Although the Gulf War did not have the same impact on home front life as WWII in terms of rationing or sacrifices asked of the general population, it was nevertheless a conflict much in the public eye and mind. For families with soldiers actually fighting in the conflict, it was of course just as difficult as previous wars had been.
“I watched the cars with their boats and campers going up north to get away for a while and find some cool spot to enjoy. This is fine for those people, but then I would come back to the cities and go [to] the Vets hospital, soldier’s home and the nursing homes. These people had no place to go and if they did, there is nobody to take them even for an hour or a day."
The Anoka County Historical Society was fortunate enough to receive an interesting collection of family papers for the Weber family of the Centerville area. The collection is sizeable, and tells many parts of the story of this particular family.
We love getting photographs in any format, since pictures are an especially rich way to look at our county’s history. Some formats are less common, and glass plate negatives certainly fall into that category. A recent donation to us of a photograph collection from St. Francis, circa 1900-1920, is almost entirely composed of this type, totaling more than 200 glass plates.
Here at the Anoka County Historical Society, we do our best to capture the stories that go with the objects, documents and photographs in our collections, as well as the items themselves. In some cases, though, there is only so much information available, and we must make do with less of the story than we would prefer.
Anoka County is fortunate to have many Century Farms – farms that have been in the same family for more than 100 years. The Anoka County Historical Society, in addition to having the history and background of these farms, also has wonderful oral interviews from many of these families (available here on our website).
Lanesboro Museum just finished a three year project to enter all the artifacts in our collection into a searchable database. Quite a feat for a museum in a town of 750 people. We finished the project by reorganizing the photography room and giving our new acquisition, a Fifield painting of Matt Bue, its rightful place in the center of the exhibit.
It goes without saying that people bring us interesting things as artifact donations. As often as possible, we try and get the story that goes with the interesting artifacts, in order to make them even more interesting. Sometimes, though, the full story of an object is not known to anyone still living, and the most that we can get is tantalizing hints.
The doll pictured here falls into the latter category.
[Editor's note: Today's Museum of Minnesota entry comes from Wendy Biorn, Executive Director of the Carver County Historic Society. It will be the first in a series of posts centered around the Society's preservation of an historic barn on the Andrew Petersen Farmstead. Wendy's posts will come every six weeks or so.]
When Minnesota passed the law creating the Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children in 1885, it was created to be transitional housing for children placed in its care by county courts. Even then, they realized that the best place for a child was in a family setting. Children were sent to the State School to get healthy, get educated, to get good moral training, and then, ideally, to be adopted or placed on a family farm. However, adoption rates were low and children were often placed out under an indenture contract.
