paul by Presbyterian Minister, Edward Duffield Neill. Addressed to a Home Missionary Society colleague out East, the letter provides a detailed account of Neill’s missionary work in St. Paul, as well as his impressions regarding the changing landscape in the surrounding Territory.

Neill recounts his early work as a Presbyterian Minister in the Minnesota Territory but first and foremost, the eight-page manuscript gives a brief statistical analysis of Neill’s work over the past 10 months. He reports his involvement in building the First Presbyterian Church in St. Paul (Dec. 1849), his financial contributions to the Home Missionary Society’s coffers ($45.00 to date), and the increase in those who “…worship in accordance with the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian denominations” (approximately 900). He goes on to describe the pre-existing Catholic and Protestant denominations, the former currently being housed in a “rude log chapel”.

The letter also describes Neill’s impression of St. Paul upon his arrival in 1849. He states, “I landed at St. Paul in April, 1849. It was then a village of 300 inhabitants, mostly illiterate French Canadians attached to the Church of Rome.” Being a man of the church, he did however attempt to lighten the blow, stating that the current state of the Territory proves there have since been “…great changes and those in the right direction.”

Neill’s interests crossed well beyond his early work as a Minister, showing an inclination towards matters of business, politics, and governance. He is delighted by the establishment of several new schools and quite impressed by the Territorial Government’s incorporation of a Library Association.  Neill believes in five years time, “…there will be direct or speedy communications between St. Anthony Falls and New York City via Lake Superior, and there will be a call for at least five times as many laborers.”

Neill’s predictions for the future were not always so bright, however. In a passage foretelling of impending events, Neill states, “Four-Fifths of the Territory is in Indian Country, the abode of the warlike Ojibwa, the wild Dakota and the discontented Winnebago. Negotiations however are going on, which will shortly induce the Dakota to dispose of the lands of his ancient ancestors and to commence his painful Exodus towards the setting sun.”

Edward D. Neill, a native Philadelphian, came to the Minnesota Territory in 1849 as a Presbyterian Minister under the auspices of the Home Missionary Society. At the time this letter was written, Neill was a frontier minister but he is also known as a prolific author, Civil War Chaplain to the 1^st Minnesota infantry, Secretary to Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, as well as a past President of Macalester College.

This spectacular piece of Minnesota history complements the Society’s collection of the Edward D. Neill and family papers, as well as the Minnesota portion of the American Home Missionary Society records, available on microfilm.

See whole letter: Neill letter 1850

Shelby Edwards, Manuscripts Collections Assistant

Learn More:

• Edward D. Neill and Family Papers

President’s Day is History Matters Day at the Capitol!

• Come hang out in the State’s seat of power and government!

• Look at cool items from the Collections!

• Go on a free tour of the Captiol!

• Enjoy a free craft activity for the kids!

• Talk to your legislator about why history matters to you!

This Monday, February 18, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Learn more here:
http://www.mnhs.org/historymatters/

Free shuttles are available from the History Center. Hope to see you then!

Historically, posters have been a relatively cheap and quick way to disseminate information and ideas. Often, in opposition to commercial posters which promote the consumption of products, political posters, as a genre, have been used much in the same way as political graffiti – to promote grassroots political and philosophical ideas and movements.

Today, political poster-makers expand upon the historic role of their predecessors, often straddling the line of fine art printmaking. Almost exclusively, they produce hand-printed, limited-edition serigraphs (screenprints) or prints produced using letterset presses – rather than using machines to print offset lithographs, which is the printing process most commonly associated with ‘large-run’ commercial posters.

Minnesota has a unique and vibrant graphic arts community; the community of printmakers and poster artists is no exception.

Poster Offensive is a biennial political poster exhibit created in 2004 by Jeff Johnson, owner and creative director of Spunk Design Machine (these exhibits currently coincide with election cycles).  According to the exhibit organizers, Poster Offensive is “an independent, non-partisan poster show, which utilizes the politically potent medium of the poster to showcase contemporary interpretations and critiques of political and social issues.”

Although many of the artworks in the Poster Offensive exhibits deal specifically with the elections with which they coincide, some reflect larger issues, including local food movements, conservation of natural resources, freedom of speech, unemployment, immigration, women’s rights, and, like these presented here from the 2012 Poster Offensive 6, the recent proposed ‘marriage’ amendment to the Minnesota State Constitution. Designed, illustrated, and printed by Jeff Johnson, Bill Ferenc, and Andy Weaver of Spunk Design Machine, a Minneapolis-based design boutique, these two versions of Equal Equals Love were recently added to the Fine Art collection at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Ben Gessner, Collections Associate

Click images above to see them larger. To learn more, please go to Collections Online:

Paul Bunyan and Jolly Green Giant

Dorothy and Betty Crocker

To learn even more:

www.posteroffensive.com/

http://spkdm.com/

http://bigtablestudio.com/

In November 1969, four months after the first manned lunar landing by Apollo 11, President Richard Nixon asked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to prepare lunar soil samples collected from the mission for presentation to the 50 United States and 135 countries.  Each sample was to be accompanied by the recipient’s state or national flag, which had traveled to the Moon and back aboard Apollo 11.

President Nixon presented this lunar soil display, containing approximately 50 milligrams of material, to the people of Minnesota in 1970 with the message:

Presented to the people of Minnesota by Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America.

This flag of your state was carried to the Moon and back by Apollo 11 and this fragment of the Moon’s surface was brought to Earth by the crew of that first manned lunar landing.

The display is presumed to have been received by the Office of the Governor, but for reasons which remain uncertain it was transferred to the Minnesota Department of Military Affairs where it remained for 40 years.  In 2010 the display was discovered in a storage area by staff of the Minnesota National Guard, who transferred it to the Minnesota Historical Society in November, 2012.

Adam Scher, Senior Curator

For more details, view the Moon Rocks in our Collections Online database.

Join us for an evening to celebrate the completion of the Mondale Papers project and learn more about the Public Affairs Collections of the MHS. Speakers will talk about the importance of the Collection, and Mr. Mondale and Gary Eichten (of Minnesota Public Radio) will have a conversation about his life in public service.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Location: Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, MN.

Time: 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Cost: FREE. Registration Required. Reserve tickets here: www.mnhs.org/mondaleevent

Call 651-259-3015 for more information

Please note:  All tickets will be held at will call 30 minutes prior to the event.  No tickets will be mailed.

Even if you can’t make the event, be sure to check out our new and improved Government, Politics, and Public Affairs page as well as the new Walter F. Mondale Collection page.

Work by eight of the artists has been selected for purchase as part of the Minnesota Historical Society’s permanent collection. The painting above is titled “The Crow is to Die For!” by Dwayne Wilcox.

Featured Artists:
Joe Allen, Angela Babby, Karen Beaver, Todd Bordeaux, Julie Buffalohead, Avis Charley, Gordon Coons, Jim Denomie, Michael Elizondo Jr., Evans Flammond, Charles Her Many Horses, Dakota Hoska, Henry Payer, Charles Rencountre, James Star Comes Out, Maggie Thompson, Jodi Webster, Gwen Westerman, Dwayne Wilcox, Bobby Wilson

Dakota Artist and Scholar Gwen Westerman Wasicuna said the following about the exhibit:

“With a stunning mix of humor and anger, hope and despair, this collection expresses the array of complicated responses to a brutal history.  While the thirty-eight executed Dakota are prominent, other essential aspects of culture and tradition are also present, including the strength of Dakota women, the role of horses and honor, and the ever-present landscape of the homeland. Whether incorporating new interpretations of traditional forms of beadwork, winter counts, and horse masks, or employing diverse contemporary techniques in glass, found objects, and photography, the messages here are as diverse as the artists themselves.  The stories depicted contribute to a broader understanding of the impact of these historical events and the power of art to tell a difficult story.  Abstract, realistic, and representational, these pieces help us see the transformative capacity of trauma and healing, destruction and regeneration, and above all, representation and memory.”

This exhibit will be on view during Hill House hours until January 13, 2013.

In this election year, we have an opportunity to look back at one of the greatest statesman produced by Minnesota: Hubert H. Humphrey.

Thanks to a grant from the NHPRC (National Historical Publications and Records Commission) we are working on digitizing all of Humphrey’s speeches. He was well-known as a fantastic orator. When complete, this project will provide a tremendous resource for students of all ages as well as people interested in the politics and history of our state and nation.

The intent with this project is to update the finding aid with those speech texts that have been digitized each month.  People can look forward to the 1941-1947 speeches being available this September.

Learn more:

• Hubert H. Humphrey Digitization Project
• Hubert H. Humphrey Speech Text Files finding aid

Together, the Northern Pacific and Great Northern manuscript collections make the Minnesota Historical Society one of the great centers for railroad research in the entire nation. Acquisitioned in December 1968 and October 1972, the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads, respectively, became two of the largest collections that the Society houses. An astounding number of records have been processed and conserved in the intervening time, leading to thousands of boxes, volumes, and drawings being made accessible for research purposes.

The availability of inventories for these collections has, until recently, only been available in the Society’s reading room, but now you can explore the multitude of records on line! Documenting all facets of the railroads’ development and the communities they served, these finding aids allow for more convenient browsing, faster searching, and the discovery of related materials that may have been overlooked before.

That’s right! Minneapolis to Minot, Grand Forks to Great Falls, and Sand Point to Seattle, all stops along the railroad to research are now available on line. Travel the rails to Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, finagle your way through financial records, peruse photographs, consider correspondence, muse over maps, delve into drawings, bring blueprints to bear, and inspect indexes. We’re not just blowing steam here, take a look for yourself, and come explore the history of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads:

Great Northern: http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00901.xml

Northern Pacific: http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/01010.xml

In October 2011, the Minnesota Historical Society acquired this Colt Army Model 1860 revolved used by Mathew Marvin of Company K in the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. A native of upstate New York, Marvin made his way to Winona, Minnesota, in 1859, where he clerked in a store. At the outset of the Civil War, he was among the first to enlist at Fort Snelling in April 1861.

Marvin’s military career was mixed. While he rose through the ranks from Private to First Sergeant, he also suffered three wounds. The first was in battle at First Bull Run, the second was in camp due to an accidental discharge from another soldier’s gun, and the third occured during the 1st Minnesota’s celebrated charge at Gettysburg. That wound, caused when a bullet passed through the length of his foot, effectively ended his service and troubled him for the remainder of his life. After recuperating with his parents in Illinois, Marvin eventually returned to Winona, where he was active in veterans’ affairs. He died, at age 64, in 1903, and was buried in Winona’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

Marvin’s revolver passed on to his daughter, Mabel, who in turn gave it to a collector shortly before her own death in 1955. The collector took it with him to Nebraska, where it was auctioned this past fall. Now the gun not only returns to Minnesota, but also joins Mathew Marvin’s frock coat, canteen, personal papers and diaries, already in the Society’s collections. It’s a magnificent addition, and all the more fitting as we commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

Matt Anderson
Former Objects Curator

Learn More

• Follow Marvin and others on the Civil War Daybook
• See Mathew Marvin’s frock coat
• See Mathew Marvin’s canteen
• See the story of the 1st Minnesota’s Gettysburg charge
• Find more resources about the 1st Minnesota

Minnesota Historical Society members are invited to enjoy refreshments and hear the Library of Congress Lessing J. Rosenwald curator, Dan De Simone, speak.  De Simone has been at the Library of Congress since January 2000; previously, he ran his own rare book company in NYC. Over the past 35 years he has developed expertise in antiquarian bibliography, illustrated books, 18th-century French and Italian books, and 18th-century Irish books.

It is also an opportunity to help build the fantastic Minnesota Historical Society’s Library Collection! This world-renowned collection is continually evolving and now is your chance to be part of it. Gifts up to $ 5,000 will be matched dollar for dollar!

To learn more about this exciting event, visit 2012bookfairwishlist.

If you are not a member yet, there is still time to join and attend!

Hope to see you there!

Who was Ignatius Donnelly? He was a U.S. Congressman, populist writer and amateur scientist, but today he’s just as well known for his theories on Atlantis, Catastrophism and Shakespearean authorship. Get to know him at next Thursday’s History Happy Hour at the Alexander Ramsey House. Reserve your tickets today!

Who is Patrick Coleman? Acquisitions Librarian at MHS, avid canoer, and Donnelly enthusiast. He’ll be the one regaling you with stories of Donnelly and old Saint Paul.

For over a decade the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) has been digitizing collections materials for the purposes of increasing accessibility, supporting research, and preserving original materials. The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ – The Seven Council Fires digitization project expanded to include additional goals. Sought by Dakota individuals who wanted increased access and understanding of the Dakota material culture in the MHS collections, a new level of transparency was achieved. By using the WOTR (Write On The Record) tool to record feedback and comments MHS steps back and shares authority in interpreting this material. Both MHS and Dakota communities will benefit from this partnership as information about these items is dramatically enhanced.

