About
The Minnesota Historical Society preserves and makes available a wide range of materials chronicling Minnesota's history and culture. The goals of the Collections Department are to collect and preserve; provide access and interpretation; and engage in education and outreach. This blog is a tool to share these stories and let people know what is happening in the department.
Northwest Airlines Stewardess Scrapbook
Richardson’s donation to the Society included her uniform and a case that held the gum stewardesses gave passengers to ease ear pain.
Two delightful scrapbooks recently donated to the Minnesota Historical Society chronicle the career and continuing interests of one of the Northwest Airlines’ earliest stewardesses.
Helen Jacobson Richardson worked for Northwest from 1939 until 1942 when, following industry rules, she resigned in order to marry. Her personal memorabilia illuminate the world of the airline stewardess, from the daily routine of life in the sky and professional development to the poise required of these pioneering women and the celebrity they enjoyed.
The passenger airline industry was just developing during Richardson’s time as a stewardess. Her scrapbooks chart innovations, changes, and the evolution of many things we now take for granted: marketing materials advertising new routes and promoting travel, the development of the oxygen mask, unpressurized cabins and the distribution of chewing gum to ease passengers’ ear discomfort, and 30 years of uniform styles.
Job qualifications for early stewardesses were strict, as Richardson recalled in a 1969 Northwest Airlines newsletter, now preserved in her scrapbook. Many, if not all, stewardesses were registered nurses. They had to be “unmarried; age 21---25; 5 feet 2 inches to 5 feet 5 inches tall; weight not over 120 pounds.” Clippings like this, plus the great variety of photographs, luggage tags, tickets, advertisements, correspondence, and flight reports make Richardson’s scrapbooks a valuable time capsule of the ever-evolving airline industry.
Molly Tierney, Curator of Manuscripts
Learn More
- Northwest Airlines Papers, Helen Jacob Richardson, 1939-1992
- Northwest Airlines Corporate Records, 1917-1998
- "Flight to the Top: How a Home Town Airline Made History- and Keeps on Making it:
the Absorbing 60-year Store of Northwest Airlines" by Kenneth D. Ruble - Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society
- Photographs of Northwest Flight Attendants in the Photo & Art Database
Four Dancing Norwegians

This is a new donation commissioned by the Minnesota Go-fer Dollies Doll Club as a memorial for Nancy Bergh, former MHS staff member and club member. Annie Wahl, a Minnesota dollmaker, who specializes in character dolls with a very distinctive look, sculpted them from polymer clay with Norwegian regional dress details.
They are delightful and will make you smile.
Linda McShannock, Objects Curator
Send an e-card of the Four Dancing Norwegians
Norwegians in Minnesota and other publications are available at shop.mnhs.org.
Bob Dylan's "Minnesota Party Tape"
Before Bob Dylan headed to New York to become one of the world's most renowned folk singer-songwriters, he made music as a virtual unknown in Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota. Now, an original recording of one of Dylan's legendary impromptu performances at an apartment in 1960 has found its way to the Minnesota Historical Society Library.
Thanks to Minneapolis resident Cleve Pettersen, the original recording of what fans and music buffs know as the "Minnesota Party Tape" is now available for the first time to the public at the library in the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.Pettersen was just a teenager in 1960 when he bought his first reel-to-reel tape recorder and spent a lot of time in coffeehouses in the Dinkytown neighborhood near the University of Minnesota. Pettersen wanted to get a local folk singer to sing songs into his new recorder and asked some local musicians who would be willing. A young Bob Dylan agreed to be recorded.Pettersen went to an apartment on 15th Ave. S.E. in Minneapolis and hung out with Dylan, Bonnie Beecher, and "Cynthia"- another local musician and friend of Dylan's. Pettersen set up the recorder and Dylan casually sang 12 folk songs into it.
Petterson has been the sole owner of the original tape ever since - until he made the decision in 2004 to donate it to the Society for all to enjoy."The surfacing of this original recording should correct all the rumors and speculation circulating on the Internet and within the circles of Dylan followers and music critics," said Bonnie Wilson, curator at the Society. "Citizens donating historically significant items and artifacts, such as this recording, have enabled the Society's collections to grow and make rare works accessible to all."The play list includes: "Blue Yodel No. 8," "Come See Jerusalem," "San Francisco Bay Blues," "I'm a Gambler," "Talkin' Merchant Marine," "Talkin' Hugh Brown," "Talkin' Lobbyist," "Red Rosey Bush," "Johnny I Hardly Knew You," "Jesus Christ," "Streets of Glory" and "K.C. Moan."The original tape is copied onto CD and cassette formats and is now available for listening at the library free of charge. Making copies of the recording will not be allowed.
The library hours are: Tuesdays, noon to 8 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; closed Sundays and Mondays. This recording will become a part of the expansive collections at the Society, including more than 2,000 sound recordings, 4,000 newspaper titles, more than 350,000 photographs, and more than 36,000 cubic feet of manuscripts.
Woodcarvings


