Local History

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). Sometimes, we are also fortunate enough to be given donations of papers and artifacts which further document the stories of these long-time Anoka County residents.

Some of the Century Farms are actually well past the 100 year mark, as is the case for the Peterson Farm in St. Francis

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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.

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Mr. Bue was a master artist at chronicling the Norwegian immigrant experience.  Minnesota Historical society supported us over the projects with grants from the State Legislature Arts and Cultural Heritage fund, funded

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.

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It was brought to us as part of a collection of things found inside the walls of an Anoka house. The family who owns the house had remodeled in 1980, and found a number of

[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.]

There are a number of terms for referring to things that are “old”.  If we are talking about a person, the person is referred to as being a senior citizen, over the hill, or as a friend of mine says when asked how he is, “still above ground.”   If we are talking about an item, it

Some of our readers may have heard of Gordon Wood, for whom my dissertation director, when he was alive, always had the highest praise. Wood spent much of the past decade decrying the decline of his profession, and in 2015 turned his ire against the William and Mary Quarterly, arguing in The Weekly Standard that the flagship journal of early American studies had “lost its way.” The WMQ now spent too much time focusing on subaltern peoples and non-U.S. regions (Haiti, Quebec, etc.), and not enough on the founding of the Great American Republic. Joshua Piker, the editor of the Quarterly

Some of our readers may have heard of Gordon Wood, for whom my dissertation director, when he was alive, always had the highest praise. Wood spent much of the past decade decrying the decline of his profession, and in 2015 turned his ire against the William and Mary Quarterly, arguing in The Weekly Standard that the flagship journal of early American studies had “lost its way.” The WMQ now spent too much time focusing on subaltern peoples and non-U.S. regions (Haiti, Quebec, etc.), and not enough on the founding of the Great American Republic. Joshua Piker, the editor of the Quarterly