We have a new Library homepage!

www.mnhs.org/library

We got rid of some out-of-date things, added some new how-tos to empower users, and cleaned up the layout. Access to our tools and information is still there, hopefully in a more user friendly format. The ability to easily change the Featured Item and Library News will make our communications to patrons as timely as possible.

Take a look!

If you’ve seen and loved the Beyond the Doughboy: Minnesota Mascots podcast, then be sure not to miss the corresponding exhibit in the Library Lobby!
Pieces from the podcast and more will be on view now through the end of March.
Keep it real, Gophers!

Connecting people and things in an intimate way is one of the core duties of history museums.  But for most institutions, letting visitors handle more than a carefully-chosen sliver of their artifact collections isn’t practical.  Frequent handling can damage an object in a matter of days.  And even the sturdiest relics are out of reach for would-be handlers who live too far away to visit them.

What, then, can museums do to recreate the miracle of contact at a distance?  To encourage handling without the wear-and-tear?  Digital photographs in online catalogs do a great deal, but they have limits.  Take this picture of a Dakota tobacco pouch, for example.

It’s a fine image; you can see the intricate seed bead and porcupine quill panels, the water damage to the buckskin shell and even, if you zoom in, the beads trimming the lip of the opening.  But what does the pouch look like when you flip it over?   How deep is the pocket?  What would you see if you could stand it on its end and look inside–that is, if you could treat it like the three-dimensional object it is rather than as a two-dimensional picture?

Thanks to a collaboration between the Minnesota Historical Society and the University of Minnesota, now you can.

Not too far from MHS, on its Minneapolis campus, the U of M houses a remarkable facility called the Evolutionary Anthropology Laboratory (EAL).  For years, the EAL has been using white light scanning technology to create three-dimensional models of primate bones, allowing anthropology students to conduct up-close research without harming the original specimens.  In 2009, EAL staff used this technology to scan a rare eighteenth century globe acquired by MHS, and in 2011 they returned to capture ten additional artifacts, including a telephone, a toy elephant, a pair of moccasins, a rifle, a knife sheath, a radio, two Civil War-era gowns and the tobacco pouch pictured above.  After several weeks of scanning sessions in the MHS photo lab and post-processing at the EAL, the models were complete.

3D models of each of these objects are now available via Collections Online, a searchable database of MHS artifacts.  Opening a model on your computer is easy and requires no special software–just a standard PDF viewer like Adobe Reader.  Here’s what to do.

1.  Click on any of the images above.  The Collections Online record of the object will display in a new tab or window.

2.  Click on the icon that looks like a page from a notebook.  The model should open inside your browser.

3.  Select an option from the 3D Tools menu to move the object in any way you’d like.  Choose from pan, zoom, spin, rotate, fly and walk functions.

From here, you’re free to explore the object at your own pace, and with your own motives.  Pan across the knife sheath from end to end.   Zoom into the radio’s dial to read its preset stations.  Rotate the gowns for a full appreciation of the silhouette created by Victorian corsets and crinolines.  And take another look at that tobacco pouch.

The seed bead panel on this side, as it turns out, is arranged in a completely different pattern.  Where the first side featured regular diagonal stripes, this pattern is more complex, with triangles and rectangles artfully arranged into a symmetrical grid.  It’s an important feature of the object that the original photograph hides, and that 3D artifact handling brings back to life.

-Lizzie Ehrenhalt, Collections Assistant

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us. Quick, what first jumps to mind? Airport congestion? Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie? Football? Doorbuster sales at department stores? These are Thanksgiving hallmarks to many of us. But when did Thanksgiving become a national holiday? The Pilgrims’ celebration at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 may well come to mind, but that predates nationhood.

The first official national Thanksgiving occurred during one of the United States’ darkest chapters: the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln—persuaded by a renowned female editor—did “invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next [i.e., 1863] as a day of thanksgiving and prayer to our beneficent Father . . . .” In a noteworthy coincidence of timing, America’s first official observance occurred exactly seven days after Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.

Prior to 1863, it was at a state’s discretion when (or whether) there was a day of Thanksgiving. The Minnesota Historical Society has several such proclamations as part of its gubernatorial collections. Now, the MHS has acquired Governor Henry A. Swift’s 1863 proclamation, which follows suit with Lincoln’s. In it, Swift highlights contemporary events—the Civil War, the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War, immigration, drought — in language that, to the modern reader, may seem occasionally brusque or even insensitive. Informed by a prevalent perspective in 1863, Swift’s proclamation now serves as documentary evidence to that perspective yet remains available for ongoing interpretation and analysis.

Christopher Welter, Collections Assistant

Remember when auto travel was romantic? Neither do we; so it was nice last month when a donor walked into the library with a reminder. Glenn Jaglowski brought us a pamphlet prepared by the Conoco Company in 1936 especially for his father, Alexander. The Jaglowski family lived in Hibbing, Minnesota and wanted to take a car camping trip to Glacier and Yellowstone Parks. Having a membership in the Conoco Travel Club allowed the Jaglowskis to request Conoco’s Travel Bureau to create a “Touraide,” an itinerary that included every piece of information they would need along the way. This included maps with highlighted routes, mileage charts, accommodations, narrative and photographic descriptions of the states the Jaglowskis would be traveling through, and perhaps most importantly, the locations of the Conoco gas stations along the way. Rubber stamped updates were added to the maps to warn the family that, for example, certain mountain passes are usually open by May 15th but it would be wise to call ahead and check. Fabulously, the donated Touraide included the triangular car window sticker identifying the Jaglowskis as Conoco Travel Club members. I have no doubt that they received an extra big smile from the gas station attendant while their gas was being pumped for them.

Patrick Coleman, Acquisitions Librarian

Such were the challenges posed by Herman the Duck, a six-piece, seven-foot tall mallard costume acquired by MHS in 1987. For decades, Herman served as the mascot of Minneapolis-based North Central Airlines, lending his image to the company’s distinctive flying duck logo. But it wasn’t until the 1980s, after North Central had changed its name to Republic Airlines, that Herman took on the outsize dimensions and larger-than-life personality embodied by the costume. Capturing that personality on camera involved a number of steps, and no small measure of behind-the-scenes collaboration.

The process began in collections storage, where Herman rested in an array of disembodied parts.  Though sad for Herman, this arrangement is ideal for the long-term preservation of the costume’s individual elements.  A mannequin was selected that was both sturdy enough to hold up Herman’s body and narrow enough in the legs to fit into his tight stretch pants.  Webbed feet, pants, body and head were placed on the mannequin, and Herman sprang to life.

Collections assistant Jason Onerheim adjusted Herman’s scarf so it draped at just the right angle.  The costume also features an aviator’s cap and goggles, the better to show off Herman’s connection to Republic Airlines.

Finally, Herman was ready for his flight to the photography studio.  Although it’s a relatively short trip, the rolling cart minimized impact on the objects, and maintained the costume’s position on the mannequin.

The cart was wheeled into the studio and onto a paper backdrop.  Herman was ready for his close-up!

Jason experimented with lighting options, camera settings and angles to achieve the perfect shot.  The result is a digital record of Herman in all his fully-fledged glory.

[Keep an eye on this site; Herman may be on exhibit in the Library lobby in 2012.  We'll be sure to announce it here when it happens.]

Lizzie Ehrenhalt, Collections Assistant

Come see a selection of these beautiful, interesting books on display in the Library Lobby of the Minnesota Historical Society. The Library is free and open to the public. These will be on display until mid-November.

• 1920s MN Literature Bibliography
• Library Hours

Seven minutes: that’s how long it took for the James-Younger gang’s Northfield bank robbery to fail utterly.  Since September 7, 1876, the foiled raid has been discussed and disputed repeatedly.  The Minnesota Historical Society maintains a significant cache of material—from first-person testimonies and reminiscences to government records—documenting the attempted robbery and its aftereffects.  Now, much of this material has been digitized and is accessible via the Web.

One interesting item is Cole Younger’s first written account of the robbery, penned to aid in his subsequent parole effort.  Other items include southern Minnesota residents’ recollections and impressions of the gang, both before the event and after.  One woman, for instance, recalls how as a six-year-old she and her family observed the gang spend the night prior to the attempted robbery in a rural school outside of Red Wing—and includes a map of the farmstead and school.

Most of the material comes from official state records, which derive from the criminal trial, prison terms, and paroles/pardons of the Younger brothers.  The materials on whole have significant research value, but some items are of singular interest.  For instance, on January 8, 1902, Miss Alix J. Mueller wrote Governor Van Sant “a woman’s prayer for mercy to one whom she loves.”  Miss Mueller had met Cole’s younger brother Jim at the Stillwater State Prison about 1896, and a romance and engagement ensued.  Though Jim was paroled in 1901, he was precluded from entering into legally binding contracts—including marriage.  Miss Mueller entreated the governor’s assistance, yet her very words foretold the end: “For he is sorely stricken, and I am an invalid.”  No pardon being granted, Jim Younger committed suicide nine months later in St. Paul, and Alix Mueller died of tuberculosis about a year and a half later.  Partly as a result of his brother’s fate, Cole Younger was granted a conditional pardon in 1903.

There are other novel items as well.  Upon being released from prison, Jim and Cole Younger had to submit monthly parole reports.  These reports essentially acted as employment records, and the current employer was obliged to vouch for the report’s accuracy.  Coincidentally, one of these reports links Minnesota’s most famous bank robbery—the Northfield raid—to perhaps its most infamous crime era—the gangland 1930s.  In April 1902, Cole was working for St. Paul Police Chief John J. O’Connor, watching his homestead and laborers.  O’Connor had provided safe haven for criminals in St. Paul during his tenure, as long as they didn’t perpetrate their crimes within city limits. Though O’Connor retired in 1920, his system persisted, ultimately proving an inducement to the likes of John Dillinger and the Barker-Karpis gang.

Digitization of this material was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.  Here follows the list of collections that contain digitized material about the attempted Northfield bank robbery:

• Northfield (Minnesota) bank robbery of 1876: Selected manuscript collections [mostly personal reminiscences]

• William Watts Folwell and family papers [Cole Younger’s written account]

• Minnesota Board of Pardons pardon applications [seven different files on the Youngers]

• Records of Governor Samuel R. Van Sant [pardon matters concerning the Youngers]

• Minnesota State Prison (Stillwater, Minn.) case files (discharged inmate files) [primarily letters of inquiry about the Youngers]

• Minnesota State Prison (Stillwater, Minn.) commitment papers [two files on the Youngers]

• Minnesota District Court (Rice County) case files and miscellaneous court papers [two different files on the Youngers

Christopher Welter, Collections Assistant

Learn More:

• The Northfield Duster
• Watch The Younger Brothers: After the Attempted Robbery
• Stillwater State Prison Log

The most recent addition came to us earlier this summer. This ceramic crème de menthe decanter is in the form of a surprisingly detailed model of the Spirit of St. Louis. It was the third in a series commemorating “Famous Firsts” in aviation. (Other decanters included Wiley Post’s Winnie Mae, and the Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport plane.) Produced 45 years after the flight, the bottle speaks to the lasting significance of – and popular interest in – Lindbergh’s feat.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Currently on display in the Library Lobby is a small sample of the Minnesota Historical Society’s objects, letters, and diaries carried through the war by members of this storied regiment. Also on display are some regimental histories from the Collection.

This small exhibit is just the tip of the iceberg; stop by to learn more about the resources available relating to the Civil War.

The exhibit is open during Library Hours until Labor Day.

The MHS is pleased to announce the acquisition of a collection of papers and memorabilia of Charles W. “Speed” Holman, famed aviator, first chief pilot of Northwest Airlines, and namesake of St. Paul’s downtown airport. Highlights of the collection include three licenses (1927-1928) signed by Orville Wright, a 1926 license to carry air mail for the United States Post Office, and Holman’s personal flight logbook covering his flights from December 5, 1929, to May 17, 1931. On that date Holman flew to Omaha, Nebraska, where he died in a horrific crash while performing at an air show before 20,000 spectators. Dozens of letters and telegrams document Holman’s international flights, the New York to Spokane air race that ensured his place in aviation history, and expressions of sympathy to his widow and Northwest Airways after his death. Famed World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker telegraphed “We grieve with you and Charles family in this hour of loss.” Other “personal” items document the purchase and sale of his Minneapolis home and include a life insurance policy, his 1927 income tax return, and his Northwest Airways business card.

The collection also includes artifacts from Holman’s life – a leather box for important documents inscribed with his name, his baby rattle and leather baby shoe spats, a leather wallet, license holders, and empty shell casings from the salute at his funeral, one of the largest held in St. Paul to that time.

The Society was able to acquire this collection with monies from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. The collection will be available for research and viewing after it has been arranged and cataloged. Some of the documents will be digitized and available through the Society’s website.

Curator of Art Brian Szott was on a recent episode of the tpt series Minnesota Originals discussing the fabulous art collection. Click on the logo below to watch.

