North Dakota has been a state for 129 years. The Hiddenwood Old Settler’s Picnic has been observed for 116 of those years.

Most readers have absolutely no idea what or where the Hiddenwood Old Settler’s Picnic is, or why it has been around for more than a century. Most people from the small community of Ryder, North Dakota would have only a sketchy idea of their local picnic’s history if not for the resources of the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND.)

Over the last couple of years, I have spent many hours researching the picnic’s history by reading microfilm in the State Archives. Luckily for me, The Ryder News was on the scene documenting the inception of the picnic, the shaky start, the good times and the bad times, the fascinating cast of characters, and the determination and spirit of the homesteaders at a place called Hiddenwood Lake. The Ryder News ceased publication on Sept. 9, 1943, but other area newspapers picked up the story and continued publishing highlights of this annual event.

Reconstructed sod house on the Hiddenwood picnic grounds. (Constructed 1976.)
In the background is the “Hiddenwood Old Settlers Chapel,” the original church built at Hiddenwood in 1907. (2018 photo, Doug Wurtz)

Hiddenwood Lake is a small body of water about one mile in length and a half-mile in width during good years (it was completely dry in the 1930s). The lake is located 30 miles “as the crow flies” southwest of Minot, North Dakota. It is a half-mile from the farm where I was born and raised.

My earliest memories while growing up on the farm were the yearly trips to the Hiddenwood Picnic grounds for the annual get-together of friends, neighbors, assorted politicians, and entertainers. I have always said that I grew up in “Mayberry,” the fictitious community setting for two popular American television sitcoms, “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Mayberry, R.F.D.” For those of you too young to remember the show, Mayberry was the idyllic setting of simpler times and traditions that lasted from decade to decade.

My memories of the Hiddenwood Picnic have always been just that; simple, folksy, and enduring. That wasn’t always the case.

Hiddenwood Mercantile and Hotel, Hiddenwood, ND (Circa 1904) (Photo: Owned by Doug Wurtz)

In 1903, two of the original homesteaders at Hiddenwood Lake, William W. Wright and Esten R. Williams, decided to hold a community picnic to attract other new residents of the area to the retail store they had established at Hiddenwood. The Hiddenwood Mercantile and Hotel was a brand new business on the prairie and would only be successful if it became the source of supplies for homesteaders in the area. They put out the word and their neighbors came to the first picnic. The picnic was a success--neighborly and nice.

The former Hiddenwood Mercantile and Hotel building (2018 photo, Doug Wurtz)

By the next year, the new store had flourished a bit and the second picnic was to be held. By that time, though, the true spirit of Williams was beginning to show. Research shows that he wasn’t just a new homesteader at Hiddenwood. He was also in business with Wright in a firm called “Williams & Wright” with offices in Minot and Hiddenwood. They were land men directing newcomers to claims around Hiddenwood Lake, undoubtedly for a profit. Business is business, but Williams was not content with just land commissions.

The second Hiddenwood Picnic in 1904 got completely out of hand, as was reported in The Ryder News on June 23, 1904:

“We have been to several bad picnics in our time but of all the picnics that we have been to, the one at Hiddenwood Monday certainly was the most rotten affair we have ever taken in. The blind pigs¹ commenced doing business in the morning and did a rushing business all day…(Another fight ensued) when the old man Williams saw that his son was getting the worst of it, he ran into the house to get his revolver, saying that he would fix him, but luckily for Williams, somebody had hid the revolver, as if the old man had got his revolver there would probably have been a lynching, as somebody was looking for a rope at that time.”

Esten Williams packed up and left the county four days later. The Hiddenwood Picnic then settled into the neighborly affair that has been held every June for 116 consecutive years. There is much more to the history of the picnic. It is slowly, but surely, being pieced together one archived story at a time.

