Mining Old Papers for Gold
From Dad’s birth to town naming, amazing history pans out in research
Surprisingly, my hometown was named not in homage to a famous politician or a place in the old country, and it seems to have gotten a library out of the deal.
This was one of the many facts, from amazing to amusing, unearthed when I mined the old area newspapers as research for “All Roads Lead to Rome,” my memoir about my dad.
Clickety-clacking through microfilm reels in a perfectly still and quiet library genealogy room in Seattle, the origin story surfaced. When coming across such an anecdote, I thought it must be how prospectors felt when a gold nugget glinted up from their flat pan of wet gravel.
I consider Williston, North Dakota to be my hometown. Epping was nearer to the farm, and we did live there briefly, but Williston was where I had my face stitched after a dog bite, went to high school, dragged Main in my first car, went on my first date, took my first job, and made friends for life. Well earned.
But my discovery of how Williston got its name came from spinning through the 1912 microfilmed version of the Epping Bulletin. I’d ordered up the film through interlibrary loan from the North Dakota Historical Society as I wanted to get a feel for the era when my dad was born. The technique really delivered, as the weekly paper (1906-1912) devoted one of its eight pages to local happenings and news tidbits.
Local Mention
The best “Local Mention” item, of course, was the announcement of my father’s birth.
In the column on page 2 of the April 4, 1912 edition, this one-liner floored me: “Mr. and Mrs. Mikkel Thornes are rejoicing over the arrival of an infant son at their home on Saturday.”
They would name him Erick Gabriel Thorness, who was born on March 30, 1912. As it turns out, a Saturday.
The “mention” was sandwiched between a line about N.T. Rosenquist traveling to a nearby town to look after “banking interests” and Swen Boe returning from Minnesota to look after his “farming interests near town.” The Thornes family (back then with one s) was looking after baby interests.
The phrasing also amused me. They rejoiced over an “arrival,” like one would over a soldier returning on leave, a beloved visiting aunt, or Santa Claus. Did he perhaps come in on the train from the Twin Cities that arrived at 6:02 p.m.? No, it was a birth! A baby was born! A joyous occasion! A son who would grow up to wear the uniform, fight for his country, be a father.
After panning out this gem, I took the rest of the afternoon off.
Tracking My Grandfather
But it wasn’t the first mention of my family. In early November, 1909, my grandfather Mikkel and his friend Anders Persson “of Tunbridge were in town on business today.” Before homesteading near Epping, Mikkel and his wife Ragnhild, with their two-year-old son Odd (to be known as Ed, or to me, Uncle Ed) and newborn Cora, had moved from southeast Minnesota to a small town in the center of North Dakota. This was likely Mikkel’s trip to scout out land for his farm.
He got the first mention in the December 1910 column, and an Americanized name: “Michael Thornes is at Rugby on a deal for draft horses to be used for farm purposes next year.” Rugby was up by Tunbridge, but clearly Mikkel/Michael had moved, and was stocking a farm.
A few months later, in the February 1911 edition, another Local Mention noted a significant visit (and a spelling regression): “Mikkel Thornes is entertaining a brother who is a resident of the state of Minnesota.” Wow, don’t get too specific there, reporter! That would have been Tjerland (Tom) Thorness, of Fergus Falls, who had preceded Mikkel in the immigrating and homesteading game. My dad traveled back to work on Uncle Tom’s farm during a particularly rough Dust Bowl summer. I regret never meeting Tom or his wife Tillie.
Abundant Bon Mots
Epping’s short-lived paper was a fount of local mentions and fascinating evidence of that bygone era. The front-page news was national or international, there were plentiful ads and columns on farming and homemaking. Fuzzy photos. Dumb jokes. Outrageous opinions.
As I researched, I created PDF images of some of my favorites. My eyes turned hot and refused to focus after a while, so if an item looked promising, I tech-snagged it to read later. As I’ve spent my column inches talking about my family in this post, I’ll mine through some of the amusing and amazing gems in a future article.
Oh Yes, the Town Name!
But, oh yes, the naming of Williston. Better not leave that hanging. It’s a historical account flavored with controversy.
