Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County

A Moorhead Murder Ballad by Markus Krueger

4/18/2023

I was at a long table full of friends at a regular Friday after work get together. John Trelstad mentioned that he just ran across the lyrics to the first song he ever wrote. In 1975, John was asked to write a song about a local double murder that took place in 1873. Some guy named Patrick Sullivan did it, he said. I darn near dropped by glass of “Friday after work juice.” “Patrick Sullivan?” I exclaimed. “The guy who killed Jerry Brennan and Whats-His-Name Fallon?” I was shocked. There is actually a song about this piece of Wild West Moorhead history?

Here’s what happened 150 years ago. Patrick Sullivan was a worker on the Northern Pacific Railway who, sources say, was involved in leading other workers in a strike. Employers frown upon that kind of behavior, so Pat was fired. In the early morning hours of June 29, 1873, sometime between 1 and 4 am, an already drunk Pat walked into John Hanson’s saloon, and who did he see? NPRR section bosses Andrew Fallon and Jerry Brennan. Pat ordered a drink and told the two men that he dropped his watch. Fallon leaned down to look for it. Suddenly Sullivan sliced Fallon’s abdomen open with a knife and stabbed Brennan twice in the bowels. Patrick Sullivan then calmly left the saloon. His victims took hours to die.

John Hanson quickly called for Sheriff Jim Blanchard. Before Blanchard could get a posse together to apprehend Sullivan, though, the slayer walked back into the saloon, took a seat, and turned himself in. The jury found Sullivan insane and sentenced him to the asylum in St. Peter. After a couple years, he was deemed sane again, retried for the murders, and sent to prison in Stillwater. He was in Stillwater Penitentiary either (according to local historian Roy Johnson’s 1950 article) for the rest of his life, or (according to Sheriff Blanchard’s memoir) for a couple of years until he escaped and moved to Ireland.

One hundred and two years later, Fargo-Moorhead was gearing up for their towns’ shared centennial celebration (the centennial for these towns founded in 1871 was oddly held in 1975). The festivities culminated in a play about local history that ran for 5 nights on an outdoor stage at MSUM’s Nemzek Field. John Trelstad, a 22-year-old musician, was asked to write a song about Moorhead’s Wild West days and perform it in that play. He wasn’t a songwriter, but he read the story and put words to music. It was the first song he ever wrote. The second he wrote was about the Flood of 2009, and it raised $4000 for the Salvation Army.

Just shy of a half century later, John plays guitar and mandolin for the band Tuckered Out, alongside his brother Lynn Trelstad and bassist Ryan Haug. Tuckered Out has a regular gig at the Troll Lounge on the 4th Thursday of every month. Go see them!

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Dr. James Condell, Psychologist and Jazz Guitarist

1/11/2023

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Psychologist Dr. James Condell and his wife biologist Dr. Yvonne Condell came to teach at Moorhead State College (now Minnesota State University Moorhead) in 1965. Dr. Yvonne Condell recalls there being only one other African American resident of Moorhead at that time, the other being a military recruiter. It did allow her to brag, however, that the average level of education for African Americans in Moorhead was PhD.

Both Dr. James and Dr. Yvonne Condell played important roles in encouraging Moorhead State’s efforts to recruit diverse students and faculty, and also in mentoring those students once they got here. And in addition to his accomplishments in the Social Sciences and Academia, James Condell was also a world class musician.

James Condell played his first gig at the age of just 14 in Louisville, KY. His skill playing piano got him a scholarship at HBCU, or known as an historically black college or university. Kentucky State College, but since the college band already had a piano player, he took up a new instrument: the guitar. He also began studying psychology and sociology.

He served with the US Army Air Corps during WWII and, after the war, he played in a nightclub’s house band in Nashville. After about a year of being a professional musician, he decided to make a career in Academia. He received further education at Columbia, New York University, and the University of Nebraska. While teaching at Florida A & M, he met his wife, biologist Yvonne Condell. In 1956, the two moved north, first to Grand Forks and then to Fergus Falls where Yvonne taught at the community college and James helped kids at the Lakeland Mental Health Association. In 1958, he became the first African American member of Rotary International in Fergus Falls, and as far as he knew, in the whole USA.

