|
I’m writing this just hours after the surviving Israeli hostages were released by Hamas and returned to their families. Each were taken on October 7 two years ago in the worst mass murder event of Jews since the Holocaust. I am happy for the liberation of the hostages and hopeful for an end to this war. I am sad thinking that, even though there are tears of joy right now, uncounted thousands will carry the trauma of the war that started on October 7 for the rest of their lives. I find myself thinking of two local men who liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945.
About twelve years ago, I interviewed Loren Helmeke in his apartment. Loren was a retired Georgetown rural mail carrier who, during World War II, was one of the first American soldiers to witness the end result of Nazi antisemitism. Loren told me he had “liberated” a camera from a German civilian sometime earlier. He used that camera to take some of America’s first photographic proof of the Holocaust. Our historical society has copies of the pictures, as does the Holocaust Museum. “I remember the day I walked in that place just like it was yesterday,” he told me as a man in his 90s. “I guess after I saw what happened over there, I thought it was the last good war, if there is such a thing as a good war. But at least there was a reason for this one.” I never got to meet his friend Runyon Peterson, a Dilworth railroad engineer who was also at Ohrdruf that day. There is a 1981 interview with him archived on the website of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Peterson was a veteran of plenty of fighting by April of 1945. “We smelled burning flesh a long time before we got to Ohrdruf,” he said. “We knew what that smelled like.” Runyon described the photos he took with a small camera he brought from home. The “beating shed.” The piles of burned bodies. The guard that was beaten to death by newly liberated prisoners. “By this time, I had seen so much stuff that at the time, it didn’t bother me…” He paused to bow his head and wipe away tears. “But now…” Tears turned to sobs. American soldiers had heard rumors of death camps liberated by their Soviet allies, but they didn’t really trust them. How could it be true? Then they saw it at Ohrdruf. The first American tank came in to witness Nazi SS guards choosing to spend the last moments of their lives killing as many prisoners as possible before they were shot down. American soldiers forced the townspeople living nearby to walk through the camp to witness the horrors that occurred in their backyard. The following day, the city’s mayor and his wife committed suicide. Runyon Peterson would go on to liberate both Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Among the people he helped liberate at Buchenwald was a Romanian Jewish kid named Elie Wiesel. Wiesel would later write the acclaimed Holocaust memoir Night and win the Nobel Peace Prize. After he retired, Runyon Peterson gave talks around the area about the Holocaust that he saw with his own eyes. I could tell Loren Helmeke believed it was his duty to share his photographic proof. Both men have passed away. There are few Holocaust survivors left. In a way, I’m glad that soon no one will remember death camps when they close their eyes. No one should be haunted by real nightmares like that. But as we lose our witnesses, we cannot allow these horrors to be forgotten or denied. If a witness entrusted you with their story, it’s because they want you to tell others. Honor them by doing so. To learn more about Runyon Peterson's experience: Interview with Runyon and other camp liberators: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513306 Interview with Runyon on his time with the Northern Pacific: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVxePxu5jQE
0 Comments
Written by former Clay County Archivist Mark Peihl in 1991
Published online by Levi Magnuson On August 27, 1927, Charles Lindberg touched down at Hector Field in Fargo to thousands of cheering fans. These days it's hard to imagine the electrifying impact "Lindy's" solo flight over the Atlantic the previous spring had had on the country. For years afterwards the newspapers were filled daily with stories of daring aviators' exploits. Lindberg inspired hundreds of young Americans to become fliers, and not all of them were men. In the 1920s women made great strides in many previously all male vocations, even aviation. One young women in the crowd that day at Hector was a gutsy former Clay County school girl named Florence Gunderson Klingensmith. Florence was born September 3, 1904,on her parents' small Oakport Township farm. She attended Oakmound School with her sister Myrtle, and brothers George and Roy. Her father, Gust, worked at Oakmound as janitor and school bus driver. Recently I talked with several of Florence's childhood friends. Everyone of them remembered her as a nice girl, a very attractive girl, and a daring girl