If you’ve read your summer edition of the Northfield Historical Society’s “Scriver Scribbler,” then you already know that the Northfield History Collaborative is about to add eight scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and more to its online collection — totaling more than 1,500 pages of our community’s story.

However, 1,500 is a huge number of pages and a huge amount of data — so huge that our computers are overwhelmed trying to process it all. So we’re sorry to say it’ll be a little bit longer until everything is ready. Check back at the end of next week — we’ll also keep you posted if parts of the new collection become available before then.

While you’re waiting, browse through the first of the library’s scrapbooks, which we uploaded last summer, “Early Northfield History.” And don’t forget to check back on what’s to come — it will be worth the wait!

If you’ve ever wanted to scan an item that’s larger than your scanner, you know how much trouble it is. That’s why we at the Collaborative are so thankful for the Minnesota Digital Library. Through their association with the University of Minnesota, they have access to fancy equipment designed to handle oversized items.

The Minnesota Digital Library handled four items from the Northfield Public Library last spring that are available online both at their site, and now in ours as well.

Included are three maps and one newspaper:

• One map shows lots in Northfield prior to Minnesota’s statehood, giving it a date between 1855 and 1858. It helps us to imagine how the city founders expected Northfield to develop — on the west side, bounded to the west by Orchard Street, the north by Fourth Street, and the south by Sixth Street; on the east side, to the north by First Street, the south by Woodley, and the east by Maple Street. One significant difference: “Independence” Street runs through the eastern part of the city. Take a look at the map and figure out what it’s called now.
• A second “map” is actually a bird’s-eye view of the city from 1869, looking southeast, with the viewer at the bottom looking from west of what’s now St. Olaf Avenue. The drawing is extremely specific, with numbers indicating the public school, “Northfield College” (Carleton), depot, mill, fairgrounds, and five churches. The map also indicates a pond at the intersection of today’s Seventh and Union streets. Local expert Chip DeMann says that area, in the vicinity of old Memorial Field, was indeed a slough back then.
• The third map is a city street map from 1968 — more modern, but still 44 years old. There are no streets east of Spring Creek Road; not much was north of Greenvale Avenue; Highway 19 followed Forest Avenue east out of town, and still not much was south of Woodley Street.
• The fourth item is a copy of the Rice County Journal, published from Northfield, dated Sept. 14, 1876, four pages long — one week after the raid on the First National Bank. The editor describes seeing eight or ten horsemen coming into town. “Several of our citizens narrowly escaped; but considering our unpreparedness for such an onset, our deliverance was remarkable.” A detailed account of the raid comes on the third page of this issue, as does an obituary for Heywood and an account of his funeral.

All four of these are items that are fragile and therefore were difficult for the public to access before. Now you can look at them in close detail and from anywhere on the planet — with internet access, anyway.

Read about the Division Street of 1895 from the eyes of a writer in 1935.

“Up and Down Main Street Forty Years Ago,” very recently added to the Northfield History Collaborative’s online collection, does just that. The booklet was published by one-time Northfield News editor W. F. Schilling. In it, Schilling describes what the town was like when he came here in April of 1895. He colorfully describes local businesses and characters in a way that’s hard to find in other accounts. It took quite some time to whittle down my list of highlights for you!

At just more than 40 pages, this booklet is an easy and entertaining read — I honestly had trouble pulling myself away from it so I could write this blog — yet it’s already proven helpful in local research since being scanned and made searchable.

Special thanks to the Northfield News for giving permission to publish this online.

What follows are four of my favorite passages.

