Ramsey County History Winter 2025

Ramsey County History Winter 2025

Volume 60, No. 1: Winter 2025

Andrea Swensson, Youa Vang, Meredith Cummings, Rebecca E. Bender

Link to download PDF of full Ramsey County History Winter 2025

 

Articles in this issue:

The Women Who Have Shaped the Ramsey County Historical Society

Author: Andrea Swensson, Youa Vang, Meredith Cummings

For the past year, Ramsey County Historical Society has focused its lens on its own past in observation of its seventy-fifth anniversary. Founded in April 1949 by community historian Ethel Stewart and her fellow officers from the St. Anthony Park Area Historical Association,1 and wholly inspired by the value Stewart saw in a nineteenth century farmstead inhabited by Jane DeBow Gibbs and her husband, Heman, Ramsey County Historical Society’s mission has been shaped by determined women working tirelessly to preserve important stories. From the founding of this very magazine by Virginia Brainard Kunz sixty-one years ago to the countless others who have since contributed to the magazine, collected artifacts, created exhibits, and served on RCHS’s various boards and committees, women have been at the heart of this organization at every step of its now seventy-six-year story.

 

Celebrating Minnesota’s History-Making Women

Author: Various Contributors

Minnesota has eighty-seven county historical societies and scores of city or town historical societies and local historical sites. Women have played an overwhelmingly dominant role in establishing and leading some of these organizations. Indeed, many would not exist today without the extraordinary efforts of women in all roles: from the front of house to collections to leadership. In addition to celebrating the women who have made RCHS, we asked staff from area historical societies to nominate the remarkable women who have worked to shape history across the state of Minnesota.

 

Catching Waves

St. Paul’s Forgotten Radio Pioneer Maurice G. Goldberg

Author: Rebecca E. Bender

In the early 1920s, radio transmission and broadcasting in the United States were frontiers waiting to be explored by those with ample supplies of engineering knowledge, creativity, optimism, and determination. In St. Paul, the 23-year-old Maurice Goldberg, son of Jewish immigrants and enthusiast of early radio technology, tinkered together the right combination of equipment in the attic of his family’s home to begin broadcasting the first commercial radio station in St. Paul, KFOY.

Maurice Goldberg’s unique contributions to the development of radio communication, broadcasting and repair in St. Paul and beyond are historically significant, though little known. In an extensively researched piece written by Goldberg’s great-niece, Rebecca E. Bender, this long-overlooked radio pioneer finally gets his due.

 

In Our Collection

Author: Mollie Spillman

In Our Collection shares the pieces acquired by Ramsey County Historical Society. The collection contains tens of thousands of pieces, including archives, books, objects, and photographs, which are maintained by Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Mollie Spillman, in downtown St. Paul. In the winter issue, learn more about a hockey stick donated by the Professional Women’s Hockey League team that plays in the heart of Ramsey County, the Minnesota Frost.