Missing the school environment, both James and Yvonne Condell took jobs teaching in Moorhead. He served as Professor of Psychology for the next 27 years, including 10 as the head of the department, and was a Diplomate of the American Psychological Association, but he never gave up music.

Dr. Condell formed and performed in bands across the region and hosted popular public radio jazz programs. Dr. Condell even learned Spanish so he could study Classical guitar at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid. He gained regional recognition as a jazz guitarist, a classical guitarist, an arranger of music, and a jazz scholar. Dr. Condell passed away in 1998, two weeks after playing his final gig.

After his passing, Dr. Yvonne Condell donated her husband’s extensive collection of recordings to the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Most are recordings of his radio shows, but among the hours and hours of tape are recordings of concerts he performed. With the permission of the University of Missouri – Kansas City and Dr. Yvonne Condell, we are pleased to share this October 23, 1994, concert of the James Condell Trio performed at the Seven Seas in Mandan, North Dakota.

If you would like to know more about Dr. James Condell’s music career, here is an interview with Dr. Condell conducted by the Heritage Education Commission in 1990.
http://www.heritageed.com/oralhistory/recordings/Arts/CondellJames1990.mp3

Continuing on the Legacy at HCSCC

Dr. James Condell's Jazz Night will take place at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead on March 14, 2023, 5-7pm.

Local jazz musicians will perform selections of Condell’s arrangements while playing with Condell's guitars. From 5-6pm, jazz music will provide background while people go through the Ralph's exhibit in which Condell's music is featured. From 6-7pm will be presentation of the music with the jazz historical context provided between numbers.

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Remembering Mel and Lucy Johnson

1/6/2023

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Remembering Mel and Lucy Johnson, by Markus Krueger, Programming Director

I read in the paper that my friend Mel Johnson passed away on December 18 at age 102. Mel was one of the original volunteers of the Hjemkomst Center when the museum opened its doors in 1986. I spent many Monday mornings sitting next to him at the museum’s admissions desk. He rang people in and ushered them into the theater to watch the movie about the Viking Ship while I waited to give them a tour of the Hopperstad Stave Church. Not a lot of tourists come to Fargo during the winter months, so we had plenty of time to chat. He once told me that he took a tumble off his bicycle, so he was probably going to stop riding. I was shocked and impressed. “Mel! You’re in your mid-90s! You’re still riding a bicycle?!?”

Mel grew up in Fergus Falls, the son of Norwegian immigrants. In February of 1942, two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mel entered the US Army at age 21. He served in Europe until his honorable discharge two months after the war ended in 1945. He deserved a good life when he got home, and he got it. He landed a sweet career as a travelling ice cream salesman.
Mel worked for Muggs Ice Cream Shop in Fergus Falls before the war and he returned after a couple years at the U of M. In the summer of 1948, Lucille Haugen, a young teacher, got a summer job at Muggs. She was smart, beautiful, good natured with a warm smile, and half a century later she would be one of the finest tour guides for Moorhead’s Hopperstad Stave Church. Mel and Lucy married two weeks after meeting each other. He would have been a fool to wait longer. They were blessed with three kids and 73 anniversaries together before her passing 11 months ago.

In 1956, Mel and Lucy moved to the booming town of Moorhead, Minnesota. To thank Mel and his fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines for saving the world the previous decade, our government passed the GI Bill, which gave them certain benefits like free college tuition and cheap home loans. The Johnsons built a brand new rambler a few blocks outside of town (now roughly the city center), about the corner of 17th St. and 17th Ave S. It cost them $12,500 to build. Zillow says its worth close to $200,000 today. I visited their home once – original mid-century modern woodwork, an old photo of Lucy that made me wonder why Mel waited so long to marry her, and a freezer full of ice cream.
Lucy went back to teaching elementary school. Each volunteered at the Hjemkomst Center when they retired. It makes me sad to realize I’ll never see them again. But I imagine a summer evening long ago, Mel behind the wheel of a classic 1950s car on his way home to Lucy and the kids and a bowl of ice cream. It was sweet knowing you both.