• Page 8.  In the little building in which Sid Freeman is now located [The Hub, about where the northern part of the First National Bank building is now], perhaps more history was made, more wars fought, more battles won and lost, with less, blood spilled, than any other like space in the whole city. That was John Clifford’s grocery and contained all the paraphernalia, accoutrements, appliances and comforts of the grocery stores of the pioneer day and age. … There was housed almost daily the Clifford’s band of story tellers.They were not early risers and generally came drifting and dragging in from 9:00 to 10:00 in the morning. Some of them went home for dinner and others came in about noon and stayed for the day or at least until a relief squad showed up …Not all of these men were veterans of the Civil War but most of them were, and what fun they did have! I wish that I could remember one-half of the stories that were retailed to me. 
• Page 23. I first met Charley [Dougherty] on the old iron Fourth street bridge as he was hauling the mail to the depot and the way that old bridge used to “jiggle” when old “Star,” his faithful black horse, used to go across it when she was in a hurry was a caution.There was a sign on the bridge “$10.00 fine for driving off a walk,” but old Star couldn’t and Charley wouldn’t read that sign if he was a bit late. As Charley was aIways a member of the city council and had something to say as to who hired the police, he just couldn’t believe in signs nohow. Well, old Star carried the mail and express for nigh onto thirty years, and when it came time for her to quit — the ordinary horse would have had to quit long before — Dr. McKenzie had to chloroform her to get her off the street. In the early stages of her service to the government when a train whistled for Northfield, she went to the depot for the mail whether Charley was on the wagon or not, and as a rule Fritz, the big Newfoundland dog, saw to it that no one else occupied the place of the driver.
• Page 28.  Where the post office is now located was a building owned by Mrs. S. E. Davis, but occupied by Dwight Bushnell and his son-in-law, W. E. Hibbard, as a livery stable. …  Memorial Day was a great one for the livery stables and that was a great chance for the students to pair off and go to the country to get the first “breath of spring.” This stable specialized in horses that could be driven with one hand as many of the students majored in oratory in those days and could not show up the scenic beauties of nature properly and drive with two hands. “Old Fred” could be driven with one hand and he was also a horse that could see well after night and was in very great demand by all the youngsters.
• Page 43. There was another rule that caused considerable trouble just before commencement each year. For two weeks during exams boys were forbidden to take their girl friends out. It was known as quarantine period and a dark time for all. One fine spring some of the boys had a streamer made one yard wide by fifteen feet long with the word “QUARANTINE” nicely painted in black on yellow bunting and hauled this up on the flag pole of Willis Hall. This had to stay up for two weeks for no one in Northfield could be hired to take it down for a local committee would have waited on said individual and a good ducking in the Cannon river would have been his without much ceremony. [I want to say I’ve seen a photograph of this before.]

New on the Northfield History Collaborative this week is one of the largest groups of loose documents we’ve ever taken on.

Available for your viewing and research pleasure are 17 new collections from the Northfield Arts Guild, totaling almost 400 pages. Included are minutes, agendas, and other regular reports from 1960 to 1969; and an assortment of other documents from the early years of the organization.

These items were scanned by the Minnesota Digital Library for their digital platform, Minnesota Reflections, and can also be found here. Special thanks also goes to Hsianghui Liu-Spencer of the Carleton College library for her cataloging work on these documents.

Here are some of my favorite items from these collections. Check them out and tell us about yours!

• Some of the NAG board’s first minutes are here. Here’s how it begins: “Eleven interested representatives of the community and the Northfield Arts Guild met at the home of Mrs. Stuart Hunter on March 7, 1960 to discuss future plans of the Northfield Arts Guild.”
• What kinds of classes were offered back in 1968? That summer, junior high students could make Punch and Judy puppets for a public show.
• In 1993, founders Betty and Stuart Hunter recorded their recollections of the beginning of the Northfield Arts Guild here.
• In 1978, Carleton College historian Kirk Jeffrey compiled this history of the building at 304 S. Division St., now the Northfield Arts Guild’s headquarters. It began life as the YMCA building and also served as a community center and City Hall.

Take a minute to check out the 22 new items we’ve added to the Northfield History Collaborative from the Rice County Historical Society! Here are a few highlights:

Included are memo books from 1928 and 1929 that were passed out to college students, featuring advertisements from Northfield businesses. At the bottom of a city business directory is written “Try in Northfield first” — even then there was a “shop local” effort!

Also among the items are several papers written decades ago by members of the Rice County Historical Society about Northfield’s history. One paper in particular is a memoir of pioneer Charles Taylor. Here, he remembers the thousands of passenger pigeons that used to come through the area, and how tasty they were.

If you have any interest in the old Northfield Farmers Mercantile & Elevator Company, here are dozens of pages of annual reports and financial statements as old as the 1890s.

Take a look at the Northfield of 1903 in this souvenir booklet.  There are 34 pages of photographs of campus buildings, businesses, and homes of prominent Northfielders. Among my favorites are this view into the Carleton campus, which makes it easy to compare then and now,  the immense brick Minnesota International Order of Odd Fellows Home, precursor to Three Links,  and the old Washington School — the building before the one that become City Hall. Does anyone know where this electric light plant would have been?

Many thanks to intern Rachel Wiers for her hard work on this project!

Please excuse the errors if you are trying to read our old blog posts. We hope to have them fixed soon.

Web-based local history resources:

• Carleton College Archives
• Dalby Database
• Findagrave.com, Rice County cemeteries
• “History of Rice County” by Edward Neil, 1882

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Over the past several weeks, the Collaborative has added more than 100 items to its collection. Here is a quick overview:

First National Bank
Five items from the bank’s lobby display case.

KYMN Radio
Six parts of a Wayne Eddy interview with Al Quie, 2006-2007.

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If you had read the previous blog post about “All About Northfield” and found all of the links broken, try again today and they have been repaired. Sorry about that!

A helpful new addition to the Northfield History Collaborative for researchers is the 1889 book “All About Northfield.” Its subtitle tells most of the story: Directory of Names and Business Firms, Information in Regard to the City, Advantages Shown Up.

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This “Early Northfield History” scrapbook from the Northfield Public library is seriously a big deal, which is why I’m writing a third blog about it! I promise this is the last one.

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