This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this week.

June 12

1946 The Minnesota Historical Society accepts a grant from the Weyerhaeuser family to establish the Forest Products History Foundation. Initially located in St. Paul, the foundation evolves into the international organization known as the Forest History Society. Now located in Durham, North Carolina, the society's mission remains the same: to preserve and interpret the documents of forest and conservation history. Weyerhaeuser company records are kept by the society, including those from 1913 to 1965 of Cloquet affiliates Cloquet Lumber Company, Northwestern Paper Company, Northern Lumber Company, and the Wood Conversion Company. Images kept there are of personnel, facilities, and town and camp life. There are many mounted originals for which there are no negatives, so they may be the only existing copies.

June 13

1886 A four-mile logjam closes the St. Croix River at Taylors Falls. The jam is so spectacular that excursion trains travel from Duluth to see it. It occurred in the area now covered by Interstate State Park, where the river runs through a narrow gorge and makes a 90-degree turn. Adding to the jam was a low water level due to a spring drought. It took six weeks to clear the logs using manpower, steamboats and dynamite.

June 14

1868 The first Ojibwe person to relocate to the White Earth Reservation arrives. An annual ceremony and reunion is held to commemorate the event.

June 15

One of the ugliest days in Minnesota history, three African American workers for the John Robinson circus are lynched in Duluth. The men were falsely accused of raping a white woman. Ignoring the pleas of a priest and a judge, a mob of 5,000 breaks into the city jail on Superior Street and hangs the men from a lamppost on First Street and Second Avenue East. Today, a memorial stands across the intersection honoring the lives of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie.

1939 Crown Prince Olav of Norway dedicates Duluth's Enger Tower as part of a four-day visit that included fishing on the North Shore and a baseball game in Superior. The couple was part of a royals invasion that year as the World's Fair took place in New York City. The month before, the king and queen of Denmark visited Minnesota. Prince Olav and Princess Martha were on a 10-week tour of the United States, visiting 34 states by car and rail. On June 14, they were in Sioux Falls before taking a Northern Pacific train to Carlton, arriving just before noon and transferring to a car for a ride to Duluth. Then King Olav returned to Duluth in 1968. In 2011, his son, King Harald, came to Duluth to rededicate a refurbished Enger Tower.

June 16

1931 The bones of "Minnesota Man" are uncovered by a road crew near Pelican Rapids. Despite its name, this glacial-age human skeleton is likely that of a teenage girl who lived 8,500 years ago.

1999 Kathleen Soliah, a fugitive since 1974, is arrested in St. Paul. Having lived under the name Sarah Jane Olson, Soliah was a presumed member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst, and was wanted for the attempted bombing of two police cars. She had been featured on the television show "America's Most Wanted" a few months before her arrest. She served seven years in prison.

June 17

1913 The first "Minnesota Good Roads Day" is marked. The national Good Roads movement was spurred in the 1870s by two forces: bicyclists who wanted to ride on better surfaces than muddy country lanes, and Rural Free Delivery, the post office's promise to deliver mail to and from farms that were easily accessible by road. On the third Tuesday of June, Minnesotans were asked to help shore up roads in rural areas and state officials were encouraged to support passable roads to support the economy of the state.

June 18

1855 St. Mary's Falls Canal opens at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron and the lower Great Lakes, eventually permitting the mass transport of wheat, coal, and iron ore from Minnesota to points east.

1892 Four-year-old Mamie Schwartz is kidnapped in St. Paul. Her disappearance causes a sensation, with $500 (around $15,000 in today's money) authorized by the governor as a reward for assistance in her return. The police find her the next year in Superior, apparently taken by a mysterious woman known in Duluth as Madame Duckworth who had traveled with the child for a year before leaving her with acquaintances in Superior. She was then given to another couple, who assumed the first couple had abandoned her. Mamie was spotted by a Superior police officer at a circus in late May of 1893. Years later, Mamie said the officer called her by name and she answered, admonishing the officer because she was forbidden to use her former name. She said the officer then pulled a picture of a girl from his pocket - it had been widely publicized since the kidnapping - and told her it was her sister. Mamie corrected him, saying it was a picture of herself with her doll. A birthmark was also used to identify her. She was soon united with her family. The case is considered the first kidnapping in Minnesota history.

1934 Congress passes the Indian Reorganization Act, which allows Native Americans to govern themselves on a tribal basis, to manage natural resources on reservations, and to incorporate as a tribe to facilitate business ventures. The major goal of the act was to reverse the traditional goal of cultural assimilation into American society and to strengthen, encourage and perpetuate the tribes and their historic Native American cultures.

1939 A tornado kills nine and injures 222 in Anoka, north of Minneapolis.

This column is derived from MNopedia.org and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society.