who was always ready to try anything. Ingvald Stensland says the whole family was like that. "Ya, they was full of spetakkel*, those kids. But they never hurt anything." Florence especially was "A wild one" laughs Clarence Simonson. "She was a great sports fan and ready to try anything." In 1918 the Gundersons moved to Moorhead. Florence didn't slow down a bit. Marion Gillespie lived a few blocks away on 10th Street and was a close friend: "Oh, she was a real live wire, real daring .... We'd run out and jump on the back of the street car when it passed and ride to each others' house." At a very young age Florence's devil-may-care attitude was nearly her undoing. Fellow Moorhead High student Oliver Sondrall remembers, "I used to do some skiing at the [ski jumping] scaffold near the Moorhead Country Club. Florence wanted to try it too. When we got to the top of the scaffold we found she didn't have any bindings on her skis! [Just a couple of leather straps.] My friend and I had to talk her out of it. She would have been killed! " In Moorhead her energy found an outlet - motorcycles, fast ones. Evelyn Gesell: "Oh, you bet she rode motorcycles! I think she was the only girl we knew who did. Some of us more conservative girls, I guess, used to look a bit askance when she would race through the streets on her motorcycle." The Fargo Forum later claimed she got her first experience with flying on a motorcycle. With her brother George riding on the gas tank, "A tire blew out when the speedometer showed better than 70 miles an hour and Florence went sailing through the air." The Fargo Forum later claimed she got her first experience with flying on a motorcycle. With her brother George riding on the gas tank, "A tire blew out when the speedometer showed better than 70 miles an hour and Florence went sailing through the air." Florence left school in her junior year and went to work as a motorcycle and truck delivery person, eventually working for The Pantorium, a Fargo dry cleaner. It may have been there that she met Charles Klingensmith. They were married June 25, 1927, but it was a short union. Within a year and a half she was on her own. Frank Vyzralek, in a biography of Florence writes that Charles "enters and exits her life almost as a shadow, leaving behind little beyond his surname, which Florence retained to the end of her life." Two months after their wedding, Lindberg paid his visit and Florence decided to become a pilot. In early 1928 she attended ground electrical classes at Hanson Auto and Electrical School in Fargo. "A lone gir I among four hundred boys;' she later wrote. She worked as a mechanic's apprentice at Fargo's Hector Field, learning planes inside and out and taking flying lessons when she could afford to. That summer her flight instructor E.M. Canfield needed a stunt girl to accompany him on a series of area flying exhibitions. Florence agreed to be that stunt person in return for lessons and she started a new adventure- skydiving. On June 14, after some brief instruction, Florence bailed out of Canfield's plane some 1700 feet above Hector Field. Her brother George, who had had jump training at Kelly Field in Texas witnessed the jump. It was a wild ride. "She pendulum worse than any 'chute jumper [I'd] ever seen at Kelly." Florence was unconscious when she hit the ground but undeterred. Later jumps at Bismarck and Brainerd were more successful. The travel and flying were a great experience for Florence, but she made little money. To make a living flying she needed her own plane. The following winter she literally went door to door to persuade local business men to provide money for a plane. In return, Florence would promote Fargo and carry advertisements at fairs, flying meets and air races. Her persistence paid off. As Fargo laundry owner William T. Lee said, "If you're willing to risk your neck, I'll risk my money." Norman Black, William Stern, J. K. Roth Herbst and others agreed and provided $3,000. In April, 1929, Florence traveled to the Monocoupe Airplane Factory in Moline, Ill. where she purchased her first plane. She flew it back to Hector and christened it "Miss Fargo." Florence had a new name too, "Tree-Tops," probably given to her by Phobe Omlie or one of the other top fliers she met and received instructions from at Moline. In June she became the first licensed woman pilot in North Dakota and started her aviation career. That summer she barnstormed county fairs, worked as operations manager at Hector and flew in her first race where she took fourth. By spring she was ready for another challenge. Mildred Kaufman of St. Louis had established a woman's record for inside loops of 46. Florence figured she could do better. On April 19, 1930, with hundreds of onlookers lining the roads around Hector she smashed the record with 143 loops. Unfortunately, no members of the National Aeronautics Association were present. Bad weather prevented Florence from making