: For Students, Faculty, and Staff 
It’s been 50 years since the Immigration History Research Center and Archives was founded at the University of Minnesota, making it the oldest and largest entity devoted to preserving and understanding immigration experiences.
In celebration, the IHRCA has an exhibit on display through January 22, 2016 at the U’s Elmer L. Andersen Library. The exhibit explores ideas of immigration and race and ethnicity, while sharing its own story of creating and developing an archive to support a wide variety of research.
Exhibit co-curator Ellen Engseth and exhibit designer Darren Terpstra provide a sneak peek of the exhibit in the video above.
Exhibit details
What: People on the Move exhibit
When: Through January 22, 2016
Where: Elmer L. Andersen Library Gallery
Hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays: 8:30 a.m to 4:30 p.m.; Wednesdays and Thursdays: 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
It sounds like a wonderful display. I have the thimble that my mother’s father, John Gaustad, brought with him from Norway in the late 1800’s. He was a cobbler (I like that word – cozier than shoe maker) and set up his business in Baldwin, Wisconsin, then sent for his wife and son. Their daughter, Minnie, my mother, born in Baldwin, met my father, Peter Albert Bondeson, when she came to Minneapolis to work in an envelope factory. He was then working in a bakery there. They were married in 1922.
My father had come over in 1902 to join his sister Hanna and her husband Oluf Newburg who had established a bakery in Litchfield, MN. After working as a cook at a lumber camp in the north woods, Dad was able to eventually set up his own bakery, selling one to move on to buying a bigger and better one. I grew up in Sacred Heart, Marshall, Wabasha, and Chatfield. Pete was granted a U.S. Patent for a “bread slicing machine” but never received the papers to verify this, apparently because he does not show up in the census in the year 1913 when it was issued, having been out there in the woods for a number of years. The family only found out about it after relatives in Norway discovered this when doing some other research on family who immigrated to America.
I sliced many a loaf of bread in Dad’s bakeries never knowing of his invention, and he never spoke of it.
I remember how he was always insisting though how I brush off the machine and clean up the area after using it. Through the years many adjustments were no doubt made to the design, but it’s great to know he had a hand in it’s beginning.