FOREST HISTORY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT:

Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Forest History Oral History Project, Oral History Interviews of the Forest History Oral History Project. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: AV2012.1

Processing Information:

Processed by: Jennifer Huebscher, May 2012

Catalog ID number: 990075238380104294

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Bergit Anderson was born in Oklee, Minnesota, 1898. Bergit was a teacher and also the author of The Last Frontier copyright 1941. She is also part of an interview with Alice Olson by John Esse as part of the same Forest History project.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early pioneer days in Bigfork; her mother dying and father remarrying; building houses; church services and traveling preachers; going to lumber camps as a young girl; social events with the lumberjacks; spring drives; summers on the farm; blueberries; Busticogan; mosquitoes and mosquito repellents; boarding school in Grand Rapids; going into town; comparing Craig to Bigfork; Lutheran Brotherhood; writing The Last Frontier; teaching; conservation; morals and morality; homesteading.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Don Benson was born in 1908 in Missouri. Don has lived in Talmoon, Minnesota since 1917.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his early life; coming to Minnesota; early days of logging near Talmoon; Slash and burn State law; camps in the area; hunting; old time camp bosses; railroads; Craig and Effie; Chippewa National Forest; camps around the Marcell township; various camps and loggers; selling alcohol to Native Americans; Chief Moose Moo; Chief Busticogan; dairy cows; fox hides; hunting deer; his wife and family; the source of the Mississippi.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Jhalmer Berg was born in 1897 in Rice River. He was a mill operator and sold lumber.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his early life; Rice River now known as Leander Lake; early community at Rice River; railroad coming through; parents emigrating from Sweden; working ore mines; timber and sawmill business; lumber camps; camp food; ethnicities of lumberjacks; mill work; loosing an eye working in a saw mill; getting material from other operations; timekeeper shack; buying goods in a lumberjack camp; getting to the camps.

Interviewed by: Robert Wheeler.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Elmer Bergstrom was born in 1899 at Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin. He was a teamster. Harland Towle was born in Lac Qui Parle County.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; Elmer's father logging around Douglas County; having a Norwegian mother, Irish father; family life around logging camps; growing up helping in the camps; logging different types of wood; daily schedule; camp food; living in the bunk houses; bull cooks; lumberjack clothing; wannigans; going into town, and finding girls; driving a team of horses; ice roads and snow roads; various lumberjacks and their nicknames; washing clothes; Itasca Lumber Company; hauling loads to camps; taking care of the horses; the expansion of logging from 1900 onward; tote team hauling to various camps; selling lumber; equipment; seasonal work; getting married; sky pilots; playing poker; differences in culture between Wisconsin and Minnesota; living in Northern Minnesota.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Marion Brown was born in 1902 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He worked for the railroad.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; father coming to Grand Rapids to teach; working as a young boy; working in a saw mill; mill operations; burning slashings; horses; roads; the timber market after World War I; work schedule for lumberjacks; different cultures interacting around the lumber camps; Indians; the effect of railroads; various railroad lines and where they went; living near the railroad line; alcohol; Deer River area; railroad and mill operators.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Carl Bruno was born in 1897 in Cloquet Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include Cloquet from the turn of the century on; Walter O'Meara; Carl's father moving to Cloquet to teach; growing up in Cloquet; church services; the 1918 Cloquet Fire; selling things from the wannigan; being Walter O'Meara's friend.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Alex J. Carno was born in 1890 in the township of Rosebud in Crookston County.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; family farm; World War I; thrashing grain; logging; meeting his wife; logging camps around Grand Rapids; logging sleighs and horses; lumberjack forms of entertainment; work schedule of a lumberjack; lumberjack equipment; working on Bigfork River, Deer River and various other rivers; growing up in Grand Rapids.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Eda Christensen was born in 1895 and lived most of her life in Hill City, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include coming to Hill City with her husband; going to the factory; the mill burning down; living on a factory workers budget; gardening and canning; cows; her husband losing his job; Hill City; Indians and alcohol; losing friends.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Scott W. Erickson was born in Clintonville, Wisconsin, September 17, 1899.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include being a Great Lakes sailor at 15; World War I; logging after the war; working for the forest service; starting his own logging business; over logging.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Oly Evenson was born in 1882 in Norway and came to Minneapolis in 1905 when he was 23.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include coming to the United States; Washkish camp; working as a craftsman; Bigfork around 1907; homesteading; the Rajala's; churches in Bigfork; hunting and fishing; ethnicities around Bigfork; family.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Charles Godfrey was born April 21, 1889 in Wabasha, Minnesota. He logged in the Grand Rapids area.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his early life; the Forest Reserve; farming; logging and different companies log marks; sorting logs at the mill; deadhead logs or logs submerged underwater; constructing ice roads; hauling logs; living in logging camps; medicine and remedies; the Frank S. Lane steamboat; various logging and milling operations around Cut Foot; types of lumber; living and working around Grand Rapids.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Mike Guthrie was born in 1892 and died in 1974.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include working in the Minnesota Forest Service; working and living around Deer River; controlled burns in the early days compared to now; retirement and family life.