Each year, the staff of the James J. Hill House, 240 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, presents a display of historic Winter Carnival memorabilia in the Music Room of the house.  The display coincides with the Winter Carnival in St. Paul, and provides a view into the past, highlighting the involvement of the Hill Family in the Carnival and winter sports activities.  The display showcases examples of the breadth and depth of the Society’s collections which includes items representing 125 years of Carnival history.

The objects in the display date from 1887, the second year of the Winter Carnival, to 1917 when Louis Hill was involved with its revival.  The lap robe and snow shoes belonged to James J. and Mary Hill, respectively.   The objects inside the case are ephemera from Carnivals in 1887, 1888, and 1916, and are a good representation of graphic and advertising styles from those years.  They also document early St. Paul businesses marketing Carnival souvenirs.

Paul Storch, Collections Liaison, Historic Sites and Museums Division

In October 1926, the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was arrested by Hennepin County Sheriff deputies in Minnetonka for allegedly violating the Mann Act.  Mr. Wright’s arrest and detention in the Hennepin County Jail is documented in a jail register of the Hennepin County Sheriff, and is one of several jail registers preserved in the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society.

A Jail Register is a chronological record of individuals committed to a county or municipal jail. They include arrest and discharge information, name of prisoner and occasionally biographical data, name of officer making the arrest, and the nature of the crime, charges, and sentence.  Unfortunately, the jail registers are not indexed by name, so it can be a challenge to locate a person who was in jail, unless you have a relatively specific date.

According to Mr. Wright’s jail register entry, he was 58 years old, had green eyes, brown hair, and a fair complexion.  Mr. Wright was held for the U.S. Marshal’s Office, committed to the jail on October 21, 1926, and released the next day to the U.S. Marshal’s Office.

The arrest of Frank Lloyd Wright was the lead story in the Minneapolis Tribune on October 21, 1926.

Charles Rodgers, Government Records Specialist

The company’s growth fostered a number of noteworthy advancements in photography, and few were as important as the Micro-Z camera. Introduced in 1980, the Micro-Z increased efficiency and streamlined photo processing. The innovative camera featured a double-reflex zoom lens, automatic light calibration, a motorized pedestal, and a failure alarm system to alert the photographer if something was wrong. Most significantly, the Micro-Z’s computerized data recorder registered date, package type, and subject information directly onto the film negative via a barcode, making it much easier to match the photo with the student’s paperwork.

The durable Micro-Z remained in service for some 25 years and photographed untold millions of students. (This curator has fond memories of posing for Micro-Zs throughout the 1980s.) We are grateful to Lifetouch Inc. for donating this example, together with a TruView camera (used in department store portrait studios), technical manuals, and reminiscences from the people who developed and used this remarkable camera.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

It’s remarkable that truly unique objects continue to surface. Such is the case with this handgun recently donated by a member of the North Star Circle. The weapon belonged to Minnesota politician Alexander Ramsey, and it dates to our earliest territorial days.

The gun is a Model 1848 Colt Baby Dragoon. The five-shot, .31 caliber, percussion cap revolver represents Colt’s first foray into the civilian market. While the military Dragoon was designed for cavalry forces, the “Baby” Dragoon was scaled down for easy portability and concealment. It should be no surprise that a practical civilian handgun was a big seller in an age of westward expansion and pre-war anxiety. More than 350,000 Dragoons were sold before production ended in 1873.

One of those buyers was Alexander Ramsey. Appointed Minnesota’s first territorial governor in 1849, Ramsey likely purchased the gun for personal protection on the northwest frontier. While we have no record of the governor taking part in gunfights, wear on the revolver suggests that it has been fired. Ramsey carefully preserved the gun, along with its leather-covered wooden case, a powder charger, a bullet mold, and a wrench for extracting spent percussion caps.

For years after Ramsey’s death in 1903, the Baby Dragoon sat in his bedroom closet in St. Paul, alongside a more ornamental pair of dueling pistols. Ramsey’s granddaughters sold the Dragoon in the early 1960s. The dueling pistols came to the Minnesota Historical Society (along with the Ramsey House itself) after the governor’s last granddaughter passed away in 1964.

With the Baby Dragoon now in the Society’s collection, Alexander Ramsey’s guns will be reunited for the first time in 50 years. It’s a most exciting addition to our holdings.

Matt Anderson
Objects Curator

Learn More

• See the Derringer dueling pistols owned by Alexander Ramsey
• Visit the Alexander Ramsey House

Over the years the Minnesota Historical Society has collected the sheet music that documents Minnesota’s musical heritage. This month sees the publication of a new sheet music finding aid; two others were published over the summer. Many of the pieces of music in these collections have been digitized and can be viewed from their finding aids.

Do you feel like singing a rousing chorus of Rah! Rah! Ski-u-mah! for the University of Minnesota football team, cutting a rug with the Minnesota Cadet Lancers , or calling the steps for the Minnesota Shake-Down?

Or browse through all three finding aids for a tuneful reminder of Minnesota’s past at:

Collection of Songs and Music about Minnesota Places, Institutions, Businesses, and Themes

Collection of Songs and Music by Minnesota Composers

Collection of Songs and Music by Minnesota Women Composers

The digitization of this portion of the Minnesota Sheet Music Collection was funded in part by a grant from the Bean Family Fund for Business History.

Sarah Quimby, Library Processing Manager

“3 Merry Widows” was a popular brand of prophylactic in the early 20th Century, and this aluminum container probably dates to the 1920s or 1930s. Latex condoms didn’t take over the market until the 1930s, so the three “widows” once contained inside may have been of the older cement rubber variety. While the thicker rubber condoms had their disadvantages, they were more durable, and could even be reused.

The donor, having found so many of these items near her house, naturally wondered if her neighborhood once hosted a bordello. The location – half-way between downtown St. Paul and Fort Snelling – certainly would have been convenient. Unfortunately, a search through the Society’s library was inconclusive. (But really, those businesses weren’t the type to be listed in city directories!) We might speculate that the tin came from a brothel, but we won’t state it as fact, just to be safe – like the tin’s original owner.

Matt Anderson
Objects Curator

Minnesota enjoys a long and continuous history of quiltmaking. The quilts in this exhibition can be viewed as contemporary expressions with historical roots. The talented artists whose work is seen here were inspired by landscape, historic figures, current events, or other traditional textiles. We see the versatility of textiles that we call quilts, as the artform continues to be both an outlet for artistic expression and recognition of women’s needlework traditions.

The Society’s quilt collection numbers over 350 quilts dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. The quilts on view here are not representative of the types of quilts found in the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection, but reflect twenty-five years of collecting contemporary Minnesota quilts. The quilt collection is available on the Society’s website at http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/.

This exhibition is one of several organized to coincide with The American Quilt Study Group’s annual seminar held in the Twin Cities between October 14-17, 2010. This event brings quilt enthusiasts and scholars together to view quilts from new perspectives, discuss aspects of women’s and cultural history, and learn the latest in documentation and research.

Thanks to MHS volunteers who helped prepare the quilts for exhibition:  Jeannette Root and Dorothy Stish. Judy Calcote, Stephanie Drinkard and Laura Oyen deserve thanks for their research and cataloging assistance. A special thanks to Nancy Eha for lending us her most recent quilt.

For local guild information, contact Minnesota Quilters, Inc. at http://www.mnquilt.org/ or Minnesota Contemporary Quilters at http://www.minnesotacontemporaryquilters.net/.

The exhibit is on display at the James J. Hill House from October 2, 2010- March 1, 2011. Click here for more information.

One of our favorite donors just dropped off the November 1931 issue of “Scribner’s Magazine.” Not something we would normally be interested in, this issue has a lead article by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Titled “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” the text may ring familiar to baby boomers too. Fitz admits that in ’31 it is too early to write about the Jazz Age “with perspective” but goes on to do so. He writes, “Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth.”

While the literary scene in Minnesota during the 1920s reached a fevered pitch, no author has withstood the passage of time like Saint Paul’s very own F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The MHS Library holds important research collection of his early work, popular editions, foreign language editions, magazine work, criticism, and some unique manuscripts.

Come see some of these items on display in the Library Lobby, which is free and open to the public. We encourage you to browse this exhibit and to come back soon to read the work of our most – hands down – important writer.

This will be on view September 21 to January 16, 2011.

The Minnesota Historical Society is pleased to announce its receipt of a Basic Project grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) which will significantly support a $500,000, 18-month project to process the Society’s unprocessed archival collections. The project targets a 4,600 cubic foot aggregation of government records and manuscript acquisitions which are largely hidden from our audiences. By arranging and describing these collections and series to generally accepted minimal standards, using economical practices that are now well tested, we expect to make our archival holdings web-discoverable, and to drive reading room use at MHS significantly.  Beginning October 18th, the project will become the focus of the archival processing staff’s work through 2011. Project staff expect to produce or revise at least 500 MARC21 catalog records and 300 EAD finding aids over the course of the project. A retrieval analysis of archival materials has been underway for the past year and will be used to help evaluate the audience impact of rapidly exposing more archival materials to web-scale discovery and access. We are grateful to the NHPRC for giving us this opportunity to get our backlog off the pallets, onto the stack shelves, and into the audience discovery space.

Watch our progress by visiting the What’s New finding aids page! Discover what old treasures are newly available each month.

Linda McShannock, objects curator, recently brought to the Acquisitions Committee a Redwork embroidered bed cover which was subsequently added to the Society’s Collection. Redwork is an embroidery style prominent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries  and is currently experiencing a resurgence of interest.

This is a signature spread made by the “Busy Bees” of Shevlin, Minnesota in 1908.  Each block was individually made and contains a different motif surrounded by family names. The designs are a sampling of embroidery motifs readily available and often used for tea towels, aprons or dresser scarves. Before acquiring this spread, the Collection contained only a small sample of Redwork, mostly towels; this is unusual and exciting because of its size and provenance.  The quilt came from the Olaf Olson family of Shevlin.  Often signature quilts were made for a fundraising purpose within the community, we may not know why the “Busy Bees” made this spread, but their embroidery preserves a moment in Shevlin’s history.

View of Shevlin, 1915.

A recent addition to the papers of Brenda Ueland (1891-1985), Minneapolis feminist, diarist, and author, includes extensive family correspondence, a childhood diary, and correspondence from literary and political figures.  A new inventory to the entire collection is available on the Library web site. Embedded in the inventory are digital images of five letters from Sinclair Lewis, single letters from Langston Hughes, Eleanor Roosevelt and Carl Sandburg, and an autograph card of Henrik Ibsen.  In an especially poignant letter of February 27, 1942, Sinclair Lewis writes:

“I’ve for years thought that I’d like really to live in Minnesota.  I wish I had one small root in some one solid area….Now that I’m fifty-seven (though only for 20 days have I been in that horribly advanced age) and practically grown-up, I ought to do something serious about this root business….I love the hills of Connecticut, and hate the grudging people; I love the gay people of New York City, and hate the steel and cement prison corridors that are called streets. I think that some day, if I ever got settled down, I might become a novelist, and I am informed that that is a very fine and happy state of being!”

Thanks to cataloger Chris Welter and interns Shelby Edwards and Julia Weisgram, working under Monica Ralston’s direction, for enhancing access to this important manuscript collection.

Duane Swanson, Curator of Manuscripts

The Minnesota Historical Society Library has opened a new exhibit of Canadiana from our Library Collection in celebration of 40 years of the Canadian Consulate in Minneapolis! Our state and Canada share many cultural similarities, some common history, and, of course, a border. It will be on view until September. Come take a look, eh?

Actually what happened to Amelia Earhart when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean has never been solved, but some documents about Amelia Earhart were found in the records of the St. Paul school district.  Amelia Earhart attended Central High School as a junior during the 1913-1914 school year, and her family attended St. Clements Episcopal Church where she sang in the choir.  The documents include correspondence and memoranda (dated 1955-1956) about Amelia Earhart regarding a book the author, Jack Pitman, was writing about the world famous aviator.  Also donated were newspaper clippings (dated in the 1930s) primarily about Earhart’s aviation career.

Featured here is a memo written by Central High School librarian, Laurie C. Johnson, describing Amelia as “an attractive, friendly, red-haired teenager-not at all unlike her friends”.  Also, a newspaper clipping with a story about Amelia’s brief residence in St. Paul, along with a photograph of Amelia in the St. Clement’s church choir.

According to legislation passed in 1873, Minneapolis firemen who had served five years as active firefighters were entitled to be exempt from jury duty and from paying the poll tax (a requirement for voting).  This fancy certificate testified that Patrick Daly had served his five years and therefore was exempt from these obligations.  Patrick Daly had been born in Ireland in April 1836, had lived in Australia and New Zealand, and emigrated to Minneapolis in 1870.  In addition to his stint as a firefighter, he served as a liquor dealer and a policeman, attaining the rank of Captain.  He died in April 1887 and is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Minneapolis.

The Society has an existing collection of Patrick Daly papers to which this new item will be added.

Duane Swanson, Curator of Manuscripts

KSTP-TV photo editor Skip Nelson shoots from an unusual angle in the office of Senator Walter Mondale in Washington, D.C. while filming the Channel 5 documentary “Mondale of Minnesota.”

