Old Dirt - New Thoughts

We had another meeting of the Hamline history group this week. This time we had several historians, archivists, and professors - so it was a lively meeting (that is if you find old photographs and railroad records exciting)!

I see this collaboration as having incredible potential. I’m already lining up interested students for next fall’s class (Excavating Hamline’s History). We are still hoping to find one of the original train depots for an excavation, but we also talked about some other potential sites. Given all the possibilities, I am convinced we are going to excavate a very significant historical site.

Phil Reinhardt, of the Hamline Midway History Corp, has added a nice section to their website describing the project and some of the research that his group has completed. I particularly like this quote from a 1901 traveler to Hamline describing the trip by streetcar from St. Paul.

Arrival - Monday morning, September 6, 1901, marks the moment of my introduction to Minnesota. From Vernon McCombs, one of the student managers of the college bookstore, I had received instructions how to reach the Hamline district from the Union Depot. … [The Hamline-Jackson streetcar] was distinctly sui generis, functioning, as it seemed, like many a homo sapiens, with a minimum of reserves and a maximum of noise. Tradition has it that the passengers got off frequently and helped the car up the inclines on Lexington and Minnehaha near their point of intersection. Of course there was no car line on Snelling nor was the street paved. Both came many years later. (Dr. James S. King, “The Middle Years and Now”)

To any Hamline students reading this blog, now is a great time to get involved in this project. There are opportunities to help with the archival research, collect oral histories, and this spring, to help with the archaeological testing of possible site locations.