What's New
Highlighted collections this month focus on our great photograph collections! They include photos from abroad taken by an ambulance driver during World War I, and from right here at home as Twin Cities photographer Stephen R. Davis explored the Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, the High Bridge Power Plant, the Minnesota State Fair, Koppers Coke Site, Feist Pet Cemetery, and the St. Paul Farmers' Market.
Glen Merritt: World War I Ambulance Unit photograph collection
Continuing our commemoration of Minnesotan's efforts in World War I we would like to highlight a recently
added collection of photographs by Glen Merritt.
Merritt captured, and sometimes annotated on the back of photographs for family back home, his time as an ambulance
driver serving overseas with the French and Italian forces.
This collection gives a sense of beginning, middle, and
end with images ranging from Merritt and others in training in 1917 to an image of himself with fellow soldier CC back
in Duluth in 1919 after the war was over. The time in between contains views of ambulance vehicles (his own being destroyed
by military shells in Champagne); views in and around Paris, Belgium, and even Monte-Carlo; and images of the war itself
with hospital stations, soldiers in full gear marching into trenches, a funeral, and military cars being loaded on to flat
cars to travel across France. The handwriting on the back of some of these photographs would be unobtainable due to glue or
previous scrapbooking assemblage, but the Minnesota Historical Society manuscripts collection has some correspondence and
similar photographs in the Glen Jewett Merritt papers which helped in
researching the photographs.
Stephen R. Davis: Rural Minnesota and the Twin Cities photograph collection
Spring has finally arrived in Minnesota with the typical hints of remaining winter and teases of summer.
One of our most recently cataloged collections includes all of these seasonal feels as documented by Stephen
Davis in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A highlight of this Rural Minnesota and the Twins Cities photograph
collection is its portraits. These portraits capture beautiful moments of Minnesotans, young and old, walking
around the North End neighborhood; enjoying county fairs and the Minnesota State Fair; strolling busy downtown
streets; tailgating at Metropolitan Stadium; selling produce at the Saint Paul Farmers Market; and participating
in classes at Film in the Cities or art camps by COMPAS. Learn more about the photographer and explore these portraits
as well as many more rural and urban scenes through our inventory of the collection.
New and Updated Finding Aids - May 2017
| Name/Abstract | File No. |
|---|---|
| Attorney General: An Inventory of Its Administrative Rules Proceedings | gr01311 |
| Proceedings files regarding the attorney general's approval of administrative rules promulgated by state government agencies. Files include proposed rule, transcript of hearing, correspondence and memos, statements of need and reasonableness [SONAR], findings of fact, and attorney general's statement of approval. | |
| Bush Foundation: An Inventory of its Records | 00016 |
| Grant files and other records of a St. Paul-based nonprofit foundation, incorporated in 1953 with an endowment from 3M executive Archibald G. Bush, that provides grants to charitable, scientific, literary, musical, educational, and arts organizations located | |
| Stephen R. Davis: An Inventory of His Photographs of Rural Minnesota and the Twin Cities | sv000237 |
 Collection includes two series
of images documenting Minnesota in the late 1970s to
early 1980s. The rural area series captured in many
different counties contains views of fields, grain
elevators, roads, water towers, and people. The second
series was captured in the Twin Cities Metro Area and
includes views of people and buildings around the North
End and downtown areas of Saint Paul, tailgating at
Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, the High Bridge
Power Plant, the Minnesota State Fair, Koppers Coke
Site, Feist Pet Cemetery, and the St. Paul Farmers'
Market. Includes digital content. |
|
| Gale Family: An Inventory of Their Family Papers | 00319 |
| Family history materials, reminiscences, diaries, scrapbooks, correspondence, poems, and photographs detailing the activities of five generations of the Gale family, a prominent Minneapolis family involved in business and politics, and several families related to them by marriage, including the Pillsbury, Lindley, Jones, Burton, and Duff families. | |
| Goodhue County: District Court: An Inventory of Its Naturalization Records and Index | SAM055 |
| Personal name index, 1858-1906, 1930-1943; declarations of intention (first papers), 1854-1951; final papers, 1858-1906; petition and record (final papers), 1907-1943; lists of citizenship petitions granted, 1929-1945; applications to take oath of allegiance (naturalization by repatriation), 1940-1944; loose naturalization papers, circa 1843-1898, 1915-1958; monthly reports, 1919-1932; and notices of application for admission to citizenship, 1908-1931. | |
