Archival Anecdotes: Worth A Second Look

The July 6 installment of Archival Anecdotes featured two photos, both representative of a New Rockford parade celebration sometime in the early half of the 20th century. However, the two photos were not from the same event as the article implied.

Two readers submitted evidence and offered insight to the clues they had used to draw their conclusions. In college, I had a professor of anthropology who blatantly told me, "You will not make a good archaeologist. You get too caught up in the story and look right past the details in front of you." The prof might have been right. That is why I did not become a real archaeologist. I opted for more of an imaginative career, like writing and doing a little archival work for the local museum on the side.

There is plenty of room for stories in my world, and it's a good thing, because when New Rockford resident Judy Belquist called with her suggestions, her words were imbued with story. She explained that the photo, which featured a large crowd with the band, was taken much earlier than 1933.

"Just look at the clothes," she advised. Sure enough, when I looked past the band members and into the crowd, I spotted women in Victorian dress- something that would have not been likely to occur in 1933.

The clothing was a good catch on Belquist's part, but the real reason she knew about this photo was that a copy hangs in her hallway at home. "My grandfather, Jack, is in the picture," she shared. Sure enough, Jack is in the front row holding a trumpet, the fifth one to the right of the drums. Judy went on to tell me about how her grandfather had run away from home when he was 16. The year then would have been 1889, and Jack joined a traveling theatre troupe.

It was then that I realized the Jack that she spoke of was Jack Johnson, who was pivotal in the development of live theatre in New Rockford. Together, we started putting together a timeline using the dates from Jack's life as a guidepost.

Working backward in time and knowing when Jack would have been in New Rockford, Belquist and I were able to create a timeline that included Jack's return to New Rockford in 1906. In 1908, Jack married Sarah Elizabeth Weeks. He was 34 years old and she was 18. The couple moved to Bremen in 1910 to open a general store, then later returned to New Rockford in 1918.

While Belquist based her date estimate on family history, another reader took a more research-based approach to dating the photo.

Historian Ken Gardner, author of the weekly column "History of New Rockford" printed on this page each week, noted details in the built environment that proved to be quite telling in terms of an estimated date. He noted that Hotel Davies appears in the middle of the picture, citing that on May 3, 1912, a fire destroyed 14 downtown New Rockford businesses. The Hotel Davies would have been among them.

Gardner also noted that the wooden building depicted on the corner was occupied by Rodenberg Bros. from Feb. 1899 to Jan. 1, 1902 and Rodenberg & Schwoebel, beginning Jan. 2, 1902. He referenced a story featured in "A Century of Sowers", New Rockford's centennial book, where Miss Julietta Rodenberg stated that the wooden building was replaced by the current brick one in 1911. Finally, since the J.M. Patch Block (the brick structure in the picture) was completed in Nov. 1902 and the wooden building was replaced in 1911, that he would guess the picture was taken between 1903 and 1911.

Considering the information from Belquist's history, we can confidently say that this photograph was taken between 1906 and 1911.

This is exactly the kind of information the museum seeks, as it adds interpretive value to the collections and artifacts. Without your stories, it's just "stuff". Keep it coming!