The Minnesota Historical Society

Date:
1935
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52/79
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Minnesota Historical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/168 page 6
    shoemakers — all makers of Minnesota and America. The hundreds of thousands of manuscripts reported upon in brief and compact summaries touch nearly every aspect of the history of the state — the native Sioux and Chippewa, the fur trade, missions, pioneer life and frontier conditions, immigration and population, land, business, the church, politics, transportation, industry, education, cultural development, literature, the fine arts, wars, the professions, biog- raphy, local history, the modern commonwealth. Many of the collections range far beyond Minnesota in their scope of interest and information, throw light upon national affairs, touch on other sections of the United States, and reveal conditions in other lands. Although most of the papers deal with the past hundred years, both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are represented, the latter, for example, by the Daniel P. Custis and George Washington collections. The records as a whole are of an almost bewildering variety. The more important materials are letters, letter books, diaries, autobiographies, and reminiscences, but there are also memorandum and account books, business records, deeds, tax bills and receipts, insurance policies, land warrants, minutes of meetings, passports, commissions, wills, bills of lading, prescription books, scrapbooks, and many other types of sources. Scholars from Minnesota and many other parts of the country have already drawn upon the collections described in this volume. Perhaps the most notable single work based in part on them is Dr. Folwell’s four-volume History of Minnesota, but a rather long list of dissertations, biographies, monographs, and special articles that have been influenced by them could be drawn up. Not only pro- fessional scholars, but also novelists, local historical investigators, journalists, state officials, lawyers, doctors, architects, genealogists, and others have explored these records. The historical possibilities of the collections have been little more than suggested, however, by what has been done. The descriptions comprising the guide open the way to hundreds of new researches and to new approaches to the wide-reaching and infinitely interesting history of Minnesota. The present guide represents only a portion of the manuscript collections in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. One large group of materials not here included comprises the records of organizations, such as churches, business firms, patriotic associa- tions, fraternal and racial societies, political parties, social, recrea- tional, and civic clubs, musical, art, and literary societies, and the like. Another consists of photostats, photographs, films, and type- written or handwritten transcripts made from originals in the col-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3