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Book Review of the Month: April 2022

4/1/2022

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Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

Book by Mayukh Sen, published November 16, 2021

Book Review by Emily Kulzer, Director of Museum Operations

One of the things I love most about living in the Fargo-Moorhead is the variety of cuisines that are available here. One can take a veritable epicurean tour across the globe without leaving the metro area. Restaurants that serve Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Thai, Mediterranean, African, Vietnamese, and Italian food are just a few examples of the different cultures represented in the FM area alone. I decided to pick up this book not only because I love the taste of food but because I also want to better appreciate the cultures and the people behind the food. This book does just that.

Taste Makers contains short biographies of seven immigrant women who influenced how Americans eat today. Chao Yang Buwei (China), Elena Zeleyeta (Mexico), Madeleine Kamman (France), Marcella Hazan (Italy), Julie Sahni (India), Najmieh Batmanglij (Iran), and Norma Shirley (Jamaica) are who Mayukh Sen dubs the “Taste Makers” who have revolutionized the way that Americans eat starting in the 1930s to the present day. These women were crucial to bringing the cuisine of their home countries to America. Julia Child is also discussed in the book but only as an interlude.

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, 1949 Edition. Source: Amazon.com

Chao Yang Buwei, ca. 1910. Source: Public Domain

Chao Yang Buwei was a physician by trade. She says she became interested in cooking while attending medical school in Tokyo because she found Japanese food “inedible.”

I appreciate the way that Sen gives context to the lives of these women by connecting their stories world events and attitudes. This context creates a book that isn’t just about food history. It is also about immigration, gender, diversity, and socio-economic issues. Each of these women were faced with the challenges that came with being immigrants in America, as well as being women in a field which was, and still is, dominated by white men.

A criticism that I’ve seen from other readers of Taste Makers has been, that it’s too short and is lacking detail. Could Sen have spent more time on each woman’s story and gone into more detail? Sure. Do I think that it would have made this book better? Not necessarily. Sen’s brevity did leave me wanting more, but in a good way. It caused me to seek out the cookbooks and recipes written by these women and I’m looking forward to trying some of them at home.

Elena’s Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes, 1961 Edition. Source: thriftbooks.com

Elena Zelayeta on the set of her cooking show “It’s Fun to Eat”, 1950. Source: University of San Francisco.

Elena Zelayeta was a restauranteur, cookbook author, and culinary instructor. She was also blind. In the early 1950s, she became the first Latin American to host a televised cooking show. She reportedly had a rope tied to her pant legs that producers would tug to let her know which camera to turn to.

In my opinion, Taste Makers earns a 4.5 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed all the short biographies of all the women and the historical context that Sen provides. I do, however, wish that the interlude on Julia Child would have been shorter or excluded all together. American-born Julia Child is probably whom all of us think of when we think of the most influential female chefs in the last century. I’m a little disappointed that she shows up here, and that these immigrant women are not the complete focus. Regardless of that minor critique, I highly recommend giving this book a go.

Sherbanoo’s Indian Cuisine: Tantalizing Tastes of the Indian Subcontinent

Taste Makers reminded me of Fargo-Moorhead’s own female food revolutionary, Sherbanoo Aziz. Sherbanoo was born in Mumbai, India and came to the United States when she was 38 years old. She’s been a local teacher of Indian cuisine for many years. We have her cookbook Sherbanoo’s Indian Cuisine: Tantalizing Tastes of the Indian Subcontinent available in our gift shop or on Amazon.

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If you’re interested in what else I’m reading you can follow me on Goodreads by following the link below. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9503549-emily

Want to read Taste Makers for FREE? Sign up for a library card today! Taste Makers is available to check out at both the Fargo and Moorhead Public Library (LARL).

Fargo Public Library Online Library Card Application: https://catalog.fargolibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-memberentry.pl

Lake Agassiz Regional Library Online Application: https://larl.org/get-a-library-card/

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5 Must Read Books for Women's History Month

3/14/2022

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A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Equality to Become America's First Indian Doctor

By Joe Starita
Published November 2016

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree—becoming the first Native American doctor in U.S. history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country.

