Bring Warm Clothes: Letters and Photos from Minnesota's Past

This is a wonderful guide into Minnesota's past. Letters and articles accompany photos that bring you to places that you've been and acquaint you with it's character. Truly a terrific book for those that love the warmth and charm of the characters and life that make Minnesota home!

Bring Warm Clothes : Letters and Photos from Minnesota's Past was written by a former columnist for the Minnesota Star and Tribune, Peg Meier. It is a great treat, both as a peek into the past and as a well "written" work of history. The author includes pictures, diary entries, newspaper articles, letters, and government documents to create her biography of the state.The book is heavily illustrated. Among the visual works are paintings of Minnesota from its exploration years, mostly by Seth Eastman and Karl Bodmer, which capture the rustic and wild character of a land yet untrammeled by the fences, industrial complexes and housing developments with which most of us are familiar. For those who like to see photographic reality, there are photos of Minnesota's early pre- and post-statehood years during the 19th Century and of the 20th Century up to World War II. The former include pictures of the Civil War in which the volunteers of the First Minnesota Regiment participated. In all some 25,000 men from the state fought in battles like Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, losing some 2,500 men, almost one out of every ten. Other photos show the old homes, city and town streets, early industry, sod homes, and family and other groups that bring to life a time past.Particularly enjoyable were the letters from the early settlement of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as presented in the merry correspondence of the Fuller family, and the witty press releases of Jane Grey Swisshelm in her paper the St Cloud Visiter, later the St. Cloud Democrat. The letters of Harriet Griswold reveal the fact that boom and bust economy is not new to our era, when her correspondence goes from exuberence and big plans in October of 1856 to bearly hanging on in September of 1858. The Civil War diaries of Sam Bloomer and Isaac Taylor and the World War I letters of Philip Longyear, an ambulance driver at the French front, bring those conflicts to a more vivid reality. The plight of the Native Americans and the fear and reactionism that the Indian Wars generated is also covered. The author has, wisely in my opinion, allowed the primary sources speak for themselves. She adds very little interpretive material of her own and then only to clarify where necessary or to provide follow up information. One of the principle points of note is the fact that most of these people had many of the same problems we have, and that they bring some of the same perspectives, same blind spots, and same sense of humor that we bring to our own daily lives. They lived one day at a time, facing an unknown future with the same uncertainty that we do. Some stories came out with a happy ending, some did not. It makes one wonder what some future writer of Minnesota history will say and think of our own times.

An excellent collection of diaries and letters from Minnesota territory days thru early in her statehood. Accompanied by many great photo's depicting the times.A great fireplace companion!