Interviewed by: Bruce Sunbauer.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Maybelle Hicks Hanson was born in Superior, Wisconsin in 1896.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include growing up in Superior, Wisconsin; moving to Grand Rapids; interacting with the lumberjacks as a young girl; going to Central School in Grand Rapids; going to high school; teaching; marrying a logger; logging around Grand Rapids; large camps on Deer Lake; driving men up to camp; loggers coming into town; being married to a camp boss; ice roads; finding loggers to work in the camps; supplying ties and pulpwood for railroad companies; community of Little Fork; managing logging camps; unionization; owning a saw mill; relationships between Indians and white men; cooking in the logging camps; traveling to Port Arthur; Park Point amusement center.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Louis Heinzer was born Pierce County, Wisconsin in 1899.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include traveling around Minnesota and Wisconsin as a child; going to school; homesteading; logging and lumber around Beltrami County; working odd jobs with her father at logging camps; working as a cookee; cooking in the camps; jammers, scalers, haulers, and various other jobs done in the camps; equipment; horses and oxen; looking at pictures; bed bugs.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include the cost of food per logger; getting started in the logging business; building camps; revenue; equipment; personalities and nationalities of loggers; working in the Cloquet area; food in the camp; wannigans; lumber drives; kinds of timber; humorous stories from logging camps; building a camp; blacksmith shop; road construction; gypos; railroad construction; ice roads; swampers; scalers; the camp foreman; pests in and around camp; fishing; being the son of a Swedish immigrant; early life; a day in the life in a Swedish community; serving in the Navy in World War I; various stories from the war.