By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Indian woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads. Her patients often were desperately poor and desperately sick—tuberculosis, small pox, measles, influenza—families scattered miles apart, whose last hope was a young woman who spoke their language and knew their customs.

This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice, then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people—physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually.

A Warrior of the People is the moving biography of Susan La Flesche’s inspirational life, and it will finally shine a light on her numerous accomplishments.

The author will donate all royalties from this book to a college scholarship fund he has established for Native American high school graduates.

A Black Women's History of the United States

By Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Published February 2020

A vibrant and empowering history that emphasizes the perspectives and stories of African American women to show how they are -- and have always been -- instrumental in shaping our country.

In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.

A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.

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Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger

By Rebecca Traister
Published October 2018

From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement.

In the year 2018, it seems as if women’s anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women’s March, and before the #MeToo movement, women’s anger was not only politically catalytic—but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women’s slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men.

With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel—from suffragettes marching on the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Here Traister explores women’s anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is perceived based on its owner; as well as the history of caricaturing and delegitimizing female anger; and the way women’s collective fury has become transformative political fuel—as is most certainly occurring today. She deconstructs society’s (and the media’s) condemnation of female emotion (notably, rage) and the impact of their resulting repercussions.

Highlighting a double standard perpetuated against women by all sexes, and its disastrous, stultifying effect, Traister’s latest is timely and crucial. It offers a glimpse into the galvanizing force of women’s collective anger, which, when harnessed, can change history.

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in American South

By Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Published February 2019

Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

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Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

By Olivia Campbell
Published March 2021

For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive healthcare.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society.

Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman’s place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges—creating for the first time medical care for women by women.

With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today.

Want to read these books for FREE? Sign up for a library card today! These books and many more are available to check out at both the Fargo and Moorhead Public Library (LARL).

Fargo Public Library Online Library Card Application: https://catalog.fargolibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-memberentry.pl

Lake Agassiz Regional Library Online Application: https://larl.org/get-a-library-card/

**Book cover images, descriptions, and other information was acquired from Goodreads**

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Book Review of the Month: March 2022

3/1/2022

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How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Book by Clint Smith, published June 1, 2021
Book review by Emily Kulzer, HCSCC Director of Museum Operations

“I’ve come to realize that there is a difference between history and nostalgia, and somewhere between those two is memory.” – David Thornton, Tour Guide, Monticello Plantation, p. 41

The connection between history, memory, and the present day has always fascinated me. Why do we remember the events and people that we do? Who gets to decide what makes it into the history books? How do dominant narratives of the past shape the places that we live, the people around us, and who we are? Why do we often look back at the past with a feeling of nostalgia and think “those were the good ol’ days”?

I think most people like to believe that history is a factual account of what has happened in the past. But the more I learn about and study history, the more it becomes evident that history, and the memories tied to it, comes with a lot of emotional baggage.

Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia contains a mass grave of 30,000 Confederates who were killed in the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War. The stone arch above the entrance road reads “Our Confederate Heroes.” In 1866, Blandford was the site of one of the earliest known Decoration Day ceremonies, which many believe to be the inspiration for the Memorial Day. Smith attended the annual Sons of Confederate Veterans Memorial Celebration at the site which still takes place every Memorial Day. Image Source: Noah_Loverbear, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

In How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, author Clint Smith takes readers on a nation-wide tour of plantations, memorials, museums, cemeteries, and prisons and examines how each site memorializes and reckons with the legacy of slavery.

Smith’s accounts of each site are based on historical scholarship and brought to life by the story of the people who care for and interpret these historical sites today. Each site is a case study that reveals how historians are choosing to tackle difficult history. Some sites choose to face the past head on, they dig it up with the ugly truth and bring it to the surface. Other sites prefer to keep the ugly parts of the past buried.

The thing that I admire most about this book is the way that Smith combines historical scholarship and journalism. It reads like a history book, yet it’s more personal. During his investigations, Smith starts up conversations with visitors, tour guides, and administrators at each site and asks them thoughtful questions regarding their understanding of the legacy of slavery and how it is told at the site.

