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From Tin Box to College Archives:
A Brief History of the Archives at Edi Thorstensson
When Reverend Eric Norelius opened a congregational school in 1862 in Red Wing, Minnesota, he did so in response to a request from the Minnesota Conference of the Lutheran Augustana Synod, the immigrant Scandinavian, (mostly Swedish) church body. The following year, the school was moved to East Union, christened Minnesota Elementar Skola, and, in 1865, incorporated as St. Ansgar’s Academy.
The earliest reference to an archives appears in the minutes of the Minnesota Conference’s meeting, held at East Union on June 2, 1864. Translated from Swedish, the minutes state the following: “Resolved, that the Conference’s secretary be assigned the purchase of a tin box for the purpose of depositing there for safe keeping the Conference’s minutes, papers, and documents.” In October 1868, a similar entry was made into the minutes, with the additional recommendation that the box should be kept in the library of St. Ansgar’s Academy. This became the nucleus of the present Lutheran Church Collection and College Archives. When the Academy was closed in 1875 and the college at St. Peter opened, the archives were brought to the new school, which, like its predecessor, was under the legal ownership of the Conference.
In 1910, the Conference instructed the trustees of the College to appoint the college president as archivist ex officio. From that time until 1943, the archives of both Gustavus Adolphus College and the Minnesota Conference remained under the immediate authority of the president, and, although they had long since outgrown their tin box, were kept for a while in the president’s office, after which they migrated from place to place, as space availability allowed. In 1943, however, the Executive Committee of the Minnesota Conference and the Board of Trustees of the College entered a joint agreement to engage the services of an archivist, Joshua Larson, a recently retired professor of Swedish and astronomy, who for years had been working with the archives on a volunteer basis. By then, the archives had been moved to the basement of Uhler Hall, where Larson plugged away, organizing the mass of documents, books, and artifacts that had accumulated over the years. His successors, beginning with history professor emeritus Conrad Peterson, were employed to work with two separately managed archives, that of the Conference (later, Synod) and that of the College. The Archives staff eventually grew to include two archivists and many volunteers and student assistants.
It is noteworthy that the archives were established by the immigrant founders of the church and school and intended to preserve evidence of each body’s activities, which were to a large extent interrelated; and that, from the time of its founding, this school was singled out to serve as a repository.
The fact that the College listed the archivist in the college catalog from 1945 on and authorized the archivist to administer these records indicates an official commitment to an institutional archival program that would reflect the organic nature of the church’s and school’s relationship. The Minnesota Conference has, through a succession of mergers, became one with the many descendants of pioneer ethnic Lutheran church bodies that today comprise the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Recently, the College renewed its commitment to the Lutheran Church Archives, asking that the collection be appraised and defined to emphasize its historical value. Last summer, I began working on this project and will continue, one way or another, until it is accomplished. Already opened are more functional channels of communication and cooperation with the archives staff at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, which serves as the ELCA District 3 repository. This is an essential step towards together serving congregations, researchers here and abroad, genealogists, students (among them, budding genealogists!), and interest groups, such as the Augustana Heritage Association, which will hold its annual meeting here next summer. Ahead lie preservation issues to be addressed, collection descriptions, basic indexing, and photo digitization.
The Lutheran Church Collection includes primary sources, statistical information, regional history, records of missions and missionaries, early social assistance, the immigrant experience, women’s organizations, youth and teaching, and much, much more.
Finally, I will share this anecdote: While sorting through hundreds of books relocated from the archives to tiger cage storage in Norelius Hall, my husband, Roland and I ran across a modest volume, published in 1839, The Dakota First Reading Book, prepared by Gideon Pond and Stephen Riggs, founder of the first mission at Traverse des Sioux. Its inside cover is stamped to show that it was once in the library, and that its donor was A.W. Williamson, son of Thomas Williamson, the Presbyterian missionary and linguist at Lac Qui Parle. A.W. Williamson held a master’s degree from Yale and served as professor of mathematics, philosophy, U.S. History, geography and English, the courses taught in the English language from 1876 to 1880. In spite of being let go because he was neither Swedish-speaking nor Lutheran, Williamson respected Gustavus and the work it was doing, and he gave this rare book and many more to the College.
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