What’s New?  We’re thrilled to feature hundreds of never-before-seen photographs from the Walter F. Mondale Papers now available online.  Walter Frederick (“Fritz”) Mondale, a native Minnesotan, spent most of his life in public service, at the state, national, and international levels. This selection of images from his papers offers exciting new looks at his life and political career.  Included are the work, travels, people, places, and events that shaped his experience and that of the country during the latter twentieth century.

These newly cataloged photographs are part of a larger project to process the Walter F. Mondale Papers.  The project was funded in part with a two-year grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A valuable component of the Society’s extensive public affairs collections, the Walter F. Mondale papers document Mondale’s service as United States Senator from Minnesota (1964-1976), Vice President of the United States (1977-1981), presidential candidate (1984), Ambassador to Japan (1993-1996), and Special Envoy to Indonesia (1998). Along with his official records as state Attorney General (1960-1964, also held here in the Minnesota State Archives), the papers cover Mondale’s six-decade career, including all of his public offices, campaigns, and Democratic Party and other non-official activities. In addition to the breadth they add to the Society’s public affairs collections, the Walter F. Mondale Papers now enrich the Society’s photograph collection. By highlighting almost 500 images from the more than 7,000 contained in his papers, we deepened the political and governmental content of our Photo & Art Database and provided you greater access to the story of this important Minnesotan.

Walter Mondale’s wife Joan is also an integral part of the story.  An artist and craftswoman with many ties to the arts community, Joan Mondale was appointed ambassador for the arts during the Carter administration. She carried out numerous functions aimed at raising the public profile of art and artists and served as honorary chair of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities–the first time a vice presidential spouse was given a specific role and duties. We feature several photographs of her activities as well.

What else can be seen in these newly visible images?  Not surprisingly, there are insights to Walter Mondale’s work with a variety of constituents across the country, key political leaders through the decades, international initiatives, local communities, and national events.  We also catch a glimpse of celebrities, holidays, family and leisure activities. We encourage you to explore the selection, reminisce, gain new insights and enjoy!

Diane Adams-Graf, Curator

Mondales, Walter, William, Joan, Eleanor and Ted

Camp Fire celebrates 100 years of building caring, confident youth and future leaders this year.  Started in 1910 by Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick and his wife, Charlotte Vetter Gulick, Camp Fire has grown from a small camp for girls to a national organization welcoming and empowering all children and youth. Today, Camp Fire USA Minnesota Council connects children and youth with nature and helps them learn and grow in their own communities. To learn more about Camp Fire in Minnesota, visit their website at: www.campfireusa-mn.org.

Materials from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Collections, in addition to pieces from Camp Fire’s own historic collection, allow visitors to see many aspects of Camp Fire life. It is a great opportunity to revisit some of these wonderful pieces; it is fun to see what has changed over time and what has stayed the same.

This display in the Library Lobby will be up through June 16, 2010.

Recently received from the Secretary of State’s office is a particularly valuable record book dating back to the early days of Minnesota statehood.  In many ways the Secretary of State is the “official record keeper” for the State of Minnesota, and this record book reflects that important function.  The record book, entitled “Official Letters, Communications and Railroad Liens”, is dated from May 1858 to June 1879, and contains copies of important documents received for filing, or sent by the Secretary of State’s office.

Noteworthy documents and topics include articles of incorporations of Minnesota companies;  commitments of individuals to the Iowa Insane Asylum in Mt. Pleasant;  memorials such as the establishment of mail service;  donation of lands and money to aid in railroad construction; removal of Winnebago Indians; compensation for losses by Indian depredations; a commission to investigate the management of Indian affairs; the extension of the pension Law of 1861-1862 to the “sufferers of the Sioux Raid” ;  adoption of the State Seal;  joint resolutions endorsing Andrew Johnson’s impeachment; appointments and resignations of officials; and notices of elections.  The record book is indexed, and is Volume 1 of a set of volumes that date through 1942.

Charles Rodgers, Government Records Specialist

On view at the Hill House Gallery through September, 2010

This exhibition is an opportunity to showcase fine work from the Society’s vast collection of art by and about Minnesota. Focusing on our strengths in portraiture and landscapes the show features portraits of such notable Minnesotans as Alexander Ramsey and artist Stanford Fenelle as well as such iconic locations Minnehaha Falls, Swede Hollow and Red Wing, Minnesota. The exhibition also highlights our small, yet exquisite, collection of still life paintings. Well known Minnesota artists such as Cameron Booth, Mike Lynch, Paul Kramer and Clara Mairs are included in People, Places, Things.

Toyland Department, Dayton’s, Minneapolis, 1940

Take a look at the new finding aid for the Norton & Peel Photograph Collection! Would you like to see an image of a chimpanzee in Longfellow Gardens, taken in 1915?  Perhaps you’re renovating an historic building on University Avenue and looking for construction elements?  Maybe you’re a collector of fire trucks and want to study vehicle details?  Do you have an interest in 1950s department store window displays? The Norton & Peel Photograph Collection has it all: find it using the new finding aid.  Descriptions of nearly 20,000 images, photo albums and card files are available in this searchable list.

Norton & Peel was a commercial photography studio operating in Minneapolis from 1886-1969. Photographers Walter Norton and Clifford Peel both worked for the studio’s predecessor, C. J. Hibbard, for a number of years before forming their own business and buying Hibbard’s studio in 1928. Their purchase included Hibbard’s 75,000 negatives and equipment. For a time, they referred to themselves as the Norton, Peel & Hibbard Studio, but eventually dropped the Hibbard name. Both firms were among the best in Minnesota and had a reputation for high quality images. During their time, Norton & Peel took over 300,000 photographs, mostly in the Twin Cities metro area.

C. J. Hibbard arrived in Minneapolis in 1885 and soon after pursued his interest in photography, first as a hobby and then as a profession. From 1899-1903 he was the botany photographer at the University of Minnesota; later he traveled to Cuba for business and to Harvard for assignment. His specialty, though, was commercial photography. Clifford Peel studied photography at school, took aerial photographs with the Army Signal Corps in WWI, and worked for a portrait photographer in Bemidji. He moved to Minneapolis in 1920 and was hired by Hibbard. Walter Norton had briefly worked for Hibbard before joining the service during WWI. After the war he continued his job at Hibbard’s Studio.

The Minnesota Historical Society acquired a portion of Norton & Peel, Inc. holdings in 1979. It includes negatives, photo albums, and client cards. A substantial portion of the negatives were printed by the Minnesota Historical Society.

The bulk of the Norton & Peel Photograph Collection is associated with Norton & Peel, but there are many taken by C. J. Hibbard, as well. Hibbard’s mark on the collection is his group of street scenes and building photos from Minneapolis. Norton and Peel’s studio continued Hibbard’s commercial focus and their views represent Twin Cities business exteriors, interiors, or products. To a lesser degree, views of landscapes, home exteriors, accident scenes (for insurance), and family events are included. A client card file created by Norton & Peel is included with the collection. The card file is keyed to the firm’s negative numbering system. The cards identify the negative, date, and for whom the image was made. A card file that serves as an index to addresses is also part of this collection, but it was created by the Minnesota Historical Society, not by Norton & Peel.

The new, online, searchable inventory, or finding aid, provides easy access to the collection’s deep, rich and expansive content. Take a look at whatever interests you!  Perhaps a Dunwoody Institute shop in 1940?  Sailing on Lake Calhoun?  Toyland in Dayton’s Department Store? The possibilities are endless!

Diane Adams-Graf, Sound and Visual Collections Curator

Learn More:

• Norton & Peel Collection Finding Aid
• Norton & Peel Collection on the Photo and Art Database

Sharp clerks practiced for their exams with kits like this one. It belonged to Richard Loida, a St. Paul-based postal clerk who made frequent RPO runs to Duluth and the Dakotas in the years after World War II. The kit consists of a wooden box, about the size of a briefcase, which opens to reveal slots labeled with primary railroad junctions; and a box of cards for each post office in Minnesota. Mr. Loida would practice placing the cards into the appropriate slots as quickly and correctly as he could. RPO clerks were required to sort as many as 600 pieces of mail per hour, and needed to score 97% to pass their exams. Needless to say, a little practice wasn’t a bad idea.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Minnesotans have long enjoyed the opportunity winter affords for outdoor recreation, especially of the ice variety. We have put together items relating to these icy entertainments, from Ice Follies to hockey to community skating. The display is on view in the Minnesota Historical Society Library when the Library is open, until mid-March. Come take a look, and perhaps get inspired to head out to the pond!

The turn of the century ushered in some of the most beautiful and elaborate examples of Christmas ornaments and cards.  Stop in to the Library Lobby and see cards, ornaments, and other decorations from holidays past. All pieces are from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Collection.

This display will be up until January 11, 2010.

The Minnesota Historical Society recently acquired a rare and historic quarter plate daguerreotype of the Falls of St. Anthony in Minnesota Territory, present day Minneapolis. The village of St. Anthony stood on the east side of the river and was a bustling area of settlement and industry by the mid-1850s when John W. Monell created this daguerreotype.

Daguerreotypes were mirror-like, one-of-a-kind photographs that first appeared in 1839 and peaked in popularity by 1856. These extremely fragile images on silvered copper plates were protected behind glass in attractive cases. This view of the waterfall is housed in its original case with a raised imprint on its velvet pad identifying the artist and location.

John W. Monell established his studio in St. Anthony in April 1854. The following year he won first prize at the Territorial Fair for his exhibit case of daguerreotype portraits and views of St. Anthony Falls, Minnehaha Falls, the Suspension Bridge, and other local sites. The view in this daguerreotype shows St. Anthony Falls from Hennepin Island. It is a variant of two similar views in the Society’s collections, taken by unidentified daguerreotypists. This perspective is from a position further back and shows a raised conveyance made of lumber, across the foreground.  It is likely a chute used for facilitating the handling of lumber, shingles, and other wood products as they were sent downstream well below the falls.

Funds from the Virginia Moe Endowment for Historic Photographs and Lila Goff Acquisitions Endowment made it possible to make this important purchase. It is a significant addition to the Minnesota Historical Society’s nationally-recognized collection of daguerreotypes of St. Anthony Falls and contributes to our earliest photographic history.

Diane Adams-Graf
Sound & Visual Curator
Learn More:

• Quarter plate daguerreotype view of the Falls of St. Anthony, ca. 1855, on the Visual Resources Database.

During her rich and varied career, Minneapolis-born Hazel Thorson Stoick Stoeckeler (b. 1918) has been an educator, designer, university professor and world traveler. Above all, one profession has remained constant over the last seven decades — visual artist.

This retrospective exhibit examines the artist’s career with over 40 works of art spanning more than 60 years. It begins with work from the Society’s collection that date from the late 1930s and continues with prepatory sketches for a mural completed in 1945 for the University of Minnesota. The exhibit concludes with a series of watercolors that document Stoeckeler’s trips around the globe. These small, exquisite images are featured in a book titled, “Porthole Views of the World.”

Lenders to the exhibit include the Cook County Historical Society, Grand Marais, Minnesota; University of Minnesota Archives and Libraries; Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota and the artist. This exhibit will be on view until January 17, 2010, at the James J. Hill House.

Recently, we acquired well-worn tailors’ tools used by a custom tailor in Duluth.  C. Paul Nelson emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden with his four daughters in early 1900.  Though tailoring has traditionally been a craft dominated by men, two of Nelson’s daughters – Sophie and Hanna worked as “tailoresses.”  According to the 1910 census, Sophie, Hanna and their father were working in Duluth.  In 1930 both Sophie and Paul Nelson were still working – Paul as a coat-maker and Sophie as a vest-maker.  In the 1900 Minneapolis City Directory, vest making was a woman’s occupation.  Six women listed their occupation as vest-maker.  Often women worked on lighter weight garments or women’s tailored clothing in a dressmaking shop rather than a tailor’s shop.   In this same city directory, of the 724 tailors listed, 89 were women.

Though cutting and measuring are the hallmark skills of a tailor’s art, these pressing tools – a tailor’s clapper, tailor’s blocks, trouser board, sleeve board and tailoring iron (a 15.5 lb weight) – donated by a member of the Nelson family are essential to giving the wool its proper shape and a crisp finish to the seams of a garment.

Included in this donation is an image of tailors at work in the shop of A. V. Ljungkvist in 1908; see below.  Paul Nelson is seated in a modified tailor-fashion at the far left.

Linda McShannock, Objects Curator

Currently on display in our Library Lobby are selected objects collected by the Society and whenever possible labels include a quote from the artists–revealing in their own words their thoughts about the materials, the finished pieces, and the passions that inspire them. This exhibit will be up until early December.

For millennia artists have been bringing the joy of art to everyday life through the application of their creative force to our material culture. Minnesota has a rich fine craft heritage and Minnesotans have long found pleasure in the use of functional & beautiful objects that provide sensory experiences which add vigor to everyday life.