Interviewed by: Allen Nevins and Louis M. Starr.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Al Heritage was born in Fairfield, Iowa around 1894 and worked for 36 years in a mill in International Falls.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; mill work; selling hay and food to lumber camps; logging operations near Virginia Rainy Lake; clearing the land and types of trees; ice roads; driving a sled; replanting; expenses and accounting; family history; homesteading near International Falls; International Falls community; mill work; changes in culture.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include coming to northern Minnesota; traveling in northern Minnesota around 1910; starting a homestead; flooding; families and others living in the Crane Lake area; wildlife and food; wannigans; not getting to see friends as much in the winter; driving a sleigh and riding an Indian pony; fishing.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Alfred Hilden was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1889 and worked in the paper industry in International Falls.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; forest fire of 1910 near Baudette; working for the Minnesota Forest Service; Working in a mill; scalers, boom haulers, and other jobs around the mill; companies involved in the mill business; working as a field buyer; moving to and living in Northome; the community of Little Fork; types of timber; land buying practices; business trips to Saskatchewan; doing business and drinking; price of lumber.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Huju Victor was born in Finland around 1894. He spent most of his life working in logging camps.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include coming to the United States; early life; working in logging camps; the town of Bovey; working in mines and harvesting in North Dakota; working various jobs in logging camps; living in logging camps; camp food; getting hurt on the job; getting married and building a house; Idle Wild Resort.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Burt Hunt, was born around 1882.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; working as a cookee and odd jobs; whiskey; working in Michigan; a day's wages; teamsters wages; logging around the year 1900 in Bemidji and International Falls; lumber companies; lumber communities and camps; early Craigville, gambling and women; log driving; living in the wannigan; going out West to log; the Rajala's; caulking shoes; hook men, and sending logs up the river; types of lumber and uses.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Clyde Jellison was born in 1899 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Minneapolis and Duluth; trapping and hunting; Indians near Bass Lake; working in a logging camp; Wilde Wood Lodge; homesteading and stories about various homesteaders; canning foods and freezing meat; building bridges; Grand Rapids; Cohasset; wannigan.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Hilfred Johnson was born in southern Minnesota in 1906. He worked in the logging industry around International Falls. Lester Pollard is the subject of a solo interview by John Esse as part of the same Forest History project.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; moving north; fishing; school; wannigans; food; wages; unions; log drives; types of timber in the around International Falls; using sleighs and horses to haul logs; the International Lumber Company, subsidiaries and their owners; equipment for the horses; types of saws; differences between logging in 1900 and the 1930s; layout of the logging camp; stripping the bark off of a tree, stripping season; stories about old loggers; logistics of log drives; corked or caulked boots; the decision not to log around Lake of the Woods; price of lumber; getting into the log driving business; photographers coming up to take pictures of the log drives.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: John Albert Jones was born in Honey Crick, Iowa around 1876.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; watching the murder of his father; moving to North Dakota and working on a binder; getting married; working on irrigation projects for the WPA during the Great Depression; death of his wife; driving trucks, tractors, horses and thrashers.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Raymond Kinkel was born in 1892 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his grandparents immigrating from Norway; moving up to Cass County to homestead; working as a cook's helper in the logging camps; Weyerhaeuser camps in the area; horses; daily schedule of a cook's assistant; log buildings; cooking equipment; lice; bunk beds; roads, making ice roads; river drives; drying off during the river drives; fishing; World War I; meeting his wife.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Esther Knight was born Esther Kermit in Hopkins, Minnesota in 1896.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include her early life; teaching in South Dakota; Bigfork; meeting her husband; singing at funerals; married life; homesteading.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Jim Knight was born in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota in 1893.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his early life; homesteading; early logging in the area; sourdough Joe; splash dam; stories about injuries while logging; teamsters and their horses; blacksmithing and wages; rut cutter; Hungry Mike; various other logging characters; hospital tickets; Busticogan; burial mounds; violence between Indians and white men over disturbing burial grounds; home life; children.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Oliver Knox was born in 1884 in Canada. He spent most of his life working in logging camps.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Canada; getting into logging; types of lumber in Canada; living in logging camps; working as a teamster on ice roads; coming to Minnesota; logging around Virginia; living and eating off a wannigan; looking at pictures and telling stories; camp breakfast foods.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Nellie Lane was born in Elroy, Wisconsin in 1874.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include her early life, and commuting 4 miles each way to school every day; getting married and farming in Deer Creek; Horse Thief Society; shucking corn, butchering animals.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Mary Litchke was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1894.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Grand Rapids; her father's harness shop; Grand Rapids around the turn of the 20th century; Indians interacting with white people; going out to Portland and Oakland; new people coming to Grand Rapids; married life.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Joe Mannausau was born near Loman, Minnesota in 1904.