Minnesota today is more ethnically diverse than at any time in its history. The work of documenting this diversity is challenging, and the Minnesota Historical Society has turned to oral history as a major tool as it reaches out into immigrant communities. The Society has undertaken a continuing succession of projects in cooperation with the Asian Indian, Tibetan, Somali, Hmong, Khmer (Cambodian) and Latino communities, and is working now to ensure that this remarkable collection of stories is available to educators statewide.

James Fogerty is head of documentary programs and director of the Society’s Oral History Office. He will discuss the immigrant oral histories and the challenges and rewards of working to ensure that the stories of these new Minnesotans become part of the state’s historical record.

• Date: Tuesday April 7
• Time: 6:00-7:30 p.m.
• Location: Fraternal Congress classroom on the 2nd floor of the History Center
• Price: MHS members $8, non-members $10
• Register online.

Intermediate Genealogy Series Continues

The second 2-lecture set in the popular 10-part series of classes offered by the Minnesota Genealogical Society (MGS) and hosted by the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) is coming up on Saturday. Don’t worry if you missed the first set, you can still come! And don’t think you need to be a genealogist to get a lot of useful information from these two classes.

This month’s two genealogy lectures are by MGS member and MHS Genealogy Help Desk volunteer J. H. (Jay) Fonkert, who will present “Census Sleuthing: Strategies for Family History Research” and “The GEO in Genealogy: Using Maps in Family History.”

• Saturday March 14, 10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Cost: $28 for MHS or MGS members; $32 for non-members.
• Location: Fraternal Congress Classroom in the Minnesota History Center.
• The class is limited to 40, pre-registration required.
• Register online.

“Census Sleuthing: Strategies for Family History Research” will take place from 10:00-11:00 a.m. Census records are among the genealogist’s best friends because they provide social and economic snapshots of our ancestors in family settings. This class will help researchers locate hard-to-find ancestors, evaluate evidence against other sources, and link generations together over time. Just in time for this class, the Minnesota Historical Society has launched the Minnesota State Census Index, so you can browse for your Minnesota ancestors using the same search interface as the indexes for Minensota birth certificates and death certificates. You can also use WOTR to report corrections.

After a half-hour break, “The GEO in Genealogy: Using Maps in Family History” will be presented from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Every event in your ancestor’s life took place in a unique place. Maps cannot only help you find the place, but bring that place to life. Maps can help explain how your ancestor got there and what life was like there. This lecture will show examples of many kinds of maps and give tips for finding the maps most useful for your family history research. After the class, be sure to visit the Society’s new map exhibit: “Minnesota on the Map: Four Centuries of Maps from the Minnesota Historical Society Collection.”

A new exhibit - Minnesota on the Map: Four Centuries of Maps from the Minnesota Historical Society Collection - just opened on February 28. The exhibit features dozens of maps, atlases, and artifacts from the Society’s collection, including an atlas from 1595, displayed alongside current road, city, and tourist maps. The Society’s extensive collection of early exploration and travel maps of North America includes document maps and atlases used by Europeans to understand the geography of the “New World” and illustrates how that understanding changed over time. For more information visit the exhibit’s webpage.

If you’re a real map lover, you’ll want to take the library class “Minnesota on the Map: An Introduction to the MHS Map Collection” on March 10 (6:00-7:30 pm).  Class participants will walk through the exhibit with Patrick Coleman, the Society’s map curator. The class will continue in the Library where other maps and cartographic resources not included in the exhibit will be viewed and their value in conducting historical research discussed.  Register online to make sure you get a spot.

Lincoln and Minnesota?

Surprising but true—there are a number of connections between Abraham Lincoln and Minnesota!

1. Lincoln was the first president Minnesotans could vote for, because we had become a state just two years before his election.
2. Lincoln was president during the Civil War, and the first troops that volunteered to serve were from Minnesota.
3. Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which encouraged settlement in Minnesota and other frontier states.

To honor the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the Minnesota Historical Society has gathered information about this great president, his connections to Minnesota, and Minnesota during the Lincoln years on a special Lincoln Bicentennial webpage. 

