On board the USS Alabama in 1942, Glen Lindstrom set up his sewing machine, fabric and thread. He sailed with the ship as the on-board tailor, skills he picked up helping his mother, in the pacific theater during WWII. In this oral history interview recorded April 7, 2005 ,Glen describes why he enlisted in the Navy, and his time aboard ship.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Read MoreOn April 29 the Anoka County Historical Society, or ACHS, received not one but two Minnesota History Awards from the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums for work in 2019 and 2020.
Read MoreOn board the USS Alabama in 1942, Glen Lindstrom set up his sewing machine, fabric and thread. He sailed with the ship as the on-board tailor, skills he picked up helping his mother, in the pacific theater during WWII. In this oral history interview recorded April 7, 2005 ,Glen describes why he enlisted in the Navy, and his time aboard ship.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Read MoreOn board the USS Alabama in 1942, Glen Lindstrom set up his sewing machine, fabric and thread. He sailed with the ship as the on-board tailor, skills he picked up helping his mother, in the pacific theater during WWII. In this oral history interview recorded April 7, 2005 ,Glen describes why he enlisted in the Navy, and his time aboard ship.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Read MoreOn the first day of 2021 Terry Overacker died after over a month in the hospital battling Covid-19. In this episode, his wife and business partner, Gina, shares her deeply personal experience with this terrible disease, her grief after Terry’s death, and how sharing your story can bring healing.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Read MoreFederal Cartridge Corporation (now known as Federal Premium Ammunition, a subsidiary of Vista Outdoor) will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2022.
The Anoka County Historical Society is helping Federal prepare for this by organizing their historical material. This process started a year ago when our collections manager at the time, Audra, started spending time at Federal Cartridge sorting through potentially historical items.
Read MoreIt’s a wonderful feeling to uncover a secret treasure in a community. My first three months at the Anoka County Historical Society has felt this way: learning about the history, about the towns and important landmarks and meeting many different people from all over the county. It’s difficult to list all the new things I’ve learned and become a part of in such a short span of time, let alone choose one to write about. I have so many new favorite things!
Read MoreAnna Gorham taught classes of students at Franklin Elementary School for 26 years. In 1989, she sat down to record some of her experiences with education starting with describing the one-room schoolhouse she attended in Burns, and then what Franklin Elementary was like when she started teaching there in 1946.
Note: This recording is digitized from the original cassette tape. The recording has been enhanced where possible, but for clarity an edited transcript of Anna’s interview is also provided below.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director, Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator and Erin McBrien, ACHS Archivist.
Read MoreA sophomore at Anoka High School, Maddie shares her experiences over the past year of distance learning in the midst of a global pandemic and social upheaval. She discusses how it feels to go to school remotely, how it affected classroom dynamics, relationships, and her own mental health.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.
Read MorePart of the joy of working at the Anoka County Historical Society is having history at your fingertips as you J-O-B. One of the challenges is deciding how best to share this trove of information with the community.
We launched History 21: The Podcast in late December to engage people who prefer an audio delivery to a more visual format. As podcast lovers ourselves, staff often drive, wash dishes or take a walk with various programs chatting in their ears — and there is NOBODY else out there focusing on Anoka County History!
Read MoreEvery year about this time, the dreams of the Anoka County Historical Society Board of Directors turn to the closing of one year and the opening of another. An indication of this is planning for the annual meeting in March when new members of the board are installed.
Read MoreRailroad development in our county began in 1857 under very speculative conditions and involved federal and provincial subsidies. The high cost of construction and maintenance combined with a volatile market caused many bankruptcies, which resulted in James J. Hill taking advantage of the closures to create his empire.
Read MoreIn an oral history interview with ACHS in 2008, Denise DeMars shares her journey with the Columbia Heights Fire Department as their first female firefighter. She joined the fire department as a volunteer in 1978, became a full time firefighter in 1980 and navigated sexism in a male-dominated profession as well as the dangers of fighting fires. She retired as a deputy fire marshal for the state of Minnesota in 2012.
Content Note: this episode contains sensitive language we do not condone. About two thirds of the way through Denise Demars’ 2008 oral history interview she recounts a conversation in which the N-word was used in her presence in 1980. We have decided to leave this portion of the interview unedited, not to be insensitive, but instead to reflect how history must acknowledge the evolution of social mores and language. We invite you to think about Denise’s reaction to the power structure at the time, her reaction recounting the event 28 years later, as well as how you might handle the situation if you were in her place.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.
Read MoreErin Freitag, ACHS volunteer and Andover resident, started 2020 teaching English in Yeonggwang, Korea. She shares her decision to teach English abroad for six years, as well as what those early months of the year were like in a different country. In the first half of the year she also made an international move back to Minnesota, and her experienced the beginning of Covid again, this time in the United States.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.
Read MoreErin McBrien became the new ACHS Archivist at the end of 2020. She talks about job searching during a pandemic after graduation, what brought her to pursuing a masters degree in library and information science and her thoughts about being a custodian and advocate for Anoka County stories and history.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.
Read MoreSaying goodbye to exemplary staff as they move to other parts of their career journey never makes the top 10 list of things to do in a day. That said, the growth of staff members does make my top 10—my top five, even—and so here we are, searching for a new human to fill the position of curator/archivist at the Anoka County Historical Society
Read MoreWhen I’m in an archive, I feel like a kid in the candy store. I want to learn everything, explore everywhere and discover every single piece that might have been forgotten in the crush of the collection.
Read MoreLocal newspapers are a bedrock of historical research, but those documents are created and run by people in the community. Listen to an interview with Arch Pease, editor and owner of the Anoka Union from 1946 until 1989, as well as it's with it's descendants Managing Editor, Jonathan Young.
Hosts Rebecca Desens, ACHS Executive Director and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.
Read MoreSanta has had a second home here in Anoka County for over 100 years, and ACHS has the proof in our collection. Listen to the ways Santa has visited the County from farm life to Zoom visits with Steve Griffiths, the Executive Director of Impact Services.
Read MoreSelf-appointed family historian, Daryl Lawrence, shares the saga of discovering his great-grandmother’s hidden first marriage and divorce as well as finding a member of his family tree who was gay like him.
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