Catalog
A Family Reclaims Its Heritage: Growing Up with Anna Belle Rideaux
Cherrelle SwainAnna Belle Rideaux. Courtesy of Rideaux, Edmond, Swain Family Archives. by Cherelle Swain To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version. Whether material or spiritual, experiencing loss changes people, families, and communities. This article examines how losing a matriarch impacted her…
Violet Gould’s Operetta School
Christine Podas-LarsonThe Violet Gould Operetta School presented Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore in 1959. In St. Paul Dispatch, June 2,1959, from the collection of Christine Podas-Larson. by Christine Podas-Larson To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version. Read the companion piece…
Violet Gould’s Civic Opera Musical Circle
Mady Metzger-Ziegler founded the St. Paul Opera Workshop. Her son, Max Metzger, followed in his mother’s musical footsteps as an orchestra conductor. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society. Mady Metzger-Ziegler (1897-1979), mezzosoprano, was a featured performer in the St. Paul Civic Opera Association (Civic Opera) and its associated Pops concerts. She…
Honoring Minnesota History Scholars
National History Day 2024 Team Minnesota Sixty-four “Team Minnesota” history scholars competed at National History Day (NHD) at University of Maryland–College Park in June. Over nine months, students in grades six through twelve identified topics related to the theme, “Turning Points in History,” and created detailed research…
March of the Governors: Jesse Ventura
Paul Nelson, Matt Wright, and Ken PetersonTo call our thirty-eighth governor, Jesse Ventura, unique is to engage in understatement. He was Minnesota’s first third-party governor since Elmer Benson in 1936. Though he ran on the Reform Party ticket, that party elected no one else, so he had no allies in the legislature. His plurality, 37% of…
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography
Reviewed by Mark TaylorF. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography Niklas Salmose and David Rennie, editors Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2024 448 pages; cloth/jacket, 78 b&w photos, $29.95 Author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby is still selling 500,000 copies a year,…
Twin Cities Snapshots: History Through the Lens of the St. Paul Pioneer Press
Reviewed by Steve TrimbleTwin Cities Snapshots: History Through the Lens of the St. Paul Pioneer Press St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Nick Woltman and Molly Ballis Vancouver, WA: Pediment Publishing, 2023 160 pages; hardcover, 250 b&w and color illustrations, $39.95 In April 2024, St. Paul’s Pioneer Press marked its…
March of the Governors: Arne Carlson
Paul Nelson and Tom BeerArne Carlson, Minnesota’s thirty-seventh governor, was a Swede and a progressive Republican, like several before him, but unlike them, too. He grew up poor in New York City and had no connection to the dominant Harold Stassen political lineage. Carlson came to Minnesota for graduate school—then won election after election:…
Ramsey County History Spring 2024
Paul Nelson, Drew Ross, Wendy Rossi, Meredith CummingsVolume 59, Number 2: Spring 2024 Link to download PDF of full Ramsey County History Spring 2024 Articles in this issue: The Fraud of the Century Author: Paul Nelson According to author Paul Nelson, “The human desire for wealth without risk and the capacity for self-delusion make an…