I think it’s easy to judge others who might not know about or who might choose to ignore the messy parts of the past. Especially when we live in an age where we have access to so much knowledge and the ability to connect with people from all over the world. How the Word is Passed offers a thorough and thought-provoking investigation of the differing understandings of the horrors of slavery and those who fought to keep it.

Louisiana State Penitentiary quarters, ca. 1901. Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, is a historic maximum-security prison farm that is still in operation today. It is named Angola after the former plantation that was at the same location, and for the African country from which came many of the people who were kidnapped and enslaved in Louisiana. In How the Word is Passed, Smith visits the prison’s on-site museum to discover how they confront their ties to slavery. Source: State Library of Louisiana Digital Repository

One of the goals that the staff and I here at HCSCC have is to have deeper conversations with our audiences and create more thought-provoking content. Learning about how other historical sites around the United States and the world is a great way to find out what is working for other museums. I found the case studies in this book helpful, not only as a public historian, but personally as well. I always strive to understand my fellow humans in the hopes that I can better understand myself and become a more compassionate and empathetic person. I recommend this book not only to my fellow historians but to anyone wanting to know more about impact that the legacy of slavery has had on our society.

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Now, this is the part where I make a shameless pitch for the new exhibit that we have coming up. I invite you all to join us on Tuesday, March 22 at 5:00 PM for the opening reception of one of the three (yes, I said THREE) new exhibits that we have opening in March. Stories of Local Black History examines the rich history of African-American and African people in Clay County and the surrounding areas. The exhibit travels through time, highlighting some of the most fascinating and influential people to live in our community, like Civil War veteran Felix Battles, professor and jazz musician James Condell, as well as Judge and former Mayor of Moorhead, Jonathan Judd.

We hope to see you there!

If you’re interested in what else I’m reading you can follow me on Goodreads by following the link below. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9503549-emily

Want to read How the Word is Passed for FREE? Sign up for a library card today! How the Word Is Passed is available to check out at both the Fargo and Moorhead Public Library (LARL).

Fargo Public Library Online Library Card Application: https://catalog.fargolibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-memberentry.pl

Lake Agassiz Regional Library Online Application: https://larl.org/get-a-library-card/

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The Stockwood Fill

3/18/2021

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The Stockwood Fill:
Lake Agassiz and the Northern Pacific Railway
Mark Peihl
March 16, 2021

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On Tuesday, March 16, 2021, HCSCC senior archivist Mark Peihl delivered a lecture exploring railroad construction through the unique landscape and geology of the Red River Valley. As the ancient, glacial Lake Agassiz drained away thousands of years ago, a rich prairie with a complex soils took its place. The Northern Pacific Railway learned this geology the hard way between 1906 and 1909 while building a railroad grade between Glyndon and Hawley, Minnesota. The steep beach ridges of an ancient lake presented a formidable challenge.

A recording has been made available on our YouTube channel.

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38 Days of Sub-Zero Winter

2/16/2021

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Image: a winter photograph of twelve people standing outside of the Moorhead Post Office in 1915.

Moorhead was an official U.S. Weather Bureau Observation station from the 1880s through the 1940s. In 1920, Bureau observers moved into the Moorhead Post Office, pictured here in 1915 (HCSCC).

38 Days of Sub-Zero Temps:
Clay County's 1936 Winter Still Coldest on Record
Mark Peihl
February 16, 2021

(adapted from CCHS Newsletter, January/February 1993)

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On Tuesday morning, January 14, 1936, local U.S. Weather Bureau observer Roy J. McClure received a telegraphic message from Washington at his office in the Moorhead Post Office (today The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum). A severe cold wave was approaching Clay County from the northwest. McClure quickly phoned the local radio stations and newspapers with the warning and made his way to City Hall on 5th Street and Center Avenue. McClure ran a square white flag with a black square in the middle of it up the flag pole — the weather bureau's official signal to warn citizens of a cold wave. It had already been a cold winter. November was the fourth coldest on record and the temperature had not been above freezing since December 15. Just the previous week the county had been stung with twenty-below weather. It must have been cold raising that flag. The temperature was 1°F with a 12 mile per hour wind. But little did McClure know that it would be six long weeks before Clay County would enjoy such balmy weather again.