Abraham Lincoln and one or all of his connections to Minnesota would make an excellent History Day topic for the theme “The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies.” 

For more information on President Lincoln and the Dakota Conflict in Minnesota, see the Minnesota History Topic on the Dakota War of 1862. Included is a digital image of the December 6, 1862, letter that President Lincoln wrote to Henry Sibley listing the names of the 39 Dakota Indians to be hanged in Mankato for their participation in the Conflict (in the Edward D. Neill and Family Papers).

Students are invited to join History Day staff and staff of the Minnesota Historical Society Library for help in getting started on History Day projects. This year’s theme is “The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies.” Staff will be available for individual help in selecting a History Day topic, using the library, and locating primary sources for projects.

Saturday January 17, 2009 
9:00 a.m. to noon
Free

Still looking for a History Day topic for this year’s theme: The Individual in History?  Here’s another possibility.

Anne Bosano enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in September, 1944. Sent sent letters home to her parents about her activities in the WAC, her course work and training as a medical technician, her social life inside and outside of her various posts, and her travel between assignments.

Those letters have been published as: One Woman’s War: Letters Home from the Women’s Army Corps, 1944-46, by Anne B. Green., St. Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1989; MHS call number: Reading Room D 807 .U6 G74 1989.   There was also an article in Minnesota History (vol. 51, no. 7, fall 1989, pp. 246-258) entitled “Private Bosanko Goes to Basic: A Minnesota Woman in World War II,” by Anne Bosanko Green, MHS call number: F 601.5 M66 v.51:7.

The original letters are in the Minnesota Historical Society Library. See the green Alpha Manuscripts Notebooks—filed under Green, Anne Bosanko—for more details and a locator number (there is 1 box of material).

See the Minnesota History Topics for more sources on Women in the Military During World War II.

Since the new year has turned over, the 1908 non-public birth records are now open for viewing and/or purchase.

What is a “non-public” birth record, you ask?  The Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MN Statutes, chapter 13.10, Subd 2) prevents MHS from making available certain birth certificates, such as the records of out of wedlock births, for a period of 100 years.  Once the 100 years is over, they will become available, as the 1908 records now are.

The Minnesota Historical Society Library will be closed Thursday December 25 and Thursday January 1.

The Library is open:

• Wednesday December 24 only until 3:00 p.m.  
• Friday December 26 from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• Saturday December 27 from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.  “I’m New Here” class at 9:15.
• Tuesday December 30 from noon - 8:00 p.m.
• Wednesday December 31 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• Friday January 2 from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• Saturday January 3 from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.  “I’m New Here” class at 9:15.

As the U.S. drew close to joining World War II in 1941, a few military officers—notably Lt. Col. John Weckerling and Capt. Kai Rasmussen—realized that there would be a need for Japanese translators in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the military could only find a few soldiers already proficient in Japanese, so Weckerling and Rasmussen began to push for the creation of a language school to intensively train people to be military linguists.

Weckerling and Rasmussen put their jobs on the line and got the 4th Army Intelligence School opened in San Francisco on November 1, 1941, where John Aiso, Shigeya Kihara, Akira Oshida, and Tetsuo Imagawa taught fifty-eight Nisei and two Caucasians. A few months later President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that forced the internment or relocation of Japanese families. Because the school was housing Nisei, it had to move or lose nearly all of its students. After a number of other mid-western states declined, Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota agreed to take in the school, so it moved to Camp Savage and changed its name to the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS).

Within a couple of years, the school outgrew itself and moved again, this time to Fort Snelling in St. Paul. Eventually MISLS graduated more than 6,000 linguists. Its graduates broke codes, served on the front lines, and even became instructors themselves. Their service in the Pacific theater of World War II was so successful that it prompted Major General Charles Willoughby—General Douglas MacArthur’s Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence—to say, “The Nisei shortened the Pacific War by two years and saved possibly a million American lives and saved probably billions of dollars.”

The Minnesota Historical Society Library has a number of primary and secondary resources about this topic. Check it out in the Minnesota History Topics: Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling.