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St. Ansgarius Episcopal Church in Chicago

Every so often I get an inquiry about St. Ansgarius and the records held here in the Swedish-American Archives of Greater Chicago.  Our website displays the finding aid of the materials in the collection along with the unfortunate announcement that the member books we hold cannot be accessed due to their fragile condition.  As an alternative, I am able to point researchers to the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center in Rock Island, Illinois where they have microfilmed copies of the member records of St. Ansgarius.  There one can also find a wonderful index of names found in the St. Ansgarius records.  The index created by Nils William Olsson is invaluable as the handwritten records can be a stumbling block to even the most practiced of genealogists.

One recent researcher requested photographs of the church; the two images here are from the collection. 

 

Another researcher in Chicago sent an email inquiry after seeing the church building today on the corner of Sedgwick and Locust Avenues.  In response to her question about the Swedish-American history of the building I was able to provide this short history from the finding aid.

    Founded in 1849, St. Ansgarius Church was first located at Illinois and Franklin Streets, Chicago, IL. It was founded by Gustav Unonius, a convert to the Episcopal Church who previously led a group of Swedish immigrants to settle at Pine Lake, Wisconsin. At the end of the century, St. Ansgarius was located on Sedgwick Avenue, one block north of Chicago Avenue, in Chicago. The church remained at this location until 1920, at which time the church effectively closed due to the departure of the rector, Carl August Nybladh and the majority of the congregation. However, in 1924, the bishop of Chicago re-opened St. Ansgarius at a temporary location on Lincoln Avenue, and later built the Jenny Lind Memorial Chapel at 2514 West Thorndale Avenue, Chicago. In 1940 the church was re-dedicated as St. Francis Church, and this congregation survived into the 1990’s. (Information courtesy of Richard R. Seidel, Historiographer, The Diocese of Chicago, 1999).

Incidentally, I met Richard Seidel in August at an event of the Society of American Archivists at St. James Cathedral in the Loop. After his expertly crafted tour that detailed the history of every nook and cranny of St. James, Richard and I got to talking about the St. Ansgarius materials held here at North Park University.  Having not known the circumstances under which the records found their way to the collection, Richard speculated that they were transferred to the Swedish-American Historical Society in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  This was coincidentally the time when Lennart Setterdahl was microfilming Swedish-American church and lodge records throughout North America.

Here's a Newly Published Guide to Using Archives!

Researches, regardless of their experience level, have many questions when they head to an archives to conduct research.  How do I schedule an appointment (and why do I have to)? How will I find what I'm looking for once I'm there?  What's online and/or why isn't everything online? Why can I only use a pencil? What can I make copies of and how can I do that?  Our website attempts to answer most of these questions for our researchers before they arrive but falls short in some areas.  

Last week I met the author of a great new e-publication to which I can now direct researchers. Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research is written by Laura Schmidt, archivist at the Wade Center at Wheaton College and published by the Society of American Archivists as downloadable pdf or viewable on their website.  The guide is well organized, addresses all of the above questions and gives researchers sound advice for using materials in a variety of archives.  Thanks Laura! 

      

LIBRAS Archivists Meet to Discuss E-Records

The question of how to manage donations and transfers of electronic documents is one of the most discussed topics in archives today.  There is not one clear method of accessioning, describing, preserving and making electronic records available to researchers.  Discussing the matter with archivists who work at similar institutions helps to sort out some questions.  The LIBRAS Archives SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting last Thursday here in the Archives reading room provided one such opportunity.

David Malone, Wheaton College archivist and SIG chair, led conversation among Laura Schmidt of the Wade Center at Wheaton College, Steven Szegedi of Dominican University, Mary Ann Atkins of Lewis University, Larry Wild of Judson University and me.  The discussion centered on both the challenges that we face at smaller institutions and strategies to overcome them.  One topic was what to do with the occasional donation of materials that comes as a digital file, including audio and video files.  A second topic covered the changing nature of institutional record keeping from print records to mainly electronic.  Each institution is at a different place on that continuum but must eventually deal with e-records in order to represent this era of our history into the future as well as we represent earlier eras.

Practical E-Records, a blog written by Chris Prom, is a great resource for managing e-records at small and mid-sized institutions.  There you can read advice on steps to take and how to take them.  The blog aims to "help archives develop a program using existing technologies, resources and tools."  

The meeting was just one in a series that will address managing digital archival content.  I thank everyone who attended and look forward to our future discussions!

 

Sigurd F. Olson: Environmental Conservationist

Last Saturday in the Archives reading room members of the Swedish-American Historical Society were treated to a talk by Society board member Kevin Proescholdt about the life and work of Sigurd Olson.  Olson who lived from 1899 to 1982 was an influential advocate for environmental conservation.  His voice is still heard in the many books he wrote and through the environmental policies he helped establish.

Kevin Proescholdt, who himself works professionally to protect wilderness areas as wilderness and public lands program director for the Izaak Walton League of America, told of Sig Olson’s role with the National Parks Association, the Wilderness Society, and the passage of the l964 Wilderness Act.  In his talk Kevin shared many photographs as he traced Olson’s life, passion for nature and struggles in environmental activism. 

The photograph here shows Kevin (right) in early May 1978 with his friend Carl (BT) Beyerhelm (left) and Sig at the Olson home in Ely, MN.  Kevin had met and visited Sig on earlier occasions, but in this shot he had just returned from Washington, DC, where he spent two-weeks lobbying during the subcommittee and full committee markups and votes on the Boundary Water Canoe Area legislation.  He was asked by his mentor, Bud Heinselman, chair of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and close friend of Sig Olson, to stop at the Olson home after a canoe trip and fill Sig in on the latest updates of the campaign in DC. 

The image poignantly illustrates how we can make connections that serve to guide us well into the future.   You can learn more about the life and legacy of Sigurd Olson at his website.  Many books by and about Olson, including The Hidden Forest (1969), Of Time and Place (1982) and Guardians of the Parks: a History of the National Parks and Conservation Association, are available at Brandel Library (link to catalog).

  

 

A Surprising Family Find!

Imagine coming to an archives to simply scroll through old newspaper microfilm in hopes of reading your ancestor’s published articles but instead discovering an actual book from his personal library.  That’s what happened to Phil Edstrom of Minneapolis when he came to the archives at North Park University last week.  Here he could view the microfilmed issues of Gamla och Nya Hemlandet, a Chicago Swedish-American newspaper published from 1855 until it merged with Svenska Amerikanaren in 1914.  Phil’s grandfather's brother, Aron Edström, served as editor of Hemlandet for some time in the early years of the 20^th century and Phil hoped to find reference to him in the pages of the newspaper.  Unfortunately, Hemlandet gave very few acknowledgments to its authors or editors.