For nearly 30 years the Minnesota Historical Society has proactively compiled a fine collection of well-documented objects made by Minnesota artists to illustrate the role of crafts in the life of Minnesotans and the work of specific individuals. The Society chose to document the work of contemporary Minnesota craftspeople and to focus the collecting on examples by established artists that exhibit a mastery of the medium and combine function with beauty in a manifestation of the craftsman work ethic. Over 200 pieces represent the diverse influences and inspirations of Minnesota’s 20^th – 21^st century period.

While most mediums are well represented in the Society’s fine craft collections, the Minnesota and Wisconsin region is best known nationally for the work of its significant and influential ceramics community. Evidence of that powerhouse role includes the existence of the Northern Clay Center and Fired Up Studios, a forthcoming collections gallery in the new wing of the Weisman Art Museum to highlight ceramics, and the Minnesota Potters of the Upper St. Croix River Annual Pottery Studio Tour & Sale that draws guest artists and pottery collectors from across the globe.

Marcia Anderson, Senior Curator

The Society recently acquired five prints and color slides of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald shortly before it sank in Lake Superior taking the lives of all aboard in a terrible storm. These color slides were shot by vacationing tourists, Jerry and Marilyn Sexton, as the ship passed through the Soo Locks in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan in late July of 1975. The sharp and poignant images record the lives and activities of a ship soon to vanish.

At 729 feet, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time of its christening in 1958. It was built by Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge, Michigan and owned by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. Distinguished for having set a number of cargo records over the years, the ship was also well known to both casual and serious ship watchers.

The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began November 9, 1975, when it left Superior, Wisconsin loaded with iron ore. Captain Ernest M. McSorley and his crew of 28 were soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, another ship that had departed Two Harbors, Minnesota under Captain Bernie Cooper.  Aware of a building November storm entering the Great Lakes the Captains agreed to take the northerly course across Lake Superior, where they would be protected by highlands on the Canadian shore. This took them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula. They would later make a turn to the southeast to eventually reach the shelter of Whitefish Point. The two ships were in radio contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald in the lead and the distance between them averaging a dozen miles.

The storm’s ferocity increased with winds gusting to 70 knots and seas 18 to 25 feet. At 3:30 in the afternoon of the 10th, Captain McSorley radioed Captain Cooper and said: “Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. I’m checking down. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?” McSorley was checking down his speed to allow the Anderson to close the distance for safety. Captain Cooper asked McSorley if he had his pumps going, and McSorley said, “Yes, both of them.”

The two ships remained in close radio contact until their last communication at 7:10 p.m. Five minutes later, the pip of the Edmund Fitzgerald on the radar screen of the Anderson was lost again (high seas were interfering with radar reflection), but this time, did not reappear. The Anderson called the Fitzgerald at about 7:22 pm. There was no answer.

The Anderson turned out to be the primary vessel in the search, taking the lead. With the ship pounding and rolling badly, the crew of the Anderson discovered the Fitzgerald’s two lifeboats and other debris but no sign of survivors. Only one other vessel, the William Clay Ford, was able to leave the safety of Whitefish Bay to join in the search at the time. The Coast Guard launched a fixed-wing HU-16 aircraft at 10:00 that night and dispatched two cutters, the Naugatuck and the Woodrush. The Naugatuck arrived at 12:45 p.m. on November 11, and the Woodrush arrived on November 14, having journeyed all the way from Duluth, Minnesota. On November 14, a U.S. Navy plane equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector located a strong contact 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point. During the following three days, the Woodrush, using a side-scan sonar, located two large pieces of wreckage in the same area.

All 29 crew, including the Captain who had commanded the ship since 1972, were lost. No one has ever been recovered. The broken hull of the steamer was located in 530 feet of water, the bow and stern sections lying close together. The lack of survivors and eye witnesses to the wreck, coupled with the lack of clear evidence in subsequent underwater expeditions, leave a variety of theories for the ship’s sinking. And, although the Coast Guard conducted an extensive and thorough search, there is no definitive reason to date. It is one of the most controversial and emotional shipwreck stories in Great Lakes history, further immortalized by Canadian singer/songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot, in his 1976 ballad, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’.

The Minnesota Historical Society’s Split Rock Lighthouse has been a retired lighthouse since 1969, but every November 10th, at dusk, the beacon at Split Rock Lighthouse is relit in memory of those men, that famous ship, and all the sailors lost on other Great Lakes shipwrecks. The Split Rock Lighthouse Visitor Center will open at noon on November 10th and will feature information on Lake Superior gales and shipwrecks, and a film on the tragic last trip of the Edmund Fitzgerald will be shown in the Visitor Center Theater.  At 4:30 the lighthouse will be temporarily closed to allow for a brief ceremony on the lighthouse steps.  The ceremony, called the “last muster”, will include the reading of the names of the men lost on the Fitzgerald and, the ringing of a ship’s bell for each name, plus a thirtieth for all other victims of Great Lakes shipwrecks.  At the conclusion of the ceremony the lighthouse beacon will be lighted, the lighthouse will be reopened, and visitors may climb the interior stairs to the lantern room for a rare, close-up view of the lighted, 3rd order Fresnel lens.

Diane Adams-Graf, Sound & Visual Curator

Learn More:

• Scale model of the Edmund Fitzgerald

• See all the images of the Edmund Fitzgerald

• List of Edmund Fitzgerald’s crew

• Split Rock Lighthouse

The Great Depression was a terrible time for Minnesota and the rest of the nation. One of the New Deal programs intended to get people back to work was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was one of the Roosevelt Administration’s most successful projects, creating jobs in everything from road construction to feeding people to literacy and more.

WPA programs focusing on the arts produced some of the best examples of federal support. In addition to producing amazing works of art, the Federal Writers’ Project was designed to encourage written work and support writers through the tough times.  Among the most well-known products are the state guides series.  Other works created by the Writers’ Project focused on history, society, and the land around them. Some examples are on display in the Library cases.

This exhibit will be on view when the Library is open, and is part of the Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story project, organized by the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. For more information about other programs in this series, please go to:

http://www.thefriends.org/soul.htm

Every once in a while the Minnesota Historical Society Library gets in a great book with a little bonus; not only is the text of the book important or interesting but the story of where the book has been is also fascinating. Very few of these back stories get better than the one for a book I picked up at the antiquarian book fair in St. Paul last month.

The book, Donald McLeod’s History of Wiskonsan[sic]: From its First Discovery to the Present Period. Buffalo: 1846, is significant having been published 3 years before Minnesota became a Territory. The volume is quite rare and contains a map that is lacking in many known copies. Its author would later settle in St. Paul, make his living in the book trade, and die here in 1903.

The back story I alluded to is that this particular copy fell into the hands of two miscreants engaged in what would become known as the “Coachman Forgeries.” Eugene “Pinny” Field (son of the respected writer, Eugene Field) and Harry Dayton Sickles attempted, with some success, to increase the value of books they were selling by making them look like they had come from the library of Abraham Lincoln. The scheme was simple enough. In 1931 a story ran in the national news that William P. Brown, Mary Todd Lincoln’s driver during the years after the President’s assassination, was still alive. Field and Sickles got him to autograph period books and maps. Frank Thatcher notarized and attested to the fact that the signature was authentic after which Sickles forged the name of Abraham Lincoln to the items. The resulting book looked as if it had the all important Presidential provenance and the notary’s imprimatur.

Our copy of McLeod has an inscription that reads “This book is from the collection of Abraham Lincoln and was presented to …William P. Brown in 1866 by Mary T. Lincoln.” Like all the “coachman forgeries” it is notarized but in this instance Lincoln’s signature was never forged on the book. It should be stressed that both the seller and the MHS knew the story of these forgeries (documented in the 2001 book Absolutely, Mr. Sickles? Positively, Mr. Field! By William L. Butts) and the price of the book reflected only the interesting story.

The book was purchased with the help of funds given as a memorial to one of the Society’s dearest friends, Floyd Risvold. Floyd was one of the most significant collectors of stamps, manuscripts, books and maps illuminating local and national history. He was a wise friend and mentor to me and his scholarship inspired me. His practicality too; he once told me that if today’s youth collected stamps they would easily be able to pass the state standards for American history. We are the poorer for his passing. As we Irish say, his likes will not be here again.

Patrick Coleman, Acquisitions Librarian

Of the many uses of maps, one of our favorites is to decorate the endpapers of books. As the new exhibit in the Library Lobby shows, endpaper maps can be both beautiful and helpful to the reader. Works of fiction and nonfiction use this illuminating and artistic technique to enhance books. Come take a look!

This Library exhibit complements Minnesota on the Map, the exhibit which runs through Labor Day.

Learn More:

• Library Hours
• Minnesota on the Map exhibit

Digital scans of 1,047 selected correspondence, clippings, and reports from the James J. Hill papers are now available on the web. These files, in pdf format, are accessible through an online inventory,  which lists a description of each item and provides a link directly to each digital version.

The digitized material comes from the General Correspondence series and the Northern Pacific Reorganization materials within the James J. Hill papers, and cover topics including the attempted merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads between 1893 and 1905 and the debate among Hill and other financiers over a potential loan to England and France during World War I.

These digital files came to the Minnesota Historical Society along with the Hill Family Collection, and we’re pleased to make them available to users.  The original documents can be found in the James J. Hill papers, an inventory of which is also available online.

• Selected digital items from the James J. Hill papers

• Full inventory of the James J. Hill papers

Jillian Odland, Hill Family Collection Cataloger

The 2008 election cycle was remarkable, distinguished by the historic victory of Barack Obama and significant gains for the Democratic Party in general. As Minnesotans know, one bit of election business remains undecided six months later. Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken continue their contest for Minnesota’s vacant U.S. Senate seat.

As usual, the St. Paul Saints baseball team turned a big news story into a winning promotion. At its May 23 game against the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Canaries, the team gave away “Re” Count bobbleheads to the first 2,500 fans. The dolls, dressed like the number-loving Count von Count character of Sesame Street fame, feature a rotating head with two faces. Depending on your political proclivities, you can set the “Re” Count to display either Norm Coleman’s or Al Franken’s mug.

While the Society collected Franken and Coleman materials during last year’s campaign, the “Re” Count is something special. It speaks to the unusually prolonged nature of the Senate race, and to the good humor with which Minnesotans have taken it. And it’s one… one clever idea, too, ha ha ha!

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• View the podcast on the 1963 recount struggle between gubernatorial candidates Elmer Andersen and Karl Rolvaag

The Minnesota’s Greatest Generation exhibit prompted a number of new acquisitions to the collection. Among the most recent is a pair of bracelets made by Duluth native Ralph “Lefty” Brodin in 1943, while he was stationed in North Africa.

Manufactured and handmade jewelry pieces were popular mementos during both World Wars. For girlfriends, fiancées, wives, and mothers back home, these items provided tangible reminders of loved ones overseas. For soldiers, making the jewelry offered a way to pass the time and keep their minds occupied. Brodin crafted his two bracelets from aluminum, and carefully inscribed decorative borders and designs on them. He sent one to his wife, Ethel, and the other to his mother, Lena.

Sometime after making the bracelets, Ralph Brodin was transferred to Europe and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He survived the war and returned home to Duluth to raise three sons with Ethel. Though he never spoke much about his time overseas, Brodin’s family preserved the bracelets and, in doing so, saved a small piece of his wartime experience.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

In 1950 the Japanese created the title of Ningen Kokuhō or Living National Treasure for select artists who are both masters of their craft and keepers of an important aspect of their culture. As a local wood engraver and fine press printer,  Gaylord Schanilec is such a living treasure.

The Minnesota Historical Society Library recently purchased the deluxe edition (one of 26 copies) of Schanilec’s latest work –  the complicated, beautiful and unusual book Sylvæ. The book combines Schanilec’s artistic and printing prowess with Ben Verhoeven’s research and printing help to document twenty four varieties of trees on Schanilec’s 20 acres near Stockholm, Wisconsin. The book was acquired with the generous support of C. A. Weyerhaeuser Funds. The book, along with a selection of wood prints, plates, and tools used to create it, are all on display in the Library Lobby now through the end of July.

Cameron Booth

Portrait of a Soldier, 1918

Oil on board

In 2008, the Historical Society was the grateful recipient of a generous gift from Eva and Michelle Terrell, Portrait of a Soldier, by Cameron Booth. An extraordinary early painting by one of Minnesota’s best known 20^th century artists, this oil sketch portrays a somewhat gaunt, uniformed soldier with a piercing gaze. It is signed with somber formality “George Cameron Booth, A.E.F. (American Expeditionary Force) France, 1918.”

Cameron Booth was born in Pennsylvania in 1892 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1912 to 1917. Following his service in World War I, Booth accepted a teaching position in 1921 at the Minneapolis School of Art and made Minnesota his permanent home. Throughout his lengthy career he exhibited widely and received recognition for his artistic ability and teaching experience.

But, is this painting a portrait of an anonymous soldier, or a portrait of the artist himself?

