Browse Items (3064 total)

• Olive Fremstad phonograph records, 1900-1906

  Recordings of operatic arias made by a soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company, New York, who was born in Stockholm, Sweden, of Norwegian and Swedish parentage. The family lived in Norway, and in the early 1880s emigrated to Minnesota. Fremstad taught music in Minneapolis, Duluth, Chicago, and New York where she also studied. IN 1892 she went to Germany to study and made her debut in the Cologne Opera House in 1898. She was a leading soprano for the Metropolitan Opera House from 1903-1918, where she sang all the principal Wagnerian roles as well as many in French and Italian.
• Severt Johan Fretheim papers, 1901-1950

  Papers of a Lutheran pastor who was born in Freeborn county, Minn. To parents who emigrated in 1870 from Aurland, Sogn og Fjordane. He attended Luther Academy, Albert Lea (1900-1903), Luther College (1903-1907) and Luther Seminary (1907-1910). He was ordained 1910 in the Norwegian Synod and served churches at Plentywood, Montana (1910-1919) and Scarville, Iowa (1919- ).
  
  Box 1: 1 folder Miscellaneous: photographs, correspondence; 1 folder Articles, Lutheran Teacher, Lutheran Herald: "Christian high schools"; "A typical; home mission parish; a birds eye view of the building of the ‘Plentywood Parish,' Montana, 1910 to 1919"; "How one parish does it"; "From the St. Ansgar circuit."; 1 folder Thesis (Luther College, 1907: "The Louisiana Purchase." MSS, 46 p.) Seminary notes (2 notebooks, 1905-1908). Histories: "Now thank we all our God." (The Centennial Commemoration, v. 1 no. 3, Sept. 1943. 11 p.) History of Hayward, 1849-1949, by Charles Nelson. 41 p. –pp. 38-39, "The Fretheim family." The 75th anniversary of the Oakland Lutheran Church, 1876-1951," by Fretheim,. 20 p.; 2 folders Materials from the Plentywood Parish: A little reminder of the pioneer days of the Lutheran church in the Plentywood Parish, Montana, 1910-1919, by S.J. Fretheim. 1 v. The Plentywood Lutheran, April 1912-March 1919. (Lack: Nov.-Dec. 1915, Oct. 1916). Fabric map of the parish.;
  
  Box 2: 11 yearbooks, 1909-1918 (2 for 1915); 1 folder: Herbarium, compiled June 1901; 1 scrapbook, clippings;
  
  Box 3: Sermon notes and addresses; 2 folders Dated sermon notes, 1911-1922, MSS; 3 folders Undated sermon notes (text is given). MSS; 1 folder Addresses. Some titles: "The pastor and his parish in time of war." "Now thank we all our God in the backward look" (to Iowa District Convention). "The first Christmas service." "Is there retrogression in the moral courage of the ministry?" "The golden fleece of ambition." Chapel talks, Luther College; 1 notebook Notes for miscellaneous sermons and addresses; Donated by Richard H. Fretheim, 904 Woodland Ave. Kalispell, Montana 59901, whose grandfather Henry was a brother of Severt.
• Laurits J. Fribert handbook, circa 1930

  Haandbog for emigranter til Amerikas vest is a typewritten copy (circa 1930) of a published work (1847) by Fribert, a former Danish official, who farmed near Pine Lake, Wisconsin, from 1843 to about 1847. Although containing comments on Native Americans, church, and government, it is largely a discussion of methods of agriculture.
  
  Note: see Theodore C. Blegen, "Norwegian Migration to America, 1825-1860" (1931), p. 256-257.
  
  Contents:
  Laurits J. Fribert Book: "Haandbok for emigranter" (1847), typewritten copy, ca. 1930. Note: see Theodore C. Blegen, "Norwegian Migration to America, 1825-1860" (1931), p. 256-257.
  
  Location: 
  1/A/5
  
• L. A. Fries papers, 1968-1969

  Letter and typescript containing data regarding Knud Langeland, Soren Bache, Mons Adland, and the Beaver Creek and Muskego settlements.
  
  
• John Frohlin papers, undated

  Bibliographical compilations on the voyages and discoveries of the Vikings. Frohlin, an engineer, Bayonne, New Jersey, owned a large library on this subject.
• Across Minnesota in All Directions: E. E. Lobeck and the Temperance Crusade, 2024

  "Across Minnesota in All Directions: E. E. Lobeck and the Temperance Crusade." In this engrossing read, Tulla Froyen gives us a glimpse into a bygone-and often misunderstood-era of American social and political activism against the predatory liquor traffic. Steeped in primary sources, the life of Norwegian-born activist and legislator Engebret "E.E." Lobeck provides new insights into both the practical hardships and political opportunities for immigrant settlers on America's northern frontier. Mark Lawrence Schrad, Ph.D., professor of political science, Villanova University, author of Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition (Oxford University Press, 2021).
  