In its first edition of 1910, the Bulletin reported that “It is because of James Hill, chairman of the board of directors of the Great Northern railroad, saw fit to name the city after D. Willis James of New York that it is today the possessor of a library that will be one of the finest in the state when completed.”
James had made a provision in his will, the article said, to provide $20,000 for the building of a library in the town named after him, and construction was underway. On the occasion of his death, Hill recalled in a letter quoted in the paper how the town came to be named:
“When the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba railroad had crossed Dakota on its way to the Pacific coast, a party of those most interested in the building of the new line went with me on a tour of inspection of the work, with us Mr. D. James and his wife. Mr. James not only one of the heaviest stockholders of the road but he was one whose interest never flagged and whose support never failed either then or in the long years between that and his recent death.
“I thought it would be a pleasant thing to connect his name with one of the points along the line where development would be sure and where a thriving city would be certain to arise. One of the liveliest places appeared to be where the line of the road, now the Great Northern, strikes the Missouri river, near the mouth of the Yellowstone.
“The outlook for a town was excellent. The natural features were attractive, the stretch of territory which it would be the natural center was large and the land good. To call it Jamestown would have been a common place, and instead of that I named it Williston.”
A railroad baron was clearly the man in charge of things in those days. Railroads meant commerce and settlement, and for better or worse, the future was etched through their vision. (Note: I wrote about Dakota’s railroad development in a previous post.) Hill, aka “The Empire Builder,” would push the line through the wilds of Dakota and Montana, all the way to Everett, Washington, a few miles north of where I sit today. And he would honor his major investor with the name of a town, in the manner of the day.
Of note, that was not the community’s original name. It was founded in the 1870s as Little Muddy, a name which it lived up to, especially in spring, when it was a little muddy. Also a nickname for the nearby branch of the Missouri River. And the perfect name for my sister’s Sherri’s business, Little Muddy Pottery, for which she turned out beautiful and useful pieces for many years.
Williston’s name got me wondering too about the county in which it sits: Williams. Was that another Hill connection? Turns out, no. The county was named for Erastus Appelman Williams of Bismarck, a significant figure in the political history of Dakota when it was being turned from a territory into a state. He was serving in the state legislature when the county was originally created in 1891, also the year that Williston was made the county seat.
Two thoughts about that: Wouldn’t the name Erastus County be cooler? Or even Appelman County? I guess the founding fathers weren’t into cool.
But as a kid named William, I felt right at home in Williston, Williams County. My county, my town! My goodness, what hubris. Perhaps I’ve grown out of that.
…and the Library Controversy
But the creation of our public library seems to be a source of controversy in the historical record. Clearly, Hill’s quoted letter in the Epping Bulletin indicated that D. Willis James had provided funding for the library in his will. It wouldn’t have been surprising, as that was about the time Andrew Carnegie began funding libraries, the first ones being in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Williston’s, however, was not a Carnegie, and might not have been due to Willis himself. According to the website of the nonprofit James Memorial Preservation Society, which today operates the old library, “In 1909 eighty women met in Williston to organize the Women’s Civic League. Their goal was to obtain a library for the city of Williston. These determined women petitioned Arthur Curtiss James for necessary funds to build the library. Mr. James agreed to fund the project as a memorial to his father, D. Willis James.”
The library opened in 1911 and served the city until 1983, after which another citizen group, including my sister Maggie, undertook an effort to preserve the building and use it for another civic good. They created the Society and developed the building into a center for visual arts.
Many days in my youth I’d climb the long set of concrete steps to the library’s pillared front door, over which was etched “James Memorial Library.” The book sanctuary beckoned to me as a student in the brick-box junior high school across the street. The library owned that corner of Seventh Avenue, just a block off Main Street. Whatever its true origin story, I am grateful for its creation, that it was there for my exploration, and that it has been saved and treasured.
Links:
James Memorial Preservation Society: http://www.thejamesmemorial.org/
Williston history: https://www.britannica.com/place/Williston-North-Dakota and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williston,_North_Dakota
Great Northern Railway Historical Society: https://www.gnrhs.org/gn_history.php
The Epping Bulletin: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88076248/