We do know that Booth was indeed in France in 1918. The formality of the signature reads more like a title (or an epitaph) and the description on Booth’s draft registration card (bald, blue eyes) matches the person in the painting. But the painting’s history after its creation is mostly unknown. Before arriving to Minnesota, it was in a private collection in California and misidentified as a portrait of another Minnesota artist Adolf Dehn. The painting has been shown to a number of people who knew Booth in his later years but the results have been inconclusive.

The earliest image of Booth in the Minnesota Historical Society’s photograph collection is from the late 1930s—nearly twenty years after the portrait was painted. Similarities between the portrait and the photograph certainly exist but until a picture of Booth from the same time period is located, the work will be identified simply as Portrait of a Soldier.

This recent acquisition is the 55^th painting by Cameron Booth in our fine art collection of more the 6,000 works of art. Many thanks to Eva and Michelle Terrell for this gift to the Minnesota Historical Society.

Brian Szott, Curator of Art

The oratory skills of Minnesota’s first Episcopal Bishop, Henry Benjamin Whipple, were highly regarded in the U.S. and abroad.  A recent donation gives readers the opportunity to read selected sermons written by Whipple with quill pen and ink.   This volume provides the opportunity to leaf through many pages of Whipple’s flowery hand and experience the energizing tone of this man’s oratory.

With the acquisition of this volume the Society now holds a fine complement to the official Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota records and the Henry B. Whipple papers.  This custom bound volume contains original manuscript versions of sermons given by Whipple between 1888 and 1889.  It was assembled by him and presented to the Library of the Bishop Seabury Divinity School, Faribault, 1889.  The sermons illustrate church politics as well as illuminate Whipple’s historical knowledge, biblical scholarship, and his regard for people of many cultures and national origins.

In this role as Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Whipple was required to attend annual church conventions across the United States. An avid traveler, Whipple frequented his home state of New York and made regular visits to Washington, D. C., for meetings relating to Indian policies.  After 1862, Henry Whipple gained notoriety as an advocate for American Indians. As an advisor to four presidents over 40 years, Whipple’s opinion carried great weight in the eastern states-often more so than in Minnesota.

Marcia Anderson, Senior Curator

Learn More:

• Selection from the Bishop Whipple Collections of American Indian Art
• Inventory of Bishop Henry B. Whipple Records

Minnesota Prints and Printmakers, 1900-1945, an exhibition of over 50 prints by 42 artists currently on view at the James J. Hill House, explores an exciting chapter in the history of art making in Minnesota. Reflecting national trends, printmaking in Minnesota before 1945 was dominated by two distinct styles. This period witnessed a revival of the centuries old etching process followed by the introduction of New Deal era innovations in color lithography and serigraphy. In his book of the same title, author Bob Crump ably demonstrates that this period in Minnesota’s art history was as lively as it was productive. Minnesota Prints and Printmakers celebrates the genius of the artists working between 1900 and 1945.

Brian Szott, Curator of Art

]]> http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/2009/03/minnesota-prints-and-printmakers-1900-1945/feed/ 0 http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/2009/03/uss-minnesota-photograph-and-relic/ http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/2009/03/uss-minnesota-photograph-and-relic/#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:15:01 +0000 Matt Anderson http://discussions.mnhs.org/collections/?p=780

The Society recently acquired a pair of interesting items associated with the Navy frigate USS Minnesota. The vessel was launched in 1855 and served as flagship of the Union’s Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War. The Minnesota is best remembered for her participation in the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads, the famed clash between the ironclads Monitor and Virginia.

The acquired items include a photograph of the Minnesota, and a relic made from her hull. The photo, taken around 1898, shows the venerable frigate in her last assignment as an apparent barracks ship with the Massachusetts Naval Militia. The relic is a small fragment of the vessel’s oak hull, with a silver plaque proclaiming its origin. The fragment was made by Thomas Buttler & Company of Boston, the firm that scrapped the ship in 1901.

The photo and relic complement two other pieces already in the Society’s collection: the Minnesota’s wheel and bell. Together, they preserve the memory of the first Navy ship named for the state (er, territory) and a witness to one of the most remarkable naval battles in history.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• Explore objects from the Society’s Civil War collection
• Follow the Civil War as it happened with the Civil War Daybook
• Order a copy of the photo from Collections Online
• Purchase Minnesota in the Civil War from the Online Store

• See challenge coin from submarine USS Minnesota

View 3-D version of the Delisle globe

Click on picture to read caption

1765

Guillaume Delisle

Globe Terrestre: Revu et Corrige sur les Dernieres Observations et les Meilleurs Carties… Paris: Desnos.

As beautiful and as informational as maps can be, globes literally add a third dimension. They are fabulous artifacts that allow a user to interact with maps in a way that a two dimensional map cannot. Mid 18^th -century French globes are considered to be among the finest examples of the art of globe making. This globe, based on the cartographic work of Guillaume Delisle, is interesting in the extreme.

To begin with, Delisle was a cartographic “rock star”. He was born in Paris in 1675, the son of Claude Delisle, a famous geographer and historian. Trained in mathematics and astronomy, Guillaume was perfectly suited to make scientific corrections on earlier Dutch cartography. Delisle made giant leaps forward in mapmaking. For his work he was appointed “Premier Geographe du Roi” in 1718.

This globe is not representative of Delisle’s most accurate cartography, however. There are many inaccuracies on the North American continent alone. Notice the two North West passages, which are clearly based on wishful thinking, and the Mer de l’Ouest, (Sea of the West), is shockingly incorrect. Since Delisle had been dead for 40 years when this globe was made, and since Delisle was know for excluding hearsay on his maps, it seems safe to conclude that his successors- his younger brother, Joseph-Nicholas Delisle and his nephew Philippe Buache – were responsible for the “Mer de l’Ouest,” based on the supposed voyage of an Admiral de Fonte who claimed to have found a river that flowed through North America. Ten years later Cook’s voyage would disprove the existence of both these inaccuracies. California is still attached to the mainland on this globe, but the shape of the Great Lakes are poorly rendered for the time period and the Missouri and Rio Grande (Rio del Norte) have nearly identical headwaters. The Mississippi River takes an exaggerated eastward bend but the location of the head of the river is a fairly accurate guess. All of these strange features add to the fascination of the globe.

There are two cartouches (think of a cartouche as the title page and copyright page of a book) and an advertisement printed on the globe. The main cartouche promises that the globe is “revised and corrected on the latest observations and the best maps” and, of course, is dedicated to the king of France. The other main cartouche mentions “Delisle, the astronomer…” as the cartographer behind this terrestrial globe that was “Monte par l’Auteur” or “mounted” by Desnos the publisher. The globe also shows the routes of the explorers via dotted lines suggesting the inclusion of information gathered from those excursions.

Globes dating from the 18^th century are extremely rare, which might lead one to assume that they were not widely used in their day. This is not the case at all. Globes were common educational tools used in classrooms, libraries, and even as navigational instruments on ships. It is their inherent fragility that has led to their scarcity.

Help us preserve and display the Delisle Globe.

Currently on view at the Library Lobby until mid-April is an exhibit of items from the Minnesota Historical Society collection relating to Abraham Lincoln and his connections to Minnesota. The Library is free and open to the public – come and see!

Learn more:

• Library hours
• Lincoln Bicentennial and Minnesota web page
  

Catch the news!  View news clips from one of the country’s premiere television news film collections, KSTP-TV Archive.  Completed in 2008 to celebrate the State’s sesquicentennial and KSTP’s sixtieth anniversary, a new web page highlights the KSTP-TV Archive.  http://www.mnhs.org/collections/kstp/

The complete archive holds over 3 million feet of news film (1948-1976) and 2,500 videotapes (1976-1993).  KSTP Channel 5 was one of the first full-color stations, and the first station in the Midwest to air a daily newscast. The currently posted segments are part of 150 news clips being digitized for web delivery.  The selection provides a glimpse of the people, events, tragedies and triumphs captured by KSTP Channel 5 in Minnesota, for the second half of the twentieth century.  See 1949 footage of a U.S. Navy blimp, the Como Lake ice skating races in 1964, and the 1979 gas lines, among many others.

Copies of these clips are also available for purchase. The full 1960s decade featured here will also be available for purchase on DVD in mid 2009. Submit the KSTP Request Form to the Minnesota Historical Society for research, purchase, or use. Watch as more segments are added to bring our total to 150 clips in 2009!

Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. gave the KSTP-TV Archive to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1994. Since then, the 16 mm news film has been cleaned, spliced, cataloged, and rehoused in a secure and climate-controlled storage area.  The news film is cataloged in the Society’s Collection Management System, for which a search interface is currently being developed. This will allow for online research of the full database.

The Minnesota Historical Society continues to promote long-term care, create further information, and provide access to this important news archive.  Welcome to the KSTP-TV Archive!

Diane Adams-Graf, Sound and Visual Curator

With winter cold and snow abundant, children around the state are taking out their sleds and heading for the hills. Some of them might wish they had one of these beauties: a Sno Scooter built by the White Bear Water Ski Company.

This scooter belonged to a St. Paul family that purchased it in the late 1950s. The donor recalled riding it with his brother and sister for several seasons – and discovering that the scooter worked best in deep snow. In later years, the donor’s own children enjoyed the scooter, making it a multi-generation tradition.

Here at the Society, the Sno Scooter will complement a water ski board, made by the same White Bear Lake-based company, already in the collection. The two pieces remind us of Minnesota’s contrasting seasons, and the unique recreational pleasures that each one brings.

The White Bear Water Ski Company is gone, but other companies continue to make their own versions of the snow scooter. (Some are even motorized!) This example may have made its last run, but it can still provide some fun, if only in the form of happy winter memories.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

A few days ago the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office transferred records of the Minnesota Electoral College Assembly that occurred on December 15, 2008.  On that day, Minnesota’s ten Electors unanimously cast votes for Barack Obama and Joseph Biden for president and vice president in a ceremony held in the Minnesota State Capitol Rotunda.  Pictured here are the ballots cast by Minnesota’s slate of ten Electors from the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party.  Under the U.S. Constitution, Minnesota is provided ten Electors, a number equal to Minnesota’s number of senators and representatives seated in the U.S. Congress.  Also transferred with the ballots, is a photograph of the Electors with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the original signed Certificate of Ascertainment of Appointment of Electors for President and Vice President, a news release about the ceremony, the assembly program, and a engraved pen of the type used for the signings.   Answers to frequently asked questions about the Electoral College are available on the Secretary of State’s Web site homepage.

Interested in photographs of tractors?  The Minnesota Historical Society is the place to look!

The Minneapolis-Moline Negative Collection is now available to the public.  This collection holds 14,180, black and white negatives of tractors, agricultural implements, machinery, and power units manufactured by that company between the 1930s and 1960s. Each of these images is described in a searchable list now available in the Society’s online library catalog.  In addition, almost 2,000 of them have been printed and can be viewed in the online Photo and Art Database. Any image can  be ordered from the Library’s Copy Service.

The Minneapolis-Moline Company was formed in 1929 and located in Hopkins, Minnesota. Many images in this collection depict Minneapolis-Moline tractors, implements, and power units, in the factory or dealer showroom or working in farm fields or other outdoor settings. There are also images with perspectives of machinery parts for use in sales publications. A large number depict the interior and exterior of factories, especially the Hopkins and Lake Street plants. There are aerial views of the factories, closer views of specific factory buildings and machinery, as well as views of company dealerships and branch offices around the United States. The Minneapolis-Moline Company’s commercial photographer, Arthur H. Jensen, photographed these images and donated them to the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) in 1975.

The cataloging needs for a collection this size required years of time, people and resources. The Minneapolis-Moline Collectors group, its many supporters and other enthusiasts, contributed gifts of both funds and labor toward documenting this collection. Other volunteers and Society staff scanned and cataloged material in recent years, and the Society is now able to provide full access to this important and vast collection of images.

The only immediate and remaining task for this collection is to follow-up on a 1995 recommendation to sleeve the negatives. Over 50% of the collection is covered by red opaque (masking) that is flaking off the negatives.  Almost the entire collection of negatives is covered with scratches.  It was recommended that buffered, acid-free, enclosures be used to sleeve the negatives. This final step is an important one to advancing the preservation of the Minneapolis-Moline Negative Collection.  We hope to secure funds for this important, preservation effort, in the coming year.

Diane Adams-Graf, Sound and Visual Curator

Learn More:

• View almost 2,000 images at the Visual Resources Database

• Research over 14,000 negatives in a topical finding aid

Political campaigns are chaotic, frenzied affairs and the best way to peer into this process is through the lens of a camera. Fortunately, Minnesota is blessed with having some of the best documentary photographers in the field. The exhibition, The Campaign Trail: Minnesota’s Historic Role in Modern Politics examines campaign photography by featuring work by three talented and dedicated political photographers in Minnesota-Tom Arndt, Terry Gydesen and Ann Marsden. Each has been documenting the political scene for many years, providing an important visual document for future generations. In particular, Tom Arndt and Terry Gydesen’s thoughtful and sensitive chronicle of the Mondale and Wellstone campaigns provide an in depth portrait of the candidate and his campaign.