| Human Services Department: Commissioner's Office: An Inventory of Its Subject Files | gr01310 |
| Subject files maintained primarily during the appointments of Leonard W. Levine, Sandra S. Gardebring, and Ann Wynia. The files document both the daily administration and operation of the office, and such related topics as child welfare, aging, chemical dependency, food stamps, legislation, licensing, longterm health care, Medicare/Medicaid, mental health, and nursing homes. They also detail the office's relationship with the American Public Welfare Association; Board on Aging; Council on Children, Youth, and Family; and the Governor's office. | |
| Glen J. Merritt: An Inventory of His World War I Ambulance Unit Photographs | sv000236 |
 Images documenting Glen
Merritt's training and service in World War I as a
driver for the Ambulance Unit Number 512, a unit
comprised of men mostly from Harvard College, and his
service with French and Italian forces. Views include
Merritt and other military personnel; hospital stations;
transports; a funeral; as well as buildings, beaches,
and countryside in Europe and the United States. Includes digital content. |
|
| Pope County: District Court: An Inventory of Its Naturalization Records and Index | SAM036 |
| Personal name index, 1869-1906; declarations of intention (first papers), 1850s-1952; final papers, 1850s-1906; petition and record (final papers), 1906-1954; lists of citizenship petitions granted and denied, 1940-1954; and applications to take oath of allegiance (naturalization by repatriation), 1942-1948. | |
| Public Safety Commission: An Inventory of Its Gold Star Roll | gr00942 |
| Mainly four-page forms compiled
by the Public Safety Commission cooperating with the War
Records Commission, giving biographical information and
military service records for men and women who died in
the war. Clippings, photographs, and sometimes letters
accompany many of the forms. Includes digital content. |
|
| Ramsey County, Minnesota : An Inventory of Telephone Directories | lb00108 |
| A collection of telephone directories for cities in Ramsey County, Minnesota. Telephone directories are published by telephone companies and include alphabetical listings of residential and business phone numbers and street addresses in the white pages, and a listing of businesses arranged by subject in the yellow pages. Each entry on the inventory lists the city name, year of coverage, and the shelf number of the printed volume or microfiche set which includes that city. | |
| Ramsey County: St. Paul: School Records: Grant Elementary School: An Inventory of Its Records | gr00530 |
| History (1962), class and staff photographs (1961-1962, 1964-1968), photographs of the building exterior (undated) and of pupil hearing testing (1963), East Consolidated Elementary School background booklet (1973), photographs (1955-1963, 1990), and scrapbooks (1961-1963). The latter include Parent-Teacher Association materials. | |
| Hilding Alfred Swanson: An Inventory of His Family Papers | 01244 |
| Legal and family papers of a Brainerd, Minnesota lawyer, state legislator, and civic leader. Includes notes and articles on the history of Crow Wing County and Brainerd; information on Ojibwe in Crow Wing County; Governor Luther W. Youngdahl's Interstate Indian Conference (1950); and correspondence, legal papers, notes, transcripts, and biographical data in cases involving the trial and imprisonment of several of Swanson's Ojibwe clients. Included as well are photographs, diplomas, certificates, and genealogical information relating to Swanson and his siblings and their parents, and some material relating to the Zeglin family, into which Swanson's niece married, and to their Coney Island of the West resort hotel located at Waconia, Minnesota. | |
New and Updated Catalog Records
| Andrew Peterson family photograph collection. |
| Images of Andrew Peterson, his wife, Elsa, and others. Tintypes had been sent to Andrew's brother, Rydell, in Sweden after Andrew immigrated to the United States. |
| Cannon, Raymond, interviewee. Oral history interview with Raymond Cannon, March 17, 1977. |
| Subjects discussed include family background as enslaved people in the South and early settlers in Minnesota; the African American community in the Twin Cities in the early 1900s; race relations at the University of Minnesota; work as a pharmacist; World War I military service in France; discrimination and racism in the armed services, the South, and Minnesota; law education and practice; activities with the Urban League; work for the Fair Employment Practices Commission; fighting discrimination on college campuses; involvement in community organizations and fraternal orders; advocating for the African American community; Minneapolis National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP MPLS); and housing discrimination in the Twin Cities. |
| Hetteen, Edgar, interviewee. Oral history interview with Edgar Hetteen, 2003 September 10-11. |
| Subjects discussed include All Season Vehicles; Gary Lemke; marketing snowmobiles to a vast client base; history of Arctic Cat; attracting businesses to small communities; and entrepreneurship. |