the record official later that spring and in May, Laura Ingalls completed first 344, then 850 loops. Florence spent the summer in Minneapolis doing commercial flying. In September American Eagle Airlines appointed her Northern Division Traffic Manager, and those duties kept her on the ground. Laura Ingalls, meanwhile, had raised her loop record to 980. But by summer Florence was back in the cockpit. On June 22, 1931 before more than 50,000 spectators (and NAA officials) Florence took off from Wold-Chamberlain Field at Minneapolis. Four and 1/2 hours later, "A trifle groggy and gagged by gas fumes," she touched down with a record of 1,078 loops firmly in hand. She taught a women's aviation class, did radio addresses on flying and with partner Jack V. Kipp, spent weekends giving 5minute plane rides for a dollar. She also began racing in earnest. At the 1931 National Air Races in Cleveland, against the best women fliers in the country, she won four events and walked away with $4,200 in prize money. At the 1932 Nationals she collected the most coveted prize in women's aviation,._the Amelia Earhart Trophy. But racing against women was not enough for Florence. She also took second racing against men in a race for planes with engines smaller than 510 cubic inches. In 1933 Florence entered the $10,000 Frank Phillips Trophy Race at the Nationals in Chicago. She was the first woman to do so. The Thompson was a 100 mile, 12 lap race around pylons. The race was open to planes with no limits on engine size. The best pilots in America competed. Florence flew a bright red Gee Bee Sportster owned by Arthur Knapp of Jackson, Mich. The fabric covered craft's original 220 horse power engine was replaced with a souped up 670 hp motor. The overpowered engine added an element of danger, but Florence was confident. The Chicago Daily News quoted her as saying just before the race, "I don't know that I will win, but I do know I will place. The plane is fast enough and I can fly it." Late in the afternoon of September 4, one day after her 29th birthday, Florence was flying a beautiful race, in fourth place ahead of four male fliers, averaging over 200 mph through the first eight laps. Then, just as she was passing the grand stands, a bit of red fabric fluttered down from the fuselage. The stresses of the race were apparently too much for the overpowered light craft. Florence immediately veered off the course and flew steady and level straight south to a plowed field a couple of miles away. Then the crowd gasped as the plane flipped over and nosed into the earth from 350 feet up. Florence was thrown from the cockpit and died instantly. Apparently she had attempted to bailout. Her parachute was found tangled in the fuselage. Even though the crash resulted from structural failure and not pilot error, Florence's death was later used as an excuse to bar women from competing with men. Officials banned women from entering the Bendix Air Race at the 1934 Nationals. Women protested. Amelia Earhard's method of protest was to refuse to fly actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the air races. The women held their own air meet in Ohio. Florence's body was shipped back home for the funeral. She was well loved in the flying fraternity. Dozens of pilots from allover the country joined hundreds of local friends at the funeral in Fargo's First Presbyterian Church. Floral tributes included one arrangement in the shape of her first plane "Miss Fargo." The businessmen who had bank rolled Florence's first plane served as pallbearers. She was interned at Oakmound Cemetery, a few miles from where she was born. Rev. J.C. Brown, "The Flying Parson" said "If she could speak to us now she would tell us not to lose faith in aviation because of the tragedy that ended her flying i career. She would say it was not usual, but in the pursuit of the thrills upon which she thrived." * Norwegian: uproar, hubbub, racket, boisterous.impression By: Petra Gunderson-Leith
Names are special, doubly so for public schools. They help you identify share experiences and "figure out" someone you may have just met. Moorhead's elementary schools are named after several important figures who devoted themselves to education or other endeavors. Here are their stories. Ellen Hopkins Elementary Ellen “Nellie” Hopkins was a beloved teacher in Moorhead for many years. Hopkins was born in 1875 in Brainerd but moved to Moorhead with her family as a baby. She graduated from Moorhead High School in 1896 and attended the Moorhead State Normal School (now MSUM). She started her teaching career in the rural schools of Clay County, including Winnipeg Junction and School District # 8 in Moland Township. She spent most of her career as a teacher and later principal at the First Ward School in Moorhead, which was renamed Hopkins School in 1938. Each year, Hopkins hosted a picnic for students and their families and was known for piling kids in her