The Independent Historical Society

Abstract

by WALTER MUIR WHITEHILL 8 The Independent Historical Society 1 Four to undertake years ago, a study when of it independent was announced historical that I soci- was to undertake a study of independent historical societies for the Council on Library Resources, the late Carl L. Lokke of the National Archives wrote me suggesting that I include the activities of the Norwegian-American Historical Association . This pleasant and welcome communication, which gave me my first knowledge of the organization, concluded: "For your study you will have to draw the line somewhere. When you draw it, I hope the Norwegian-American Historical Association will land within it." A letter of inquiry soon brought me full information, including a copy of Dean Biegen and Professor Bjork's A Review and a Challenge describing the aims of the association. This brochure, admirable in tone and impressive in content, combined with the list of publications, immediately convinced me of the soundness of Lokke's advice. Thus, on April 1, 1960, my wife and I paid a visit to the association's quarters in the library of St. Olaf College at Northfield. Of this day, I noted in my journal: "Professor Lloyd Hustvedt, Secretary of the Society, showed 1 An address presented at the triennial meeting of the Norwegian-American Historical Association in Minneapolis, May 11, 1963. Ed. 198 THE INDEPENDENT SOCIETÏ us their remarkable publications, well edited, well printed studies of the highest scholarly seriousness, printed out of receipts of membership dues and the free work of various people who have too many other things to do. Hustvedt was a sensitive, learned and delightful man - one of the finest we have met, as was his association. Unfortunately he had a class to teach, but Professor Theodore Jorgenson and Dr. and Mrs. Clarence Clausen took us to lunch in a charming Norwegian restaurant, oddly hidden under a bowling alley, where we had wall-eyed pike, the best fish we have encountered in our travels , and much good talk. At two we regretfully left our amiable Norwegians and drove back to Minneapolis." While traveling through three quarters of the fifty states in the course of my study, I have encountered a gratifying number of people who pursue learning, cultivate the arts, enjoy good conversation, food, and drink, and cherish the features of building and scene that differentiate their community from the next. But I have remembered that day in Northfield with such particular pleasure that I am especially happy to have been invited to return to Minnesota for this triennial meeting, at which I have been able to enlarge my acquaintance among my fellow members of the Norwegian-American Historical Association. When the association's last directory was published, there were thirteen members in my state of Massachusetts. The names of eleven, including Anderson, Eklund, Halvorson, and Larson, have a clear ethnic reason for being numbered among those interested in Norwegian-American history. The other two names - my own and that of the library of the Boston Athenaeum, whose affairs I direct - indicate solely disinterested respect and admiration for sound historical research and writing without any consideration of family or geographical ties. I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, fifty-seven years ago. Every ancestor of mine that I have heard of came out of England,' Scotland, or Wales, most of them before the Ameri199 Walter Muir WhitehM can Revolution. In the first two thirds of my life, I instinctively headed east, rather than west. Thus, while I was quite at home in Spain, France, and the British Isles, I was forty years old before I reached Chicago, and got there then only because I was in naval uniform and under orders. In recent years I have been making up for that ignorance as rapidly as I can. I cite it, with shame, solely to reinforce my status as a disinterested observer. It would be pointless, particularly after a good dinner catered by Ludvig Roed, whose restaurant in Northfield I remember with such pleasure, for me to attempt to summarize the accomplishments of the Norwegian-American Historical Association over the past thirty-eight years. They speak for themselves, and with particular clarity to those of you who...