William Heritage was born August 27, 1888 at Campbell, Dakota Territory (later South Dakota) to John Wesley Dewees Heritage (1862-1946) and his wife Josephine (Minster) Heritage (d.1938). The family later lived on a rented farm near Perlee, Iowa and in 1902 settled on a claim near Ray, Minnesota, in Koochiching County.
Heritage attended the Columbia School of Drafting in Washington, D.C., where he studied to become a topographic draftsman. He estimated timber (1908-1910) for the E.A. Engler Lumber Company (Baudette, Minn.), and later worked for the firm as a cruiser-walking boss (1917-1918). From 1910 to 1917 he worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a district forest ranger in the Superior National Forest at Ely, Minnesota.
From 1918 until his retirement in 1958 Heritage worked for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), where he was involved with logging and the management of forests on Indian reservations. He began as a timber cruiser (1918-1919) at the Bad River Indian Reservation (Ashland, Wisconsin), and held various positions at the Red Lake (Red Lake, Minnesota) (1919-1921), Flathead (Dixon, Montana, 1921-1925), and Warm Springs (Warm Springs, Oregon, 1925-1927) reservations. From 1927 to 1929 he worked at Albuquerque, New Mexico and at the Menominee reservation in Wisconsin. Around 1929 Heritage was moved to the BIA office in Minneapolis, where he worked as a logging engineer (1929-1938) and held the positions of regional forester (1938-1946, 1948-1950) and district forester (1946-1948). Occasionally he was given special assignments in such places as Tennessee and Arizona. Heritage served as area forester from 1950 until 1958.
The collection consists of correspondence and subject files, land examination field books, work/field diaries, photograph albums, and maps and papers related to Indian forests in several states. There is information about the management of forests for sustained yield, logging operations, lumber mills and milling, tree plantations, and the development of forest management plans and policies for Indian forests.
Land examination field books contain maps, notes, and other information about timber tracts compiled by Heritage as a cruiser for the E.A. Engler Lumber Company, the U.S. Forest Service, and the BIA.
Personal and biographical information includes a scrapbook/photograph album (Memoirs) containing family history information (ca.1952), a volume of retirement letters (1958), and a few family papers dating back to 1879. There is detailed information about Heritage's career history in a file containing job applications, position descriptions, performance reviews, and other material.
There is information about the Grand Portage reservation, its forest, and the history of the fur trade there, including a 1936 report by Sigurd F. Olson entitled "A Recreational Plan for the Grand Portage Indian Reservation." There is also information about the operations of the Menominee Indian Mills at Neopit, Wisconsin, and about a logging railroad there.
Correspondence, both business and personal, is found throughout the files. Most of it relates directly to Heritage's work as a forester. Correspondents include J. P. Kinney and other BIA officials in Washington, D.C. and at the Minneapolis Area Office; other officials of the Interior Department and of the U. S. Forest Service; personnel at various Indian agencies in Minnesota and Wisconsin; and a host of foresters, forest rangers, and other colleagues, co-workers, and subordinates.
Accession number: 14,531
Processed by: David B. Peterson, September 1993.
Catalog ID number:
Regarding Brighton Indian Reservation.
Includes land ownership and other maps, timber estimates, transcriptions of correspondence, and other miscellaneous papers.
Regarding Koochiching County?
Compiled around 1952, the memoirs include narrative and photographs dating 1905-1952.
Includes a few photos from 1920s.