car, Henrietta, and driving them to school events. One student said, “Once you have had her as a teacher, you will never forget her.” Hopkins retired in 1938 but continued to partake in her other passions, including performing in local theatrical productions. Dorothy Dodds Elementary School Dorothy Dodds was born in 1923 in Lisbon, ND. The Dodds family moved to Moorhead when she was a teenager, and she graduated from Moorhead High School in 1941. She earned a degree in elementary education from the Moorhead State Teachers College (now MSUM). Following her undergraduate degree, she attended Colorado State University, earning a master's degree in 1948. She returned to Moorhead and spent her life improving the lives of local children. She taught young children at the MSTC campus school until 1972. Dodds shaped many future educators as a professor at MSUM. Beyond teaching, Dodds was a passionate advocate for early childhood education and childcare. After retirement in 1986, Dodds stayed busy taking care of neighborhood children and volunteering with local organizations. S.G. Reinertson Elementary School Stephanus Gustavus (“S.G.” or “Steve”) Reinertsen was born in Illinois in 1890 but grew up in South Dakota. He graduated from St. Olaf College in 1911 and earned a master’s degree from the University of Colorado. Reinertsen was named superintendent of Moorhead Public Schools in 1926. Before coming to Moorhead, he had served as superintendent in towns throughout Minnesota, Iowa, and Montana. While in Moorhead, Reinertsen oversaw the expansion of the Moorhead School District and was one of the founders of the school patrol. Reinertsen retired in 1955. Robert Asp Elementary School Robert “Bob” Asp was born and raised in Thief River Falls and Goodridge, MN. He served in the United States Army from 1946 to 1947. He came to Moorhead to attend Concordia College after his service, graduating in 1952. He taught various subjects in the Moorhead Public Schools before becoming a guidance counselor. While many remember Asp as a teacher and counselor, he is best remembered for fulfilling his dream of building a Viking ship: the Hjemkomst. Visit the Hjemkomst Center to learn all about Bob and his dream! Probstfield Elementary School Randolph Probstfield became one of the first white settlers in Clay County when he arrived in 1859. He held many jobs in his life- postmaster, experimental farmer, and state senator. Probstfield valued education and was a lifelong learner. The family held intellectual gatherings for neighbors in Oakport Township, and Probstfield was responsible for building the first schoolhouse in the County. To learn more about the Probstfield family, check out By The Sweat of His Brow by Carroll Engelhardt.  Erwin "Lefty" Johnson in England, 1944. (Courtesy of Erwin Johnson) Erwin “Lefty” Johnson
Adapted by Levi Magnuson from the exhibit "Doing Our Part: Clay County in WWII" June 6, 1944 saw the beginning of the end of Nazi occupation in Europe. The United States and several allied nations lead an invasion in Northern France under the codename Operation Overlord. The D-Day landings were the important first step that led to the ultimate victory of the allies over the axis powers. Erwin “Lefty” Johnson was one man who helped make this victory possible. Erwin Johnson, born and raised in Hawley, joined the army so he could afford to study engineering at the University of Minnesota in November 1941. A month later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States joined World War Two. For the rest of the war, “Lefty” Johnson found himself at the forefront of some of most consequential moments of the war. As the platoon leader for the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment, Johnson’s specialty was invading enemy-occupied beaches. He and the other combat engineers were tasked with clearing minefields, building roads, and fixing or destroying bridges, all while under enemy fire. “It was all part of the mission of being an engineer,” he said in a 2011 interview. “When you’ve got somebody that’s working on a job, and your part of that job and the mortars come in and there’s some shrapnel and some people getting cut up; that’s just part of a day’s work.” Johnson stormed the beaches of northern Africa at Algiers in August 1942. He landed in Sicily in July of 1943 and Salerno, Italy, three months later. Because he had so much experience invading beaches, he was picked to help plan the most important beach landing of the war: the invasion of Nazi-occupied France on D-Day. He was given the security clearance called “Bigot,” a level above Top Secret that meant he was one of the very few people who knew the exact beaches where we would land. Johnson landed at Utah Beach on D-Day. Utah Beach was one of the five beaches as part of the initial assault on the Normandy coast. Johnson’s unit helped to clear beach obstacles and build causeways to make it easier to bring equipment