Arts and Crafts Movement

1930s Cookbooks

Minnesotans who lived on farms often had more food available to them than people who lived through the Depression in town or in The Cities because they raised animals for milk, eggs, and meat and grew vegetables, berries, and some other fruits in large gardens. Farm women had the skills, space, and equipment to preserve food when it was ripe and plentiful, for their families' nourishment and enjoyment after the state's short growing season. In general, though the 30s were tough on farmers too, food remained plentiful for many, as demonstrated in this charming oversized cookbook published by The Farmer in 1931 to help farm girls learn to cook. The cookbook says nothing about the need to help Mother economize, to stretch ingredients or learn to use less expensive substitutes. It gives recipes and instructions for everything from muffins to a whole meal for the family. And this was published after the farm economy had been in dire straits throughout the 1920s!

A frequently seen recipe type in 1930s cookbooks is the "Mock recipe" which attempted to make a desirable dish without using one of the main ingredients that makes it desirable. The best known is probably mock apple pie, made with soda crackers and lots of sugar and spices. The Northwest Housewives Prize-Winning Recipes Book, published by the St. Paul Daily News Home Economic Dept. in 1934, includes a recipe for Mock Maple Mousse that uses brown sugar and water to substitute for the maple syrup and a recipe for Mock Turkey Legs that calls for veal steak and pork tenderloin, molded into the shape of a drumstick on a wooden skewer.



Home economists often worked at establishments where cooking for large numbers of people was essential. A boon to them was a book called Quantity Cookery, written by two well-known Minnesota home economists, Nola Treat and Lenore Richards. In the 1941 edition of their book, 1st published in the 1930s, they advise: "In Discussing the Limitations in Menu Making the Element of Cost Has Come Up Again and Again. It becomes a definite restriction in institutions that work on a budget, or where the group to be served demands good, wholesome foods at the lowest price." Examples given are factory cafeterias, school lunchrooms, and restaurants and hotels “whose patrons comprise the lower-income groups”. They then discuss the need to re-use all leftovers, noting "It requires a good deal of ingenuity to use these leftovers in some other form so as to maintain variety and that element of surprise which is so essential."

A cookbook written by another Minnesota home economist, Mrs. J.B. Graham of Duluth, illuminates the challenges of feeding a family and of making a living on a northern Minnesota farm. 212 Ways to Prepare Potatoes, [1935], establishes Mrs. Graham as a premiere writer of cookbooks for hard times. She lovingly dedicates the book, which sold for 75 cents, to “Our Rural Friends of the Arrowhead. May it Wend its Way Into Every Home and Add Interest to the Homemakers Cookery. May it Help to Bring Prosperity to The Arrowhead Farmer.” The recipes came in large part from the Duluth Chamber of Commerce’s annual recipe contests held during the city’s Potato Week in 1932, 33, and 34. There are recipes for potato breads, muffins, pancakes, and a chocolate mashed potato spice cake, potato doughnuts, fritters, patties, and pies. Cornish pasties and English pasties, dumplings and puddings, soufflés, and sausage, potatoes smothered, creamed and scalloped, hashed and fried. The “foreign recipes” section includes Swedish Kropp Kakor, Norwegian Lefsa, and a savory/sweet Austrian Potato Potica that calls for sugar and cinnamon as well as ham or bacon. The book may have helped many a poor northern Minnesota family through the rest of the Depression by providing a real variety of dishes from one primary ingredient that was inexpensively available.
Debbie Miller, Reference Specialist
View of Mendota, 1848 by Seth Eastman
In his painting, View of Mendota, 1848, Seth Eastman has created a remarkably detailed portrait of Mendota, a settlement built in the 1830s at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. Mendota was the home and base of operations of Henry Hastings Sibley, the American Fur Company's regional manager. Sibley, who may have commissioned the painting, was already moving out of the fur trade and into politics by 1848. He was instrumental in creating the Minnesota Territory in 1849 and became the state's first governor in 1858.
Eastman (1808-1875) was an acclaimed American artist as well as a career soldier. He was stationed at Fort Snelling from 1830 to 1831 and from 1841 to 1848, when he served as the fort's commander. In his painting, he depicts Mendota as seen from Fort Snelling, including the Sibley and Faribault houses, both of which still stand today as historic sites.
Harry and Mary Zimmermann, whose family had been in Minnesota since the mid-1800s, purchased View of Mendota, 1848 in 1937. In honor of their memory, the painting has been given to the Minnesota Historical Society by their daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, and her two sons. It joins several other art works in the Society collections by Eastman. The Society is deeply grateful for this extraordinary act of generosity and commitment to Minnesota and its citizens.
Brian Szott, Curator of Art
Learn More
Olmsted County Coroner Records