Come see an exhibit of these fascinating images on view at the James J. Hill House Gallery until Feb. 22, 2009.

Above photo by Tom Arndt

Highlights from the convention itself include the Minnesota delegation’s floor standard, two delegate chairs, informational signs that guided delegates through the Xcel Energy Center, and 56 pieces of the confetti – each piece bearing a color photo of John McCain – that fell over the crowd after the nominee’s acceptance speech.

From the media, we collected eight different credential cards – two for each day of the convention – used by staffers with Minnesota Public Radio and KARE-11 TV. We also collected a photojournalist’s camera that was broken beyond repair as he covered protests near Mears Park on September 2.

Two protestors donated handmade anti-war signs they carried on the John Ireland Boulevard bridge during the September 4 demonstration, as well as a pocket guide to protestors’ civil rights issued by the ACLU. We received a “Peace Keepers” T-shirt worn by one of the volunteers who formed a nonviolent barrier between protestors and police officers. We also collected one of the disposable “PlastiCuff” wrist restraints used by police officers to secure arrested individuals.

Our week at the center of American political life was a thrilling one. I’d like to think that we’ve preserved a little bit of that excitement along with these objects.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• Podcast on the 1892 Republican National Convention, held in Minneapolis
• History Topics page on the 1892 Republican National Convention

James J. Hill was a business legend. In the last quarter of the nineteenth-century, he transformed the near bankrupt Saint Paul and Pacific into the legendary Great Northern Railroad that ran from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington by 1893. The man known as the Empire Builder had amassed a fortune of more than $63 million by the time of his death in 1916. Hill’s son Louis inherited his father’s business acumen and energetically pursued railroad, mining, and development activities throughout the west.

In March 2008, the Minnesota Historical Society happily agreed to transfer 1400 cubic feet of Hill Family records from the James J. Hill Reference Library in Saint Paul to the History Center. These papers cover the family and business concerns of James and Louis, the family and social life of Louis’ wife Maud Van Cortlandt Hill, and the activities of the Reed/Hyde family between 1860 and 1920. Together these materials document late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social, political, economic, and cultural topics. By transferring the materials to MHS, the Hill Reference Library can better focus on its core mission: serving the needs of business owners and entrepreneurs with reference help and online tools. The Minnesota Historical Society, on the other hand, is uniquely suited to meet the needs of researchers, providing care for and access to the papers. The Society already has a number of resources that will complement and contextualize the Hill Family Papers. These include our collection of Great Northern Railroad records, a large collection of state newspapers, and an online database of historical images.

Generous support by the Northwest Area, Jerome, and Grotto Foundations will allow MHS to process the papers, create up-to-date finding aids, and produce a web site that will present web visitors with a single portal to access material relating to James J. Hill and his family. This work will be completed in 2010. In the meantime, limited access to the papers is available at the History Center library in Saint Paul.

Jennifer Jones, Head of Collections

Learn More:

• James J. Hill House
• Minnesota Historical Society Library
• Selection of Hill Family Images on the Visual Resources Database

Born in Watonwan County, near Butterfield, Minnesota, in 1922, Laingen was raised in a modest farm community and enjoyed participating in 4-H events. He graduated from St. Olaf College, joined the U.S. Navy and served in the Philippines during World War II. Laingen studied at the National War College and earned a Masters degree in international relations from the University of Minnesota. He joined the Foreign Service in 1950 and stayed with the agency for 38 years. Laingen was President of the American Academy of Diplomacy from 1991-2006.

Today Laingen resides in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife, Penelope (Penne). Penne originated the yellow ribbon campaign during the hostage crisis. Ribbons are still used to this day to bring attention to issues ranging from support for American combat troops to breast cancer awareness.

The Laingen collection includes personal papers and letters, the suit and tie Laingen wore while in captivity, and an American flag given to him by President Ronald Reagan after his release. The collection will serve as a wonderful resource for any scholar researching 1970s politics, U.S.-Iranian relations, diplomacy, hostage issues, rural Minnesota farm life and World War II in the Philippines. Some of the material will be featured in the Minnesota’s Greatest Generation exhibit, scheduled to open at the Minnesota History Center on Memorial Day, 2009.

 Molly Tierney, Curator of Manuscripts

Learn More:

• Books by and about Laingen in the MHS library
• Minnesota’s Greatest Generation
• Share your own story of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation
• WCCO-TV story on Laingen’s donation

Come by the Library Lobby and see some of the wonderful pieces we have from the Republican National Convention of 1892 on display. This includes badges, original newspapers, photographs of the event, as well as visitor guides given to the Delegates. Consider the 1892 Convention in light of the hoopla surrounding the upcoming Convention, which will be held just down the hill!

This display will be on view the same hours as the Library. It will not be available during the Convention itself, from September 1 through September 4.

Be sure to listen to the Podcast on the 1892 Convention as well!

See Hudson’s report here: http://wcco.com/findingminnesota/lindbergh.historical.site.2.770341.html

Visit the Lindbergh Site’s web page here: http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/lh/

You know his mansion on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, and you know that he’s the railroad magnate, but did you know about how diverse his ventures were or the kind of family man he was? The answers can be found in his papers!

The James J. Hill/Louis W. Hill manuscript collections provide a wealth of documentation on topics as varied as mining interests, agricultural enterprises, national and international commerce and finance, and the expansion of the Pacific Northwest. These business papers complement our massive collection of railroad records. The papers contain details about the Hills’ interests in Canadian fishing, oil exploration, Glacier National Park, and philanthropy throughout the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Complementing these business topics are the Maude Hill papers, a rich resource on the domestic side of the Hill family.

The papers were transferred from the James J. Hill Reference Library to the Minnesota Historical Society in May 2008. They are currently in the process of being recataloged, and so will not be available for public use for several months. In the meantime, come see materials from this outstanding collection on display in the Lobby of the Minnesota Historical Society Library through August 25, 2008.

Learn more:

• James J. Hill Historic Site

Watch the interview, and come see the show!

The July 2006 – April 2007 History Center exhibit “Red Wing Retro: Extraordinary Pottery, Everyday Life” provided an opportunity to feature a significant portion of the Society’s holdings documenting a Minnesota firm and products. Exhibits also enable museums to inform potential donors about strengths and gaps in a collection. As a result of this exhibition, nearly 50 pieces of Red Wing pottery were acquired for the collections between 2006 and 2008.

A recent and most generous gift from a long-time donor has greatly increased our holdings of early and rare Red Wing art pottery with 9 examples of the vessels in the Nokomis line.

The company best known today as the Red Wing Potteries, Inc., had its beginnings in Red Wing, Minnesota about 1878. While focused on utilitarian wares with a conscious eye toward affordable yet fashionable offerings, Red Wing Potteries were at the same time traditional and modern. In 1929 glazed art pottery became part of the Red Wing Potteries, Inc. product family, and examples from many lines continued to be available until 1967. The Potteries’ artware featured exhaustive quantities of abstract, stylized and iconic objects created either for contemplation or to function in various capacities throughout the home. The vases, planters, ashtrays, bowls, sculptures, commemoratives, promotionals, and other items in the artware line generally amounted to about 15% of the Potteries’ sales.

Produced circa 1926 -1929 and likely sold into the 1930s, Nokomis vessels were slip-cast in plaster molds. The glaze was described by the company as “a metallic finish in gray and tan with a tint of copper;” and collectors today agree that the 18 classic shapes decorated in this impressionistic hand-applied glaze were marketed ahead of their time. Nokomis vessels are found in matte, semi-matte, and glossy surface finishes. All the shapes in this donation (#195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 205, 207 & 212) appear in the “Price List-August, 1931 Red Wing Pottery Glazed Ware.”

Marcia Anderson, Senior Curator

Learn More:

• Books by Ray Reiss on Red Wing Art Pottery and Dinnerware, and other reference sources

• Red Wing Retro, archived exhibit page

In 2007 the Minnesota Historical Society acquired a significant portion of the Richard Ferrell Flour Milling Industry History Collection. For 40 years Mr. Ferrell, who once managed Pillsbury’s historic ‘A’ Mill on Minneapolis’s east bank, collected flour milling objects, photos, advertisements, and memorabilia. Today his collection represents the premier record of the industry’s development from the mid-1800s to the present.

Items produced by Minnesota-based millers form the core of the collection, but it also includes material from companies in neighboring states, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada. Among the collection highlights are flour bags, barrels, advertising broadsides, company premiums, trade journals, photos, and postcards showing mills throughout the region. Given Mr. Ferrell’s association with Pillsbury, the collection also includes many items featuring that most celebrated advertising icon, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Work to process the Ferrell Collection, which includes thousands of items, will continue into 2009. Ultimately, many of the objects will be on public display on a rotating basis at the Mill City Museum. Other photo and manuscript materials will be made available to researchers through the Society’s library. They will be of great value to anyone interested in industrial history, foodways, or 20th Century advertising.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• Mill City Museum
• History Topic: Washburn ‘A’ Mill Explosion
• Photos of Minneapolis Flour Mills in the Visual Resources Database
• Mill City: A Visual History of the Minneapolis Mill District by Shannon M. Pennefeather
• Minneota History, Spring/Summer 2003, Special Issue on Flour Milling in Minneapolis

An exhibition of paintings, prints, and sculptures from the 1930s and 1940s by Minnesota artists is on view at the James J. Hill House through November 2, 2008. Please visit the exhibit website for more details and to see examples.

Now on view in the Library Lobby is Founding Documents of Our State: Minnesota at 150 Years. Highlights include Minnesota’s two (count them, two) original Constitutions; a territorial legislator’s desk from 1853 (shown above); a map from 1857 (also above); Seth Eastman’s design for the territorial seal; and an original newspaper from when statehood was declared. This will be up until June 23, 2008.

Quilting is a $4 billion dollar industry, as reported by the director of the Houston Quilt Festival in a recent newscast. Interest in quilting was revived in the early 1970s along with other forms of handwork. Today quilters in their enthusiasm demonstrate their interest in both traditional and experimental quilting. “Motherwort” is a contemporary quilt by a Minnesota quilter recently added to the permanent collection.It is an abstracted floral image with rich color in the designer’s choice of printed cottons and decorative machine stitching.  

The quilter, Clare Degerness of Moorhead, Minnesota, notes: “I approach quilt making from both a construction background and a life long interest in art. Both aspects of my quilt art are important – original, creative and precise construction. Although I began quilt making with traditional patterns and techniques, my own creativity has stretched to include original designs, non-traditional fabrics, and construction techniques never taught in Home Economics…. My work goes beyond my own space into public places where, hopefully it educates and inspires.” (Quote from Proverbial Challenge website.)

Linda McShannock, Curator

Learn More:

More than an exhibit…more than a party…it’s

RetroRama!

Join us!

And be sure not to miss our guide to 1950s fashion.

The MHS holds the James C. Christie and Family papers. William and Thomas were excellent and prolific writers. The back-and-forth correspondence among the family members creates a wonderful display of details, events, and personalities through almost daily accounts with the First Minnesota Light Artillery. 

In our existing collection of William’s correspondence, he wrote to his father, James C. Christie, on January 17 and 18, 1862, mentioning their change in location to the St. Louis Arsenal, guard duty, receiving muskets, living in tents, the buildings, illness and death at the camps, and the operations of making musket balls. Another letter to his brother, Alexander, on the 22nd of January mentions that Thomas is too lazy to write and that he’ll do so when the spirit moves him, while William will return all letters written to him. Judging by the surviving collection, the spirit doesn’t move Thomas to write until February, and he lets his brother Alexander know that he can’t expect a letter for every one written.

In the case of the newly acquired letter written by William on January 19, 1862, we know that he is writing to his brother, most likely Alexander. The following excerpt displays William’s astute observations:

“events are taking place so fast here that I am forced as it were to give you some things as it were over again. Well on last Wednesday; we came here: and are doing guard duty in place of some troops: that have been ordered of to Cario[?]: We had fortithree men: on duty last night and the same today. We will soon be relieved from such onerous duty for we will have 500 troops to keep the place. We will stay here until we are fully equipped with our whole accoutrements as Artillerients at Present we have muskets to duty with. There are a great buildings inside the walls There are three or four buildings occupied in storing cartridges and such like things. There is one building and two storied for making cartridges. Boys do the work and their fingers fly pretty nimble each boy will make from eight hundred or one thousand per day…There is a black smith shop in which they have quite a number of fires going. They are making nothing new here they shot and shell are cast in the foundry in the city. Only the repairing of muskets… We have an Irish Winter at Present. Tom will have some funny things to tell you about the seceshers. We have some sixtifive of them here they do police duty and all things of that sort. They are a poor shabby looking set tall light men with a great predominance of legs. They cut ice and Tom was with them in the ice guarding them…I have some sad news to tell you. We had had two deaths in our company within the past week one a german the other an American. The first one of Asthma. The other of the measles there is a great deal of fault as a lack of knowledge among the men or in fact both are the cause of a great deal of the sickness among us. They have not the least idea of the laws of health or Anatomy or phisology you would laugh to hear them talk of being sore in their stomach when in fact it is there heart or rather their windpipe so it goes they eat and drink ale they can…”

An interesting notation underneath the patriotic saying on the letter: after “No North, No South, No East, No West But Equal and Exact Justice to all,” William adds, “And also to the Negro.”

