• Welcome
  • About Us
    • Employment and Volunteer Opportunities
    • Local Links
  • DHC Contributors
    • Bridgewater Township
    • Carleton College
    • Christdala Church Preservation and Cemetery Association
    • City of Dundas
    • First National Bank of Northfield
    • First United Church of Christ
    • KYMN Radio
    • Northfield Area Fire and Rescue Service
    • Northfield Arts Guild
    • Northfield Historical Society
    • Northfield Hospital
    • Northfield News
    • Northfield Public Library
    • Northfield Student Research Collection
    • Rice County Historical Society
    • St. John’s Lutheran Church
    • St. Olaf College
    • Three Links Care Center
  • Collection Guides
    • James-Younger Gang Bank Raid collection guide
    • World War I in Northfield and Rice County Collection Guide
  • Primary Source Sets
    • Settlement & Immigration in Northfield
    • James-Younger Gang Bank Raid
    • Malt-O-Meal in Northfield
    • Agriculture in the Northfield Region
    • Milling in the Northfield-Dundas Area
    • Women in the Northfield Area
    • World War I on the Northfield Home Front
    • The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in Northfield
    • World War II in Northfield
    • Religion in the Northfield area
    • Entertainment in Northfield
  • History Blog
  • How To
  • Contact Us

Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection

Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection

Category Archives: Agriculture

Primary Source Sets released

02 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by Stephanie Hess in Agriculture, Arts and Culture, History Blog, James-Younger Bank Raid, Malt-O-Meal, Military, People, Recreation, Religion, Social Issues, Women, World War I

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

Primary Source Sets

We are pleased to announce that we recently released a set of educational guides to Northfield-area history called Primary Source Sets. Primary source sets are online collections of digitized historical materials—from photographs to diaries and more—arranged by topic. These sets all reflect the local Northfield experience of a larger historic event, theme, or era.

The sets explore these twelve topics:

  • Settlement & Immigration
  • The James-Younger Gang Bank Raid
  • Malt-O-Meal in Northfield
  • Agriculture & Farming
  • Milling in Northfield
  • Women in Northfield
  • World War I Home Front
  • 1918 Influenza Epidemic
  • World War II in Northfield
  • Northfield Architecture
  • Religion in Northfield
  • Entertainment in Northfield

Each set includes a topic overview, links to approximately 20 digitized items on the Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection (DHC), discussion questions, related resources, and a guide to using primary sources for research. Several benchmarks of the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards in both Social Studies and English Language Arts can be explored using these sets, as well.

Some of the Primary Source Sets available on the DHC

Mark Heiman, Northfield history enthusiast and member of the DHC steering committee, observed, “This is an invaluable starting point for anyone interested in local history, whether you want a deep dive into a topic you’re already familiar with or an introduction to fascinating people and stories that may be new to you.”

The Project Coordinator for the DHC, Stephanie Hess, explained, “One of the primary goals of the DHC is to provide access to a wide variety of digitized materials about local history. We want to spread the word about these amazing resources and provide guidance so teachers, students, and the whole community can discover their stories.”

Northfield founder John W. North and his daughter, Emma, in 1855. Find this primary source along with others in the Settlement & Immigration Primary Source Set on the Northfield History Collaborative.

Northfield founder John W. North and his daughter, Emma, in 1855. Find this primary source along with others in the Settlement & Immigration Primary Source Set on the Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection.

The DHC developed these sets with guidance from the Minnesota Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America. These publications were made possible in part by the people of Minnesota through a grant funded by an appropriation to the Minnesota Historical Society from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. The sets are open to all researchers: please follow the link to the Primary Source Set landing page.

For more guidance, check out our Primary Source Set Users Guide.

Send us feedback about these primary source sets!

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email

What’s new on the DHC?

13 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Stephanie Hess in Agriculture, Businesses, Carleton College, City of Northfield, History Blog, Malt-O-Meal, Northfield Historical Society, People, Politics and Government, Religion, Rice County Historical Society, Social Issues, St. Johns Lutheran Church, St. Olaf College

≈ Leave a Comment

Residence of Frederick Albers, c. 1900. Bridgewater Township collection.

We have been busy so far in 2018! Here is a list of some of the highlights that have been added to the Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection since January:

Bridgewater Township collection:

  • Birth Register 1907-1915
  • Individual documents and photos

First United Church of Christ collection:

  • Looking Backward: A History of the Congregational Church in Northfield
  • Manual of the Congregational Church of Northfield, 1878

Three Links Care Center collection:

  • I.O.O.F. Home for Elderly and Children Scrapbook

St. John’s Lutheran Church collection:

  • Ladies Aid Past Presidents scrapbook

Rice County Historical Society collection:

  • Miscellaneous historical documents

Northfield Historical Society collection:

  • 1878 Newton S. Persons Diary
  • Northfield City Council meeting minutes book, 1893-1903
  • Malt-O-Meal photographs and documents
  • Sheldahl Co. photographs
  • Reminiscences of Elise K. Ytterboe
  • Minutes book of the Northfield Improvement Association, 1884-1937
  • Northfield High School commencement programs: added years 1929, 1930, 1937

Carleton College born digital collection:

  • World War II photographs and documents

More to come!

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email

Food and the War

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by Stephanie Hess in Agriculture, Health and Medicine, History Blog, Politics and Government, Rice County Historical Society, World War I

≈ Leave a Comment

Today I am continuing to highlight some of the new resources available online that highlight the Northfield experience during World War I. In the last post, I shared some aerial photographs from France kept in a scrapbook by Irwin Smith, who served in the Intelligence Division “over there” during the war.