Image: a chart showing five weather flags used by the U.S. Weather Bureau. The white flag indicated fair or clear weather. A Blue flag indicated rain or snow. A white and blue flag indicated local rain and snow. A black triangular flag indicated a temperature extreme. A white flag with a black square indicated the approach of a cold wave.

For 38 days between January 15 and February 20 the temperature at Moorhead never reached above zero, the longest such streak in the county's history. Eight times morning lows reached -30°F, twice it hit -37°F, and three blizzards added to the fiasco. It all helped to make the winter of 1936 the coldest on record.

The first week of the cold snap was not that bad. Lows were around -15°F and highs about -5°F, and winds were light. Newspapers hardly mentioned the cold. But Tuesday afternoon, January 21, the bottom dropped out. By midnight the temperature was -37°F with a 15 mile per hour wind. That's a wind chill of -85 degrees. The high that day was -29°F.

Few folks in Moorhead bothered to try starting their cars and fewer succeeded. Packed city buses managed to stay on schedule, but the Fargo-Moorhead Electric Street Railway routes were completely disorganized. The intense cold created a frosty film on the street car tracks. Without adequate traction it took the cars an hour to complete a 45-minute loop.

Taxi cabs raced the deserted streets getting people to work and stores. Many folks waited an hour for a ride. The Fargo companies raised their fares from 15 cents to 25 cents and still did a booming business.

Moorhead Judge N.I. Johnson bought a thermometer at a local hardware store, stepped outside and watched astonished as its mercury plummeted 102 degrees in moments.

Most people just stayed home and talked on the phone. Northwestern Bell put on all the operators they had and could not handle the estimated 12,000 calls placed between 7:30 and 9 a.m., four times the normal load. Most of the calls were to cab companies or about school. Classes were held but attendance was off by a third.

Conditions in the country were worse. Thermometers near Ulen hit -42°F and Downer residents reported -38°F for a high on Wednesday. J.B. Olsen from Hawley had to melt snow for his 16 head of stock when his well froze. Most rural schools closed for the week. Drifts blocked many township roads. A lot of snow had already fallen that winter. It was light and dry and blew like crazy with even a moderate wind. North of Georgetown WPA workers added blocks of snow to increase the height of a snow fence, but 10 foot drifts piled up anyway.

On Saturday, after three days of minus thirty, the temperature "moderated" for 10 days. It even reached zero a couple of times. But on Tuesday, February 4, a strong north wind brought back frigid air. On Friday, highs edged up to -12°F and snow started to fall. By Sunday an additional 4.5 inches had fallen and blown sideways.

City, state, and county road crews worked round the clock to keep main routes open, but most rural roads were clocked. The Hitterdal and Felton areas were particularly hard hit with 12 to 14 foot drifts. The Fargo Forum reported drifts "packed hard as concrete" by the wind. Crews used dynamite to clear some North Dakota roads.

By Wednesday things were more under control. Then it started snowing again. Frustrated road crewmen sat as "canyons" they had spent half a day digging out fIlled in an hour with new white stuff.

On Friday the weather cleared and the temp plummeted to -37°F again. The Moorhead Daily News joked that the only break Moorheadites got from shoveling coal into their furnaces was to run upstairs and phone for more coal. In Iowa, fuel became so short that armed guards were posted on coal trains. There was no such problem here. Most Clay County coal came from dock storage facilities at Duluth or open pit mines in North Dakota and Montana. Local coal dealers reported their business up by 25 to 75% over normal, but except for a couple of popular grades there was plenty to go around. However, at Hitterdal and Ulen, where snow blockedrail deliveries for a time, dealers limited what they would sell.

As furnaces stoked up, chimney fires became common. Moorhead fire fighters fought three fires on one -37°F night.

On Sunday, the third blizzard in less than 10 days struckand Clay County residents had had enough. The Moorhead Country Press said that old timers' stories of how cold it was in the old days were getting a lot less interesting. A Spring Prairie resident complained that his neighbors talked of nothing except coal, cold weather and firewood.