He requests stimulating discussion from his brother and comments on his sister Sarah’s health and school performance. He mentions that he will no longer write to a woman by the name of Ann again, describes pitching tents in a grove of trees, offering details of the tent’s structure and what they did the first night.

William’s letter is a welcomed addition to the Christie Family papers; please check out other Christie family letters at http://www.mnhs.org/library/Christie/intropage.html and through the Library.

 Molly Tierney, Manuscripts Curator

While what is deemed beautiful has changed over time, the search for beauty is an ongoing saga. The new display in the Library Lobby features pieces from the collection that illustrate   that desire for perfect hair and makeup including institutions devoted to promoting beauty products.  Minnesota played a pivotal role in the drive to make beauty possible at home, with thriving early home permanent, hair care, and makeup industries in the Twin Cities.

Entrance to the Library is free and open to the public; follow this link for hours.

Images, clockwise: Permanent wave machine, 1937-1941; Toni Spin Curlers, 1954; human hair rat, ca. 1910.

*Pulchritude: physical beauty, comeliness

As we approach summer and the start of the outdoor concert season, we recall one of Minnesota’s most memorable outdoor performances. The Beatles staged their second concert tour of the United States in the late summer of 1965. At this peak of Beatlemania, the Beatles played a mixture of outdoor stadiums and indoor arenas and for fans in Minnesota, that date came on August 21, 1965 at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington.  The images seen here capture the Beatles’ landing and their waiting fans at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, interviews with radio sponsor, WDGY and an ecstatic crowd at the stadium that warm evening.  Taken by newspaper photographers, Sully and Neale, these images are part of the Society’s St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press negative collection. This event was also captured on camera by local teen Bill Carlson, and his photographs were recently published in The Beatles! A One-Night Stand in the Heartland. 

Diane Adams-Graf, Sound and Visual Curator

 Learn More:

• View images from this memorable event on the MHS Visual Resources Database here
• Share your memories of The Beatles here

Images, top to bottom:

The Beatles arrive at Twin Cities Metropolitan Airport

Fans at Beatles Concert. Metropolitan Stadium

The Beatles Concert at Metropolitan Stadium

In addition to interpretation and preservation, a primary responsibility of a curator is to build and expand the collection for which he or she is responsible.

This exhibition highlights some of the more notable acquisitions to the art collection over the last five years. The fifty works included here represent only a percentage of the art that has come to the Minnesota Historical Society and an even smaller fraction of the literally thousands of items acquired by the Society each year.

The title, “Looking Back/Moving Forward” refers to the fact that while the Society collects the art of the past (sometimes the very recent past!) it is always with an eye toward the future. Curators continually evaluate the interpretive value of an object for future generations.

At the Society, not only are we charged with telling the story of our past, we also have a duty to tell the story of our present. That is why along with such 19th century masters as Eastman, Volk and Fournier and such modern masters as Wedin, Brown, Havens and Quirt, you’ll also find tomorrow’s masters such as Smith, Griffiths, Lynch and Swiszcz.

We have all heard the expression “every picture tells a story.” At the Minnesota Historical Society–if we’re lucky–our pictures tell many stories. Interpreting art through a historical context provides opportunities not available to other institutions. At the Society, a work of art becomes a portal through which the viewer can discover unique aspects of Minnesota’s history.

As Minnesota commemorates the 150th anniversary of statehood in 2008, we will acknowledge and celebrate those things that distinguish our state. One of Minnesota’s great accomplishments is its long tradition of art making. It is a mark of excellence for which we should be very proud.

Brian Szott, Curator of Art

Learn More

• Podcast of Brian Szott sharing five of his favorite additions
• The Art Collection at the Minnesota Historical Society
• More about Seth Eastman
• Art by Seth Eastman
• Art by Elof Wedin

Originally commissioned in 1885 by the State of Minnesota as the Third State Asylum for the Mentally Ill, the Fergus Falls State Hospital/Regional Treatment Center received its first patients in 1890.  The facility was self-sufficient with its own farm, food service, laundry, workshops and power plant.  The institution served 17 counties in northwestern and west central Minnesota, with the patient census reaching an all-time high of 2,078 in 1937,  The regional treatment center was one of the first multi-purpose campuses, serving those with developmental disabilities, chemical dependency as well as psychiatric illnesses.  For the past two decades patients have been moved to smaller community based facilities, and in 2007 the campus buildings were sold to the City of Fergus Falls. 

Selected historical records of the Fergus Falls State Hospital/Regional Treatment Center are preserved in the Minnesota State Archives, and with a few exceptions, are available for public use.

Prior to the war, Foley established itself as a successful cookware manufacturer. Its signature product, the Foley Food Mill, was an early hand-cranked version of the modern electric food processor. After Pearl Harbor, Foley joined many other U.S. companies in turning over its production facilities to wartime use. Given Foley’s experience with kitchen components, it was only natural that it be selected to produce canteens and mess kits for American soldiers overseas.

The canteen set is a welcome addition to the collection, and it reminds us of the many crucial efforts made on the home front during the struggle of 1941-1945.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• In Their Words: War - Keeping the Home Fires Burning
• Minnesota’s Greatest Generation

“Selections from the Bishop Whipple Collection of American Indian Art,” on view Feb. 15 – April 13 [PLEASE NOTE: THIS EXHIBIT IS NOW CLOSED.] at the Minnesota History Center, is presented in cooperation with the Science Museum of Minnesota.

The exhibit features examples of traditional quillwork, beaded garments, bandolier bags, as well as a variety of objects and lace produced at mission schools in Minnesota.

To learn more about Bishop Whipple and the exhibit, please visit:

Bishop Whipple Collection of American Indian Art Podcast

Selections from Bishop Whipple Collection Exhibit

or come to the History Center!

The Minnesota Historical Society’s primary collecting mission is to document people and events from the past. It is rare for us to collect present-day items because, without the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to identify significant objects and events. The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge across the Mississippi River on August 1, 2007, was an important exception.

In the days after the disaster, MHS curators discussed how best to document it in the Society’s collection. Steel bridge girders are impressive, but they are difficult to move, exhibit and store, so we opted instead for smaller pieces. Road signs seemed an obvious choice, and a sign clearly connected to the bridge would be better still. The Minnesota Department of Transportation recommended a mile marker sign, and in October the Society took possession of the sign for mile 18.4, which stood on the northbound lane at the time of the collapse.

From a curator’s perspective, the sign is an ideal artifact from the tragedy. It is quickly recognizable to viewers, is branded with the I-35W identification shield, and is directly connected to the bridge (the I-35W bridge stood between miles 18.3 and 18.7).  The sign is just one of several pieces the Society has collected from this event, but it will remain one of the most poignent.

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator

Learn More:

• I-35W Bridge Resources at the Minnesota Historical Society
• Podcast of Government Records Specialist Shawn Rounds commenting on I-35W bridge resources

 

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another
land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.
                                                                     Franklin Roosevelt

Late in 2007, the Minnesota Historical Society became the proud steward of a large collection of art from the Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA (1935 – 1942) was part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program to put unemployed citizens back to work. In Minnesota, this program employed numerous artists creating one of the most prolific and exciting periods in the history of art making in the state.

For nearly 70 years, this collection had remained on location at Ah-Gwah-Ching (meaning “out of doors” in Ojibwe), a state-run medical facility in Walker, MN. Originally opened as a tuberculosis hospital in 1907, the institution is scheduled to close early in 2008. The employees of the hospital and residents of Walker have taken great pride in (and great care of) this collection.

Originally commissioned by the federal government–which still claims title to all WPA material–the Historical Society has been identified as a facility best able to preserve, research and interpret the work from this important era. In an agreement with the General Services Administration, MHS will hold this work in perpetuity.

The Ah-Gwah-Ching archive, as it is now called, consists of more the 160 items including prints, watercolors, oils and woodcarvings by such artists as Bob Brown, Henry Bukowski, Reathel Keppen, Dorothea Lau, Alexander Oja and Bennet Swanson. A selection of this archive will be on view at the James J. Hill House beginning in May 2008.

From top to bottom:
Communications (1936) by Ingrid Edwards
Train Yard (1936) by Sverre Hanssen
Nite in North St. Paul (1941) by Alexander Oja

Brian Szott, Curator of Art

See Trompeter’s report here: http://wcco.com/specialreports/minnesota.history.center.2.609055.html

The long anticipated donation of the Andersen Corporation Archives has arrived at the Minnesota Historical Society. The collection consists of more than 240 cubic feet of manuscript records and three-dimensional objects! We are thrilled to add this major Minnesota company to the many businesses represented in our collections.

Danish immigrant Hans Jacob Andersen and his family founded Andersen Lumber Company in 1903 in Hudson, Wisconsin, where the logs arrived via the St. Croix River. In 1905, Hans introduced an innovative “two-bundle” method of designing and shipping unassembled window frames. By producing bundled pairs of horizontal and vertical window frame sections, Andersen streamlined frame production and simplified mass distribution. This was the first of many innovations for Andersen Corporation. Hans Andersen sold his lumber business in 1908 to focus on window frames, but returned to the retail lumber industry in 1916. The privately owned business moved across the St. Croix River in 1913 to South Stillwater (now Bayport), Minnesota.

Today the Andersen Corporation remains headquartered in Bayport and employs more than 9,000 people across the United States. The company celebrated its centennial in 2003 with a pledge to build 100 homes with Habitat for Humanity. Andersen finished its 100th home this year.

The manuscript portion of the Andersen collection contains Andersen family papers and corporate records from the 1870s-2005. The records include employee newsletters, product catalogs, price lists, advertising, legal files, trade mark and patent documents, sales information, product installation manuals, photographs, audio-visual materials and much more. Together these records document the people and facilities of Andersen Corporation, its predecessors and its subsidiary companies.

The object portion of the collection features a number of important pieces including – naturally – windows.  Two pairs of early 20th Century “two-bundle” frames represent Andersen’s first innovation. One double-hung window, complete with frame, represents the most widespread window style. A sales sample of a Fibrex® window – made from a composite of vinyl and wood fibers reclaimed from the manufacturing process – characterizes one of the company’s more recent innovations.

Other three-dimensional pieces include a set of drafting tools used by Fred C. Andersen (son of Hans), a carpenter’s square, a shop apron, and an Army-Navy “E” Award pennant presented in recognition of Andersen’s substantial production of ammunition boxes during World War II.

Molly Tierney, Curator of Manuscripts

Matt Anderson, Objects Curator (who spells it “s-o-n”)

While not all school district records in the State Archives collection are as colorful as these, the information a researcher can find about students, teachers, and school buildings is rich. The State Archives currently preserves records of about 3,000 rural and independent school districts. Many of the records are the official records (meeting minutes, school board election results, summaries of receipts and expenditures) of the school district clerk and treasurer, but there are also teachers’ class record books and attendance registers, school censuses, photographs, and much more. There is lots of information listing the kids who attended individual schools, who their teachers were, what subject the pupils were taught, and the books they read.

Learn More:

Search the Library Catalog by:

1. the county name and school district number,
2. the name of the school, or
3. the township or city name and the term “school,” plus the county name if the township or city is a common name.

Search the Visual Resources Database to find individual photographs of schools by:

1. the county name and school district number,
2. the name of the school, or
3. the township or city name and the term “school,” plus the county name if the township or city is a common name.

Schoolhouses of Minnesota By: Photography by Doug Ohman

Family History Resources: School Records

The Society’s collection holds more than 800 of Whitney’s images, including seven daguerreotypes, taken during the 1850s of St. Anthony Falls, St. Paul and residents. These are rare views of Minnesota’s pre-Civil War scenes and citizens.

Daguerreotypes were mirror-like, one-of-a-kind portraits (no negative was involved) that first appeared in 1839 and peaked in popularity by 1858. To have a “daguerreian portrait” of Minnesota’s most prolific and famous photographer is a benchmark contribution to the iconographic history of the state. This acquisition completes a singular collection of Whitney’s pioneering work held by the Minnesota Historical Society. It was secured with private funds from the Lila J. Goff Acquisitions Endowment, the Josephine Harper Darling Estate and the Virginia Moe Endowment Fund. Tentative plans are underway to display this daguerreian portrait of Whitney and selections of his work from the Society’s collection, in 2008.

Learn More:

• Whitney’s Images in the Visual Resources Database
• Whitney’s Works in the Library Collection
• Records in the Library related to Joel E. Whitney
• Photograph Collection at MHS
• Caring for Photographs