These are the words of the Olmsted County coroner's jury concerning the 1901 death of a Henry Schmelzer in Rochester, Minnesota. Mr. Schmelzer committed suicide by drinking carbolic acid, and the bottle containing the poison is pictured here. The bottle was discovered in the coroner's inquest file (no. 151) for Mr. Schmelzer, along with statements given by coroner's inquest witnesses. Witnesses included Henry's two brothers and his spouse, Emma. According to the testimony, Henry had been depressed for sometime about his failing crops. His body was found three days after he went missing in the unfinished basement of the new part of a Catholic church. The empty bottle of carbolic acid was found near Henry's body.
Recently the State Archives collection received coroner's inquest files dating from the 1880s to the 1980s from the Olmsted County District Court. Usually, a coroner's inquest was only conducted if a death was caused by homicide and suicide, or if the death was somehow suspicious. Not all of the files contain such details about a death, such as Mr. Schmelzer's, but coroner's records are useful for family history. The State Archives preserves coroner's inquest files, and coroner's registers and record books from most of Minnesota's counties. These records are available for use in the Society's Library.
Charles Rodgers, Government Records Specialist
Learn More
Statehood Centennial Commission Records

This collection provides wonderful documentation of how Minnesota celebrated its centennial and will be useful for planning the state's sesquicentennial celebration in 2008. The Statehood Centennial Commission records are part of the State Archives collections, cataloged in the Society's online catalog, MN PALS, and available for use in the Society's Library.
Charles Rodgers, Government Records Specialist
Learn More
St. Paul Police Department Mug Shots

Pictured are samples from a recent acquisition of 125 mug shots and 85 Bertillon cards which originated with, or were used by, the St. Paul Police Department. This collection documents the identification and incarceration of criminals thought to be in the City of St. Paul and surrounding areas from 1891 through 1911. "House sneak," "safe blower," and "swindler" were not uncommon criminal occupations, and tattoos, scars, moles and physical shortcomings were duly noted. One card in the collection describes a criminal as follows: "Walks slightly pigeon-toed, slightly stooped shoulders, round lump on top and back of head..."Most of the mug shot cards were created by the St. Paul Police Department, but some originated in other cities' police departments, including Duluth, Minneapolis, Superior (Wisconsin), Chicago, Kansas City, Fargo, Denver, and New Orleans. Most are marked "Personal Property Jno. J. O'Connor," presumably the same John J. O'Connor who was Chief of Police for the City of St. Paul from 1900 to 1912 and from 1914 to 1920.
Mug shot cards are 4 by 2 1/2 inches (pocket size) with a photo of the criminal on the front and the criminal's name, alias(es), residence, legitimate and criminal occupations, physical measurements, features and "peculiarities" on the back.
The Bertillon cards are 6 by 5 1/2 inches, offering front/profile photographs of the criminal and Bertillon measurements on the front of the card, while the back lists information similar to the mug shot cards. The Bertillon System was an improvement of identification over simple mug shots and basic physical measurements, and was a forerunner to fingerprinting. It was developed by French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon in the early 1880s to increase the accuracy of criminal identification by measuring certain bony portions of the body, including the skull, foot, cubit, trunk and left middle finger. This identification method spread throughout Europe and was introduced into the United States in 1887.
Charles Rodgers, Government Records Specialist