Closer to home, the households of the Northfield area were also heavily involved in wartime activities. Since Rice County is a very agricultural area, many local citizens were encouraged to contribute to the production and conservation of food for local and worldwide consumption. The National Emergency Food Garden Commission was formed shortly after America entered the war to promote food conservation ideas as well as educate Americans on how to participate. The commission urged households to grow and produce their own food so that the food they would normally buy could be exported to feed American troops and the populations of the Allied Nations.

Cartoon of produce joining the Army of Food Producers and Food Savers, 1917

Cartoon of produce joining the Army of Food Producers and Food Savers, 1917, from the Manual for Home Storage, Pickling, Fermentation and Salting Vegetables

This cartoon was printed in a manual with guidelines for the home storage, pickling, fermentation, and salting of perishable vegetables and fruits in 1917. Rice County Historical Society owns many of these wartime food conservation guides, with practical information on preserving produce, preparing dishes using new types of flour rather than wheat, and following recipes for sugarless sweets. Local families and businesses followed wheatless and meatless days. Even candy stores bought into the idea of using less sugar and created sweets based on fruit, nuts, and even the newly popular peanut butter. The idea was that the soldiers needed the meat and the wheat and the sugar more than the folks at home. Some of the recipes are also due to wartime shortages and issues with the food supply lines.

“Are we to do less now for sugar than we did last year for wheat?” the United States Food Administration wrote in a Sugar for the Common Table recipe booklet. “Are we not going to face the sugar shortage squarely and solve it satisfactorily?” The booklet continues:

Let it again be said to our honor, we have ungrudgingly shared with the brave soldiers and the War-wearied folks of other lands who sit with us now at freedom’s common table. When we eat candy, we must eat war confections. The old-fashioned candies, made largely from sugar, should be discouraged. On the succeeding pages are suggestions for making war confections. Patriotic people, big and little, will use these instead of pre-war candies.

manual Sugar for the Common Table, October 1918

Recipes from the manual Sugar for the Common Table, October 1918

Through food preservation and sacrificing pre-war sweets, meats, and wheats, people at home in Northfield could show their patriotic support for the war effort.

Another interesting facet of the food conservation movement during the war was the growth in understanding of nutritional science. The United States Food Administration developed a college course called “Food and the War” which was designed to provide students information not only on the wartime food situation, but also an understanding of how food fuels bodies, what calories are, different sources of protein, and more. Students at both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges took this course, and its outline is available online.

Excerpt from Lecture II of the Food and the War course outline

Excerpt from Lecture II of the Food and the War course outline, 1918

By taking this course, students left behind at both colleges could learn how best to go about conserving food and other resources so that the rest of the country could focus on winning the war.

Check out the next post for more details on community organizations during and after the war!

View all of the items digitized for this project here.

 

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email

1900 Rice County Plat Maps

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by Stephanie Hess in Agriculture, History Blog, Maps, People

≈ Leave a Comment

We recently added a copy of the 1900 Rice County plat map book to the Northfield History Collaborative, and I couldn’t be more excited. I love maps!

Outline map of Rice County, 1900. Page 3 of the Plat Book of Rice County, Minnesota.

A plat map shows the divisions of a piece of land in a township, city, and rural areas. It features natural and civic landmarks, like rivers and schools, but it also shows the borders of each piece of land, whether it is a small lot in the village or a large farm in the countryside. And it identifies the name of the owner of the land, as well. This book includes maps of each of the county’s townships, from Bridgewater to Wheeling, as well as its cities and towns – Dundas, Nerstrand, Northfield, and more.

Selection of the plat map of Northfield Township, 1900. Page 13 of the Plat Book of Rice County, Minnesota.

Many of the names of land owners are the same, which makes me wonder if they are all part of the same extended family, or if they came from the same town or village back East (or across the globe). And some owners are clearly women, which for 1900 is an interesting fact – what circumstances allowed them to be listed as a landowner at that time? For those of you who like tracking demographics, especially where people came from, there are some clues in the names as well – you have some clearly Scandinavian-heritage surnames like Engeseth alongside a Germanic Koester and Blau, next to a Keegan and Pritchard and Drentlaw (and even an O’Brien or two).

We also have a 1915 book of plat maps for the county. When you compare the maps, what is the same? What is different?

Outline Map of Rice County 1915

Outline Map of Rice County, 1915. Page 3 of the Atlas and Farmers’ Directory of Rice County Minnesota 1915.

While maps provide many answers, they also lead to new research questions. We hope you enjoy looking through the townships and villages of our county more than 100 years ago.

For more plat maps from the whole state of Minnesota, visit the State of Minnesota’s Public Land Survey System website, the Michael Fox Map Collection of the Minnesota Historical Society online, and the John R. Borchert Map Library of the University of Minnesota Libraries.

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email

♣ Search the DHC

Search collections by keyword

Advanced Search

Browse all items from the DHC contributors

♣ DHC Partners

  • Bridgewater Township
  • Carleton College
  • Christdala Church Preservation and Cemetery Association
  • City of Dundas
  • First National Bank of Northfield
  • First United Church of Christ
  • KYMN Radio
  • Northfield Area Fire and Rescue Service
  • Northfield Arts Guild
  • Northfield Historical Society
  • Northfield Hospital
  • Northfield News
  • Northfield Public Library
  • Rice County Historical Society
  • St. John’s Lutheran Church
  • St. Olaf College
  • Three Links Care Center

♣ Recent History Blogs

  • Entertainment history
  • Local Architecture Resources
  • Settlement and Immigration primary source set
  • Primary Source Sets released
  • Women in Northfield local history resource

♣ Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection

Northfield-Rice County Digital History Collection

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.