With their customers marooned at home by snow and cold, merchants reported business was terrible. The previous fall male students at Moorhead State Teachers College had started a fad of going about hatless. The -30°F weather stopped that fast. Half the residents of Ulen had to haul water when their pipes froze. Although hundreds died around the country from the cold, Clay County recorded only one death. On January 22, WPA worker Gerald Payseno tried fixing a tire in a closed garage with his truck's motor running. He was overcome by exhaust fumes.

Wildlife suffered terribly. Newspapers carried stories about woodpeckers frozen to trees, chickadees stuck to iron pipes, and even a rabbit found with his tongue on an ax head. Residents reported pheasants flocking in farmyards. Local game warden Robert Streich said 1936 was the worst year for wildlife he had ever seen and predicted the weather would set back pheasant production by five years. Streich pleaded with farmers to set out feed for game birds. Local Rod and Gun Clubs raised funds for bird feed. Streich himself speared 1000 pounds of rough fish at the north Red River Dam to feed pheasants. The ice on the river froze 36 inches deep and several small lakes winter-killed completely.

County residents grimly dug out again and hung on. Finally, on Friday, February 21, thermometers registered at a sizzling 8°F. Soon after, 32°F weather brought a sleet storm that turned roads to ice and yet another blizzard followed, but the back was finally broken on the grand daddy of all Clay County cold waves.

When the previous record for extended sub-zero weather was broken (a wimpy 11 days in 1889) the Moorhead Daily News editorialized "already youngsters of 1936 are being taught the momentous news, so that in the dimfuture when they achieve the status of grandfathers they can chuckle over a younger generation complaining about cold weather, saying: 'Now when I was a lad .... '"

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Paranormal North: A History Podcast

1/5/2021

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Paranormal North
Davin Wait
January 5, 2021

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My good friend Matt Hopper, a talented producer with Forum Communications, first approached me about collaborating on a podcast in 2018 or '19. I frequently resisted these invitations, as I'd already spread my time fairly thin between various projects at HCSCC and some volunteering responsibilities elsewhere in the community. Of course, outside of a select few podcasts on road trips or morning walks (like Backstory or Revisionist History), I've also never been much of a podcast listener. I'm more apt to listen to public radio, YouTube documentaries, or some type of innocuous background music while I work. When I drive or workout, it's music or silence.

However, when COVID-19 entered our lives in March 2020 and temporarily closed our museum at the Hjemkomst Center, my colleagues and I were forced to confront a new reality. Our positions at the museum were generally safe — which was not the case for many of our museum colleagues around the U.S. — but we needed to find new ways to connect with our audiences. So once we navigated the challenges of reopening the museum in June (before we closed again in November) and moving staff meetings and programs into digital spaces, Matt and I decided to give it a shot.

Paranormal North is the result of this collaboration. We researched and scripted the episodes through August and September, both at work and in our own free time. Then we recorded and edited at WDAY studios before publishing them through inForum in October and November — just before COVID-19 visited me and my girlfriend (we're both okay). Our content drew from new research and research that my colleagues and I have conducted intermittently over the last several years, particularly for a small local folklore exhibition called Weird FM that we shared alongside an exhibition of SuperMonster市City!'s America's Monsters, Superheroes, and Villains: Our Culture At Play in the fall and winter of 2019. We wanted the podcast, like both of these exhibitions, to provide historical context and interpretation for some of the local legends in the Red River Valley. We wanted to know, what are our local legends, why do we tell these strange stories, and where do they come from?

After producing four episodes we've certainly identified some ways we can improve our storytelling in this new medium, but the feedback we've received has been overwhelmingly positive. We've had thousands of listeners, and dozens of folks have reached out to share kind words or suggest upcoming episodes (we haven't decided the podcast's future, yet). Will we do a deep dive into the Kindred Lights or the Wendigo, for example? What about Nisse or Trolls?