ashore. By the days end and despite strong currents moving the landings off course, allied forces managed to secure the beach head by the days end. By the end of September 1944 all of France had been liberated and the push to Berlin from the West began. Johnson built roads, camps, and bridges through France and Germany until the war ended. He returned to Hawley after the war and used his engineering expertise on several projects, including the Hawley Rodeo Grounds, the softball complex, and the golf course. Through the 1970s, he became very involved in Robert Asp’s Hjemkomst Viking Ship project. Johnson’s leadership solved the problem of getting the 16-ton Viking ship out of a potato warehouse and onto a truck bound for Lake Superior. Erwin "Lefty" Johnson passed away at the age of 95 on June 23, 2015.  Grace Berg was the daughter of Lutheran pastor O. G. Berg and Lillie Berg. Originally from Nebraska, her family moved to Moorhead when she was a young girl. Berg would attend Concordia College between 1939 and 1941 and studied nursing. While at school she participated in the music program - singing in the choir, playing in the band, and attended the Music Club. She was also one of 57 students selected to be in the choir by Professor Paul Christiansen. Berg would transfer to Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis to finish her nursing studies. With the start of the war, America needed as many nurses as possible to care for the sick, injured, and dying service members fighting overseas. Berg enlisted in the Army Nurse Corp on February 4, 1943, and attended basic training at Camp Hale, Colorado. Lt. Grace Berg served as a nurse aboard the US Army Hospital Ship Shamrock in the Mediterranean Sea. She cared for wounded soldiers of all allied countries as they were transported to hospitals away from the fighting. Hospital ships were considered neutral and protected from attack by international law if they were only used for medical care. To make sure everyone knew it was a hospital ship, the USAHS Shamrock was painted white with green stripes down each side, had large red crosses painted on it, and was brightly lit with lights each night. Back in Moorhead, the Concordia’s newspaper called Grace Berg the “Cobber Angel of Mercy”. Berg, on leave in 1944, told the Fargo Forum about her time at sea caring for wounded soldiers. She said that there was no "giving up" in them and that they were hopeful for the future. Berg’s ship followed the front, first tending to those wounded on the battlefields in North Africa, then going to Sicily, and southern France. During the war, Grace fell in love with the ship’s pharmacist, Robert Harkrider. The two married on May 19, 1945 - 11 days after Germany surrendered. The two raised four children together and made their home in Atlanta, Georgia. In the Mediterranean, aboard a defenseless ship designed to be as visible as possible, she bravely bet her life that our enemies would show mercy to her ship of wounded soldiers.   Fenwick H. Watkins - center holding ball - in his high school yearbook from 1905. Identity can be complicated. We know that there are people in our local history who, for a variety of reasons, tried to avoid being identified as Black. Some found it advantageous personally, professionally, and for safety, to identify as white. Fenwick Watkins may have been one of them. Fenwick Henri Watkins was born in 1885 in Burlington, Vermont, to an African American family. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Vermont where he was a standout athlete in football, baseball and basketball. Fenwick Watkins was the first Black athlete of a predominantly white school to captain a college football team. After graduation, he moved to Fargo. With the exception of the 1930 Census, all known records about Fenwick Watkins list him as white while living in Fargo. He coached and led the sports program at Fargo College from 1909 to 1915. He entered the real estate business and coached part-time until 1920 when Fargo College closed. After one year as Assistant Coach at North Dakota Agricultural College (NDSU today), Watkins took over the athletic department at Concordia College where he remained until 1926. For a time, he worked for the Home Owners Loan Corporation, a program notorious across the country for refusing home loans to African Americans in certain neighborhoods - a practice known as Redlining. He continued in the real estate business in Fargo until his death in 1943. Watkins' life highlights the complicated history of African American identity and sports history.  Fenwick Watkins', back row on left side, Fargo College football team, 1910.  