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include types of timber around Loman; farming and logging in the area throughout his life; going to work in the logging camps at 16; driving logs to Baudette; describes a boom chain; describes a jammer; prostitution near logging camps; types of saws; types of sleighs and their equipment; working as a cook; types of food in logging camps; wannigans and types of boats used in log drives; starving homesteaders; horses and horse barns; teamsters and their horses; cows and dairy produce; types of bunk houses; working in cold weather; stories about interesting loggers; making money as a logger.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Louis Mannausau was born near Loman in 1906.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include Louis' brothers; the timber near Loman; how his father had to walk 600 miles from Hibbing to their homestead; wolves and farming; childhood friends; the French Addition in Hibbing; married life, divorce, and TV ruining children; trying logging but deciding to farm instead; going back and forth from Canada and meeting his wife; the toughness of making a living; his children; bad roads and driving conditions; history of the town of Loman.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Peggy Mattice was born in 1903 in Eveleth, Minnesota. She ran a bar and brothel in Craigville, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include brief comments on early life and working in a Twin Cities emporium; moving to Craigville and working in a bar; when lumberjacks would come into town; prostitution; all of the money being spent when lumberjacks come to town; myths about the rough and tumble lumberjack towns; breaking the law; why the girls got into prostitution; stories about running a bar in Craigville; the slow decline of the city of Craigville; the types of lumberjacks that came into town; lumberjacks who marry the girls; getting the girls to Craigville; the town of Virginia, Minnesota; buying and selling alcohol during prohibition; her relationship with Baby Face Nelson; other small towns around Craigville.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Jack and Hazel O'Konek lived almost all of their lives in Hill City, Minnesota. They were both born around 1906.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include their early lives and traveling around the surrounding area of Hill City; Roads, railroads, and river transportation; how the community of Hill City changed from being very tight to being much less so; Jack's father being a lumberjack; Jack's responsibility with the family farm; cows and cattle Tuberculosis; Christmas as a child; coming to Hill City because of the land boom in the 1920s; raising a family; mill work; working for the Heath brothers in Swatara; the struggles of finding full time employment and paying for food; loggers who came to the area in the 1880s and 1890s; eloping because Jack was a Catholic and Hazel a Methodist; the history of the town of Swatara.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Alice Olson was born in Annandale, Minnesota in 1895. She spent much of her life in Bigfork, Minnesota. Bergit Anderson was born in Oklee, Minnesota, 1898 is the subject of a solo interview by John Esse as part of the same Forest History project.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Bigfork; being some of the earliest homesteaders to the area; other early settlers; comparing Bigfork to Deer River or Bemidji; Native Americans in the area and Busticogan; how farming took awhile to get started, and how that affected them growing up; canning and root cellars; Itinerant preachers; different settlements around Bigfork, including those from the Red River Valley and those who came straight to Bigfork from Norway; the Rajala family; the school being the center of the community; Rahier family and their dances; camping in the 1920s and 30s; dealing with mosquitoes; Bergit Anderson's life.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Both Otto and Elida Paulson were born in 1883. Otto was born in Sweden.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include why Otto came to the United States and specifically Minnesota, and his experience immigrating; running a saloon; the history of Deer River.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Jacob Pete was born in Ely, Minnesota in 1896.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Ely, Minnesota. Being a third generation to live in Ely and his father and grandfather living in Ely before the railroad to mine; working in the resort business and the timber business; sporting houses in the early days of Ely; nationalities of the men around Ely; Chandler Mines; transportation with sleighs, cars, and railroads; lumber camps; logging rates from the 1910s on; various families and loggers from the area; owning and running camps; horses; U.S. Canada border.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Lester Pollard was born in 1907 near Lake of the Woods. He spent most of his life in the lumber business. He is also part of an interview with Hilfred Johnson by John Esse as part of the same Forest History project.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life; living in Warroad; going to school; local fisheries; the International Lumber Company; logging camps; logging railroads; pulpwood; bunk beds and bed bugs; camp food; camp horses; building a camp; various jobs in a logging camp; sky pilots visiting the camps; the town of Craigville being a rough city; wannigans; the changes to logging that unionization caused; Timber Producers Association; family.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Bill Rajala was born in 1909 near Bigfork, Minnesota. He and his family had a considerable influence on the logging industry in the Bigfork area.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include family; homesteading near Bigfork; his father's mining career and surviving a cave in; townships and communities nearby; farming and logging in the area; impressions of Grand Rapids; fishing; having to walk everywhere before the roads came in; logging pine near Bigfork after World War II; other early homesteaders near Bigfork; going to the sauna was the main source of entertainment early on in Bigfork; family; logging camps; loneliness of log driving; mosquitoes and dealing with them; dealing with expenses such as groceries.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Mabre Rajala was born in 1911. Her parents came to the Dunbar Lake, Minnesota from Sweden as homesteaders.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include her early life; the frame house her father build on their claim; speaking Swedish at home growing up; building roads and telephone lines; dealing the Spanish flu and small pox epidemics being so far away from doctors and medical services; attitudes towards Indians; relationships between Swedish and Norwegian families in the area; going to school; memories of Blackduck, Minnesota; the life her parents left in Sweden; moving from Dunbar Lake to Grand Rapids; working as a maid and later as a teacher; meeting and marrying Art Rajala; how the Rajala family got into the logging business; setting up logging camps in Minnesota and in other states.