  
• Torkel T. Fuglestad autobiography, undated

  Memories from the School of Life, an autobiographical account by a Norwegian-born North Dakota farmer, translated by Charles H. Skalet and R. E. Fuglestad. Torkel Fuglestad was born at Bjerkreim, Roggland, Norway. After military training at Kristiansand and work in the shipyards of Stavanger, he emigrated together with his wife in 1883. He lived on a farm near Hannaford, Griggs County, North Dakota, did some writing for Norwegian-American newspapers and was a charter member of the corporation of Oak Grove Seminary, Fargo, North Dakota, serving party of the time on its Board of Trustees.
• 
  Andrew Furuseth papers, 1874-2004

  Biography/History: 
  Andrew Furuseth (March 17, 1854–January 22, 1938) was a Norwegian-born merchant seaman who became one of the most influential American labor leaders in maritime history. Born Anders Andreassen Nilsen in Åsbygda, Hedmark, Norway, he experienced poverty early and went to sea in 1873, sailing under several national flags before settling in San Francisco in 1880. Joining the Coast Seamen’s Union in 1885, he quickly rose to leadership and, in 1891, helped merge unions to form the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, which he led for decades. Furuseth also played a central role in building national maritime labor organizations, serving multiple terms as president of the International Seamen’s Union of America. Known in later life as “the Old Viking,” he was tireless in advocating for sailors’ rights, though his legacy also includes his participation in the founding of the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1905.

  Furuseth’s greatest impact came through his success in securing landmark legislative reforms that transformed life at sea. He was instrumental in ending corporal punishment and imprisonment for desertion through the Maguire Act of 1895 and the White Act of 1898, and he was the principal architect of the Seamen’s Act of 1915, widely hailed as the “Magna Carta of the Sea,” which regulated hours, wages, safety standards, food quality, and crew qualifications aboard American vessels. He later supported the Jones Act of 1920, shaping sailors’ compensation rights and domestic shipping policy. Despite setbacks during the post–World War I downturn and internal union conflicts, Furuseth remained a respected moral force in labor circles. When he died in 1938, he became the first labor leader to lie in repose at the U.S. Department of Labor; honoring his final wish, his ashes were scattered at sea, a fitting tribute to a man who devoted his life to the dignity and welfare of seafarers.

  Scope and Content: 
  Papers of a Norwegian-born labor leader and author of pamphlets and articles in professional and technical journals. The collection includes pamphlets, correspondence, reports, congressional records, and more. Furuseth's constant agitation for improved status of seamen resulted in the passage of several laws, including La Follette's Seamen's Act of 1915. He was president of the International Seamen's Union of America, 1908-1938, and has been called the "Abraham Lincoln of the Sea."

  
  
  Location: 
  1/A/5
• Brandt-Galby family records, 1874-2000

  Mathilde Brandt was born in Winneshiek County, Iowa, and married R.O. Brandt 1883. They served five parishes in Deuel County, South Dakota (Deer Creek, Highland, St. Johannes, Leganger, Wood Lake) until 1900 when they moved to McFarland, Wis. Where her husband served until his death in 1927. Mathilde Brandt also wrote "Parsonage life on the Dakota prairie 45 years ago" in Widening the frontier, ed. by J.C.K. Preus, Augsburg, 1929.
  
  Manuscript "Reminiscense of Seventeen Years in the West as Pastor's Wife" written by Mathilde Galby in January 1929 while at the Spring Prairie parsonage in Wisconsin. The manuscripts social aspects of prairie pioneering. Included are the printed copy and the original draft manuscript.
  
  The collection also includes:
  

  • "Various anecdotes";
  • "Some incidents of the winter of 1880-81" as told by Mrs. Lou Norman, Brandt, S.D.;
  • "Brandt Bugle," newspaper published 1900 by the Brandt children;
  • family history data and descendancy chart from Otto Ottesen, 1743-1819; accounts of her father and mother (Johan Thorn Galby, 1830-1870;
  • Margaret Aaker, 1837-1825).; 
  • Account of the last illness of her son, Olaf Brandt (1887-1908)
  • Brandt and Galby family letters (200+, 1874-1916), Brandt family histories and correspondence (Josie Galby letters (100+, 1874-1905), and published church histories. Of particular interest are courting letters between Realf Brandt and “Lettie” Galby (married Sept. 1883). Realf Brandt, son of Nils and Diderikke Brandt; Lettie Galby's notes on her trip to the Minnesota State Fair, Sept. 5, 1882; musical recial of Louise M. Bever, May 31, 1883; Luther College Cornet Band concert, April 15, ca. 1883; letter from Lina Koren, 1883; Collection Compiled and partly transcribed by Lois Edel Brandt Drews. Donated by Michael Drews on behalf of his mother, Lois. Added 10/3/2012: Decorah Posten newspaper, Friday, September 5, 1924, article "Pastor R.O. Brandt's Ungdomsminder fra Decorah (Childhood memories from Decorah)".
• Thomas Garber music, 1989

  "Rev. Malmin's Lost Tune," a musical composition based on an unidentified folk tune. The composer became interested in the melody upon reading a short article by Dr. Gunnar Malmin, who told how his father had heard the tune as a boy in Haugesund, Norway.