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History Revealed: Natural Curiosity

Don Luce

A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum with Don Luce History Revealed Series Program Date: July 21, 2022 Video on YouTube Since its humble start in 1872 as a one-room cabinet of curiosities, the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of natural history…

History Revealed: Daybreak Woman

Jane Lamm Carroll

Daybreak Woman with Jane Lamm Carroll History Revealed Series Program Date: Thursday, July 14, 2022 Video on YouTube In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library & Roseville Library A remarkable woman’s life spans nearly a century of peace, invasion, war, exile, return, and…

March of the Governors, Governor #16, John Albert Johnson

Paul Nelson and Ken Peterson

John Albert Johnson Podcast Link Minnesota’s sixteenth governor, John Albert Johnson, was our fourth from St. Peter. He had a “rags-to-riches Horatio Alger life.” The son of Swedish immigrants, he quit school at age twelve to support his mother and siblings. Self-educated, he eventually became a newspaper…

March of the Governors, Governor #15, Samuel Van Sant 

Paul Nelson and Tom O'Connell

Samuel Van Sant  was Minnesota’s fifteenth governor—the first to serve in the twentieth century and the first to occupy the current capitol. After three years of combat duty in the Union cavalry  (1861-1864), Van Sant joined the family steamboat business in LeClaire, Iowa. In 1883, he moved…

March of the Governors, Governor #14, John Lind

Paul Nelson and Fred Johnson

Three-term US congressman John Lind, a traditional Republican with a stream of populism coursing through his veins, made a major political course change in 1894. Unhappy with Republican policies, Lind, the first Swedish-American elected to Congress, opted not to run for a fourth term and quit the…

Ramsey County History – Spring 2022: “Six Decades Making Music and Memories: Minnesota Boychoir”

Barbara W. Sommer

Six Decades Making Music and Memories: Minnesota Boychoir Author: Barbara W. Sommer Sixty years ago, father and son—Morris M. Nilsen and Morris A. Nilsen—wished to give back to their community, and, so, they founded the Morris Nilsen Boys Choir, featuring the high treble voices of young, male singers. In the first…

March of the Governors, Governor #13, David Marston Clough

Paul Nelson and Matt Wright

David Marston Clough was a lumber baron and politician who served as Minnesota’s Republican governor from 1895 to 1899. Born in New Hampshire in 1846, he moved with his family to Spencer Brook Township, Minnesota, in 1857. He was successful in the lumber business and moved into politics,…

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…

Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota

Reviewer: Renoir Gaither

Chad Montrie St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2022 272 pages; 26 b/w photos and 4 maps, notes, bibliography, index; $19.95 Reviewed by Renoir Gaither Chad Montrie’s book, Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota, examines racial exclusion around job and housing discrimination meted…