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Buzz Ryan was born in Wilmar, Minnesota in 1900.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include the origin of the "Buzz" nickname; early life; moving north when his father took a job at the Cass Lake saw mill; living in the Bemidji area; lumber companies and railroad companies; getting into the Forestry Department; burning slashings; forest fires; camp clerks their role and importance in logging camps; buildings in a logging camp; camp equipment; describing various camp jobs such as bull cook, cookee, teamsters, walking boss, blacksmith; camp food; bedbugs; sky pilots; houses of prostitution in the towns around Bigfork; sexually transmitted diseases in camps and their remedies; Buzz's book Early Loggers of Minnesota; logging roads; log drives; scaling logs; bark marks on the logs from the separate logging companies.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Maurice Salisbury was born in 1896 in Eden Valley, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include his early life and coming up to northern Minnesota in 1920; working in a bank and owning a saw mill; Finnish boys being "the real loggers"; running a business; the town of Rabey, Minnesota; family life in northern Minnesota; running logging camps; "cruising" the land for timber to buy and log drives; various stories about people in the area of Rabey.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Veda Scholta was born in 1896 in Dassel, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life and going to school; the early days of International Falls; Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 in Minnesota; living around timber wolves; getting married; day to day living in International Falls in the 1920s; nearby logging operations; cooking in a camp; Indians living in the area; churches in International Falls; dealing with mosquitoes with smudge pails and cheesecloth; picking blueberries and canning; suicides in the Black River area and loneliness that goes along with homesteading.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: John Sirotiak was born in 1894 in North Slovak.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life, leaving North Slovak and coming to the United States; the difficulty of learning English in Minneapolis; moving to northern Minnesota and becoming a logger and sawyer; living in logging camps; clothing, and shaving in camp; camp food; entertainment in the camps; lumberjacks taking breaks to go into various towns in northern Minnesota; ice roads, horses, and log runs; "Jew Employment Agencies" finding jobs for lumberjacks; difference in pay working manual labor jobs in Minneapolis versus working in the woods; getting married and starting a dairy farm in Itasca county; logging in North Dakota.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Helen Skov was born in 1918 in Fairland, near Loman, Minnesota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include her early life and Norwegian heritage; growing up on the family homestead and going to school in Fairland, Minnesota; entertainment in small communities; churches in the area of Loman, Minnesota; families, farms and logging operations in the Fairland area; wannigans; marrying Ray Skov, his life; visiting International Falls.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Jessie Smart was born in Pelican Rapids, Minnesota in 1884.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life growing up on a farm; working as a foreman in factories in Hill City and Little Falls; working for the WPA; hauling logs; living and eating in logging camps; working with horses in logging camps; World War I; farming; career and retiring to Leisure Hills in Grand Rapids.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Tina Smith was born near Montreal, Canada.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life, and her father's logging career in Canada and near Beefslew, Wisconsin; helping her mother while her father was away; Cloquet in the 1890s; lumberjacks coming into town; the Weyerhaeuser's’ and early logging camps in the Cloquet area; Cloquet fire of 1918; local lumberjacks; kinds of entertainment in small towns; reminisces on the changes in the world during her life.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Walter Smith was born in Wadena County, Minnesota in 1893.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life with his father who worked as a lumberjack; early log drives; moving up to Balsam, Minnesota to homestead; his father's inn; log drives and building ice roads; living and eating in logging camps; building logging camps; various camps, and camp stories about loggers; river log drives.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Hazel Staples was born in Platteville, Wisconsin in 1892.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life, living in Wisconsin, near Iowa, North Dakota, and Canada; homesteading in northern Minnesota; cooking in a logging camp; how her husband built their home; being friends with Indians in the area; her children going to school and then to the military during World War II; organizing activities for the town, dances, 4-H, etc; farming and gardening; raising her children, grand children and great grand children.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Laura Stiller was born in Sioux City, Iowa approximately 1892.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life, and coming with her family to northern Minnesota to homestead; getting married and having a family during World War I and II; her husband being gone for 5 month stretches logging; farming and gardening; dealing with mosquitoes; thoughts on living a hard life.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Emma Voigt was born in Iowa in 1884.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life in Iowa and coming north to Grand Rapids, Minnesota to farm; getting married and having a family; working as a cook for the lumber camps; life in the logging camps; the improvements made to the community made after World War II; logging around Grand Rapids.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Harriet Walker, better known as Hattie, was born in Turner County in South Dakota.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life and moving to Iowa, and then to Hill City, Minnesota; early days of Hill City; Indians in the area; early logging camps in the area such as Miller Brothers Logging Camp and Weyerhaeuser camps; people of interest in the early Hill City community and the evolution of the city; the saw mill in Hill City; being a dry community and having houses of prostitutions; marriage, her parents and her own; high school dances; going to college and then teaching; World War I; life in the 1920s and 30s; the mill closing; forest fires.