Of course, we've also encountered a little pushback, including a charge that Paranormal North deflates local legends and ruins a small slice of fun in our community. When I first read this accusation, it reminded me of valid ethical concerns I had about leading elementary and high school students on tours through Weird FM and America's Monsters, Superheroes, and Villains. I wondered, could I tactfully introduce the folklore of German and Scandinavian immigrants, including Krampus and Saint Nick, without peeling back the curtains on, say.....Santa Claus? Could I frame one of the central arguments of America's Monsters, Superheroes, and Villains — that the pop culture stories we tell and the ways we play are intrinsically tied to the material realities of history, psychology, and biology — without explicitly casting zombies, Superman, and the Marvel Universe into the shadows of the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and Jim Crow? Where do we draw these lines as journalists, educators, and historians — especially since we're not just talking about stories, but storytellers and audiences?

I'm skeptical of supernatural and paranormal phenomena. I trust hard evidence and the scientific method and professional consensus. I am sympathetic to the fallibility of humans and science, and I push back against the ridicule that True Believers face, but I'm perhaps more sympathetic to the feedback I've received suggesting that magical thinking primes us for propaganda, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.

To put this another way, I personally don't think of ghosts or flying reindeer when I hear a noise in the attic, but Christmas and Halloween are still a magical time in my house.

Have a listen and tell us what you think.

* * * * * * * * * *

Click to play/download.

Episode 1 - The Vergas Hairy Man

Episode 2 - The Val Johnson Incident

Episode 3 - The Wild Plum Schoolhouse Poltergeist

Episode 4 - The Horace Mann Elephant

Paranormal North is produced in collaboration by the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County and Forum Communications.

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Grasshoppers in Clay County

10/8/2020

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Drought and grasshoppers, like those shown here, plagued farmers in the Red River Valley during the 1930s (OPI-WPA Photos, Library of Congress).

Grasshoppers in Clay County
Mark Peihl
October 8, 2020

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As in the rest of the area, outbreaks of the Rocky Mountain Locust devastated crops in Clay County between 1874 and 1876. Huge swarms of the pests swept through the area eating crops, grass, trees – even laundry hung on lines. Farmers tried burning, plowing, capturing and stomping the hoppers but nothing seemed to work. Eventually they disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Ironically, the trillions of Rocky Mountain Locusts which caused so much damage are now extinct.

But five other hopper species have given local farmers fits. The hot, dry years of the 1930s proved perfect breeding environments for the bugs. Between 1932 and 1939 the hoppers caused millions of dollars in crop damage in Clay County.

Grasshoppers devastated Clay County fields in the 1930s, causing millions of dollars in crop losses. This photo shows the remains of a cornfield (OPI-WPA Photos, Library of Congress).

However, this time farmers had an effective weapon – poison. Workers mixed wheat bran, molasses and saw dust with water and sodium arsenate and spread it on fields just as the hoppers hatched. The insects ate the sweetened bran and died by the billions.

Farmers in Warren, Minnesota, mix grasshopper poison in the 1930s. Sodium arsenate, molasses, and wheat bran were mixed into troughs of saw dust for spreading on fields (Grasshoppers and Their Control, 1938).

The arsenic used was hazardous, causing respiratory problems, skin damage, and much worse. Unfortunately many farmers mixed and spread this grasshopper poison by hand, with little if any personal protection. Sodium arsenate was later outlawed for these purposes. In the 1980s the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency discovered 18,000 pounds of arsenic still stored on a half dozen Clay County farms. The poison was removed to a hazardous waste disposal site.

In the 1980s the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency discovered and disposed of thousands of pounds of arsenic-laced grasshopper poison still stored on Clay County farms, including the stockpile shown here (Clay County Extension Agent's Annual Report, 1938).

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Articles and Blogs

Continuing on the Legacy at HCSCC

Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America

A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Equality to Become America's First Indian Doctor

A Black Women's History of the United States

Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in American South

Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

​How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Book by Clint Smith, published June 1, 2021​Book review by Emily Kulzer, HCSCC Director of Museum Operations

Archives

Visit Us

Resources

Accessibility

Connect

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Book by Clint Smith, published June 1, 2021
Book review by Emily Kulzer, HCSCC Director of Museum Operations