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Ramsey County History – Fall 2022: Retracing the Red River Trail

Terry Doerksen

Volume 57, Number 3: Fall 2022 A Man, a Woman, an Ox, and a Cart: Retracing the Red River Trail Author: Terry Doerksen Remember your teachers assigning the annual class essay, What I Did on Summer Vacation? Canadians Terry and Patty Doerksen were kind enough to share Terry’s one-of-a-kind…

Ramsey County History – Spring 2022: Grasshoppers in My Bed: New RCHS Children’s Book Coming in May – Kickoff Event at Gibbs Farm

Ramsey County Historical Society

Grasshoppers in My Bed New RCHS Children’s Book Coming in May Ramsey County Historical Society is pleased to announce the much-anticipated launch of a new children’s historical fiction book, Grasshoppers in My Bed: Lillie Belle Gibbs—Minnesota Farm Girl—1877 by author Terry Swanson and illustrator Peggy Stern. Written…

Grasshoppers in My Bed: Lillie Belle Gibbs, Minnesota Farm Girl 1877

Terry Swanson, Author and Peggy Stern, Illustrator

It is 1876—Christmas day—which just happens to be the eleventh birthday of Lillie Belle Gibbs. Her mother and father present her with a new journal. Now she must decide how to fill the pages. Grasshoppers in her bed, a smudge pot to keep the mosquitos at bay, the one-room schoolhouse…

A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum

Reviewer: Anne Field

A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum Lansing Shepard, Don Luce, Barbara Coffin, and Gwen Schagrin Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2022 400 pages; cloth cover/jacket, 310 color plates, $34.95 The Bell Museum, located on the edge of the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul…

Ramsey County History – Summer 2021: “How It Started; How It’s Going: Land O’Lakes Celebrates Ten Decades of Innovation”

Karen Mellott-Fosier

How It Started; How It’s Going: Land O’Lakes Celebrates Ten Decades of Innovation Author: Karen Mellott-Fosier Arden Hills-based Land O’Lakes, Inc. celebrates a milestone birthday in 2021. A century ago on June 7, 1921, representatives from 320 of the state’s co-op creameries gathered in the old state capitol…

Ramsey County History – Spring 2020: “Women and Children First: The Volunteers of America and Louis W. Hill Build Fresh Air Rest Camp”

Eileen R. McCormack and Aine C. McCormack

Women and Children First: The Volunteers of America and Louis W. Hill Build Fresh Air Rest Camp Authors: Eileen R. McCormack and Aine C. McCormack In the early 1920s, Irving and Martha Starr, a married couple employed by the Volunteers of America (VOA) approached St. Paul businessman…

Ramsey County History – Winter 2020: “Ramsey County’s ‘Boy Problem:’ Snapshots of Boys Totem Town”

Bobbie Scott

Ramsey County’s “Boy Problem” Snapshots of Boys Totem Town Author: Bobbie Scott When Boys Totem Town, a detention home on St. Paul’s east side, closed its doors in 2019, administrators, teachers, judges, and several men who once spent time there as boys, gathered to remember. The facility opened…

Ramsey County History Podcast #9 – Fall 2017: Gibbs Farm

Paul Nelson

The Gibbs Farm The Gibbs Farm museum preserves remnants of both Indigenous and pioneer life from the mid-nineteenth century, right in the middle of a densely populated urban environment. There, you can find farm buildings from the Gibbs family, an archeological site, recreations of a sod hut,…

Ramsey County History – Spring 2015: “Brings Is Gone: The Life and Death of a St. Paul Family Business”

Marcia Kremer

Brings Is Gone: The Life and Death of a St. Paul Family Business Author: Marcia Kremer Joseph Brings and his family immigrated to the US in 1857 and eventually settled in St. Paul, where Joseph opened a store in 1870 on West Seventh Street that later (1884) became Brings…