Interviewed by: John Esse.

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Use Restrictions: None.

Biographical Information: Frank Werthner was born in 1886, near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Scope and Content: Subjects discussed include early life, logging and homesteading around Green Bay, Wisconsin; moving to Minnesota, and eventually to Bigfork; logging and homesteading in Minnesota, compared to Wisconsin; water barrels and water tanks; hauling logs; hunting; first homesteaders in the Bigfork area; Indians in the Bigfork area, and Busticoggins and the Bustiecoggin Township; CC camps; logging wages and daily schedule; logging camp layout, and living in a bunkhouse; tobacco use amongst Lumberjacks; wolves interactions with loggers and camp; becoming a rancher, growing oats and barely.

Interviewed by: John Esse and William Rajala.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Forests and forestry -- Minnesota.

Frontier and pioneer life -- Minnesota.

Logging -- Minnesota.

Lumber camps -- Minnesota.

Lumbermen -- Minnesota.

Ojibwa Indians -- Minnesota.

Pioneers -- Minnesota.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Minnesota.

Persons:

Anderson, Bergit I., interviewee.

Benson, Don, interviewee.

Berg, Jhalmer, interviewee.

Bergstrom, Elmer, interviewee.

Brown, Marion, 1902-, interviewee.

Bruno, Carl, interviewee.

Carno, Alex J., interviewee.

Christensen, Eda, interviewee.

Erickson, Scott W., 1899-, interviewee.

Esse, John, interviewer.

Evenson, Oly, interviewee.

Godfrey, Charles, 1889-, interviewee.

Guthrie, Mike, interviewee.

Hanson, Maybelle Hicks, interviewee.

Heinzer, Louis, interviewee.

Henrikson, Carl H., interviewee.

Heritage, Al, interviewee.

Heritage, Mabel, interviewee.

Hezzelwood, Lillian, interviewee.

Hilden, Alfred, interviewee.

Huju, Victor, interviewee.

Hunt, Burt, interviewee.

Jellison, Clyde, 1891-, interviewee.

Johnson, Hilfred, interviewee.

Johnson, Stan, interviewer.

Jones, John Albert, interviewee.

Kinkel, Raymond, interviewee.

Knight, Esther, interviewee.

Knight, James K., interviewee.

Knox, Oliver, 1884-, interviewee.

Lane, Nellie, interviewee.

Litchke, Mary Vigren, interviewee.

Mannausau, Joe, interviewee.

Mannausau, Louis, interviewee.

Mattice, Peggy, interviewee.

Nevins, Allan, 1890-1971, interviewer.

O'Konek, Hazel, interviewee.

O'Konek, Jack, interviewee.

Olson, Alice, interviewee.

Paulson, Elida, interviewee.

Paulson, Otto, interviewee.

Pete, Jacob, interviewee.

Pollard, L. E. (Lester Ellsworth), 1907-, interviewee.

Rajala, Bill, interviewee.

Rajala, Mabre, interviewee.

Ryan, J. C., interviewee.

Salisbury, Maurice, interviewee.

Schlota, Veda, interviewee.

Sirotiak, John, interviewee.

Skov, Helen, interviewee.

Smart, Jessie, interviewee.

Smith, Tina, interviewee.

Smith, Walter, 1893-, interviewee.

Staples, Hazel, interviewee.

Starr, Louis Morris, 1917-, interviewer.

Stiller, Laura, interviewee.

Sunbauer, Bruce, interviewer.

Towle, Harland, interviewee.

Voigt, Emma, interviewee.

Walker, Hattie, interviewee.

Werthner, Frank, interviewee.

Wheeler, Robert C., 1913-, interviewee.

Document Types:

Interviews.

Oral histories

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