Orabel with painting tools. Orabel Thortvedt was a local historian, animal lover and trained artist from the Glyndon area. Born into one of the earliest families to settle in Clay County, she was raised hearing stories of their travels and trials moving from Norway to Clay County. This storytelling instilled in her a life-long passion for her family’s history and that of her neighbors. She showed artistic talent at an early age. Orabel studied at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the University of Minnesota and developed a long and successful career painting animal portraits and historical scenes. Her introduction to art began when at age six she drew a caricature of her teacher in a snow bank with a stick. Though her teacher was unimpressed, her parents recognized her talent and encouraged her. Orabel had a love for animals and a special talent for capturing the personality of a dog or horse in her art. She was a good writer. In the early 1920s Orabel began a series of scrapbooks documenting her experiences and the lives of her family members and neighbors. Her parents’ stories inspired her to create an illustrated manuscript depicting her family’s travels and travails in Norway and the US. It occupied her for over 50 years. Orabel moved to Minneapolis to study art in 1930. After both her parents died in 1936, Orabel continued to work in the Twin Cities for a time but returned to the farm permanently in 1938. Blessed with supportive and perhaps indulgent family, Orabel was allowed to just be Orabel. She continued her artistic career, painting animal portraits and historical local scenes for neighbors and friends. Orabel died from heart disease November 1, 1983. She’s buried with her parents in Concordia Lutheran Cemetery. From Prairie Daughters: The Art and Lives of Annie Stein and Orabel Thortvedt Orabel's historical notes are housed at the Clay County Archives. Her notes have proven a vital resource in the work of the HCSCC. They are currently being scanned and transcribed so that they can be more accessible and preserved for future generations. To learn more about Orabel and Annie Stein, another local artist, copies of Prairie Daughters: The Art and Lives of Annie Stein and Orabel Thortvedt available at the Heritage Gift Shop or our online store.  Notes written by Orabel on Edward Grover.  Orabel (left) and another student working on drawing a horse. Animals were a common motif in Orabel's art and she kept extensive notes on the horses, cats, and cows her family raised.  Anna Gates in 1922 Anna Gates, nee Liedahl, was born in Norway in 1869. Like so many in this region, she immigrated with her family to the United States and by 1881 had settled in Leonard, North Dakota. She would later move to Fargo and work in homes. In 1896, Anna married Elbert Gates, a mail carrier from Moorhead and moved across the river.
Anna was unlike many suffrage supporters, she was working class and an immigrant. At the time, many of the suffrage supporters in the country came from wealthier backgrounds and had more established American families. Still, Anna didn't let this stop her and she would eventually become Chair of District 49's Minnesota Woman's Suffrage Association. Although living in Moorhead, she often worked across the river in both Fargo and the rural parts of Cass County. She helped bring Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House which served the immigrant communities of Chicago, to Fargo in 1912. Two years later, she was described in the Wahpeton Times as, "...doing quite a little quiet work for suffrage among the farm women near Leonard reports a very encouraging prospect for suffrage in that region.” Along with her suffrage work, Anna was part of several veteran auxiliary organizations, Order of Eastern Star, WCTU, and the Fine Arts Club of Moorhead. After suffrage was achieved, Anna continued to work in her community. She was made a police officer, sometimes referred to as a Police Matron, in 1920 by the city of Moorhead. Her position had her in lots of roles. She was part cop, social worker, and city food inspector. She was often tasked with handling cases involving women and children. During the early years of the Great Depression, she was tasked with distributing food aid to the poor and needed of the community. Anna would remain a part of the Moorhead Police department until she retired in 1933. Upon her retirement however, she told one journalist that, "I have a great deal of work planned ahead, and I know I will not be sitting a minute." She later added that while she was planning on remaining active, she also was "...going to 'get acquainted' with my home. I haven't seen much of it these years, for a policewoman's job is a 24 hour position." Elbert passed away in 1936, however Anna managed to live until 1950. She had three sons with him: Ernie, Dewey, and Donald.   Farmer William Thornton Montgomery had more land than any other African American in Dakota Territory. From about 1881-1900, he owned 1,020 acres two miles north of Christine, ND (about 20 miles south of Fargo) plus more land in Cass County and Manitoba. Local newspapers describe him as “a most worthy man,” and “the greatest Colored farmer of the Northwest.”
W. T. Montgomery had a fascinating life. He was well educated (against the law) as an enslaved child. He served in the US Navy in the Civil War. His family bought the plantation where they were once enslaved, and for a time they were among the wealthiest merchant-planters in Mississippi. William’s appointments as a postmaster and a constable in 1867 make him likely the first African American to hold public office in Mississippi. He moved to Dakota Territory in 1881 because he was pessimistic about the prospects of African Americans receiving fair treatment in the South. William Thornton Montgomery spent most of his fascinating life in Utopian Communities. Robert Owen’s Worker’s Utopia Robert Owen was a wealthy British factory owner who became an early philosopher of Utopian Socialism. He turned his bleak Scottish Industrial Revolution textile factory into a utopia for his workers. He shortened the work day to 10 hours and gave them health care, sick pay, and health insurance. He abolished child labor and put the children in school instead. In the 1820s he went to America to spread his philosophical ideas and set up new utopian communities. All of his utopias failed, but his ideas aged well. Joseph Davis’ Utopian Plantation In 1825, Joseph Davis met Robert Owen and tried to adapt his utopian ideas to the Mississippi plantation system. The 345 men, women and children on his unique plantation in 1860 had better living conditions than most enslaved people in the South, but they were still enslaved. They had better food and clothing rations, larger homes, and overseers could not punish anyone unless they were convicted by their peers in the Hall of Justice. People were encouraged to learn skilled trades to make extra money and to learn to read and write, which was illegal in the South. This is where W.T. Montgomery grew up. Jefferson Davis & the Civil War Joseph Davis’ land also included the plantation of his younger brother Jefferson Davis. When the Civil War broke out, Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederate States of America. The Davis “utopia” ended when the US Navy arrived in 1862 and all the enslaved “members” chose freedom. Several men including W.T. Montgomery joined the US military to fight the Confederacy. For the rest of the war, the US government took pleasure in using Jefferson Davis’ plantation as a place for the Freedmen’s Bureau to experiment with ways of easing formerly enslaved people into freedom and a market economy. The Association of Montgomery & Sons Benjamin Montgomery, William’s father, was the enslaved operator of the Davis plantations. He was highly educated against Mississippi laws, a mechanical and business genius, and charismatic. Before the war, a general store he opened on the plantation made him wealthy. As a freed man at the end of the war, he purchased the plantation from Joseph Davis. Montgomery shared Davis’ utopian philosophy, and he created a community of free African American sharecroppers he called the Association. For a time, the Montgomerys were among the wealthiest merchant-planters in the South, but the community was eventually undone by a combination of local natural disasters, the crash of the cotton industry, and a white court awarding Jefferson Davis much of the land under questionable reasoning. The demise of the Montgomery & Sons Association convinced W.T. Montgomery to move to Dakota Territory in 1881. Isaiah Montgomery’s Mound Bayou W.T. Montgomery liked Dakota Territory and tried to convince his family and other former members of the Association to move here. His younger brother Isaiah, however, decided to start a new utopian community of African American landowners and businesses in Mississippi called Mound Bayou. In the last decade of his life, W.T. Montgomery decided to join the colony, working as a director of the Bank of Mound Bayou and co-founder of the Mound Bayou Loan and Investment Co. (Text from Stories of Local Black History an HCSCC produced exhibit) We are excited to announce a series of spring History Harvests in the communities of Barnesville, Hawley, Ulen, and Moorhead. The HCSCC is hoping to interview people about built places in Clay County that have meaning to them. Anyone who has a story or a memory is invited to stop in and share, first-come, first-served. These buildings can still be standing or may be long gone. The interviews will be recorded and stored in the Clay County Archives. The stories about the places that result from the interviews will be shared with the public through the North Star Story Map (see https://northstarstorymap.org/).
North Star Story Map is a collaboration between the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Minnesota, Mill City Museum, and the Minnesota Historical Society. This collaboration is made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on Nov 4, 2008. The scheduled gatherings include: Tues. March 4, 1-4pm at the Barnesville Public Library, 104 Front Street N. Wed. March 19, 1-4pm at the Garrick Theatre in Hawley, 509 Front Street. Wed. April 2, 1-4pm Ulen Senior Center, 60 Front Street E. Wed. April 23, 1-4pm Moorhead Public Library, 118 5th St. S. Light refreshments will be served. Please feel free to bring along photographs and historical objects or items pertaining to Clay County history to be photographed. For more information email [email protected] or call Maureen at 218-299-5511, Ext 6732. |
Archives
February 2026
|
RSS Feed