¹ The term “blind pig” originated in the United States in the 19th century; it was applied to lower-class establishments that sold alcohol during prohibition. The operator of an establishment (such as a saloon or bar) would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a “complimentary” alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law. http://blindpigofasheville.com/about/what-is-a-blind-pig/

In his classic children’s book, Dr. Seuss wrote, “Oh, the places you will go….” But at the Former Governors’ Mansion State Historic Site, we could add “and the places you will not go.” We have both kinds of places—rooms and nooks where visitors can spend hours, and places that are generally off-limits because of accessibility or safety issues (such as the precarious basement stairs). Let me take you now to some of those forbidden places.

Roof: The hatch in the ceiling of the attic can be reached by climbing a ladder, and the original, 134-year-old wooden ladder is still used today by our staff for roof access. The flat roof, marked by the widow’s walk railing, provides a stunning view of downtown Bismarck and beyond.

Basement: Although the interpretive panel on the basement door describes the area, venturing into the basement is more exciting. While there is electricity (bulbs hanging from cords), a flashlight provides a better view of the cistern, coal room, and the work table used by prison release trustees (inmates cleared to leave the prison briefly to perform repairs and upkeep at the Mansion). The enormous silver furnace, most likely original to the mansion, is a work of historic technological art.

Furnace in basement (Photo: Johnathan Campbell)

The cistern (the original water source) is approximately ten feet deep and can be accessed only by crawling through a space high in the wall of the coal room. Around the corner is a small bathroom (added between 1907 and 1913) with a toilet still equipped with the wooden tank and pull cord high above the seat. This area also contained a laundry room and a cupboard for canned goods.

Bathroom Cabinets: One of Bismarck’s first indoor bathrooms is mostly sectioned off from traffic. Still inside the cupboard, out of view from the hallway, sits a can of Bon Ami cleanser, circa 1940s.

Top Floor, Carriage House: As the interpretive panel describes, some of the mansion’s caretakers and their families lived in the bright, airy apartment on the upper floor of the Carriage House. Because that area is now Johnathan Campbell’s office (the site supervisor), it is not open for tours. But some of the features of the apartment remain, such as the faux burnished copper light fixtures popular during the Arts and Crafts Movement (late 1800s–early 1900s).

Faux burnished copper light fixture, 1920s (photo: Kris Kitko)

Servant’s Staircase: The narrow, steep, unlit staircase (without handrails) hides a memento in the dark door frame: the initials “R.H.” written in pencil. Site supervisor Johnathan Campbell speculates that the culprit was Robert Hanna, son of Governor Louis B. Hanna, who lived in the mansion with his family from 1913 to 1917.

Initials in servant's staircase (photo: Johnathan Campbell)

If you visit the mansion and would like to see some of these unique spaces, be sure to ask. We may be able to accommodate some requests, with the exception of rooftop visits—as much as we’d like to!

Every year it seems we find something yet to be uncovered, like a tossed light bulb under a staircase, letters etched in wood, or evidence of something that was once secured to the floor. So keep your eyes open; perhaps you will make a discovery in one of the places you (usually) can’t go!

We will be opening a new temporary exhibit in the Governor’s Gallery of the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum on August 25, 2018. The exhibition, titled The Horse in North Dakota, includes about 200 artifacts and specimens from the Museum Division, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division, the North Dakota State Fossil Collection, as well as a few items borrowed from the citizens of North Dakota.

The Museum Division staff is spending many hours of preparation on artifacts selected for the exhibit. Once artifacts are selected, the objects need to be cleaned, their conditions evaluated and reported, and object data sheets created. Each artifact that requires additional physical support must then be fitted on appropriate mannequins or mounts.

Many of the artifacts selected for The Horse in North Dakota include leather. Due to the organic nature of leather and its natural oils, a very common reaction between leather and metals occurs, especially between leather and copper. Copper in contact with leather develops a waxy, flakey, or hairy buildup that needs to be removed. Technically this accreted material is known as fatty acids stained with copper ions, but we affectionately call it “green gunk.” In order to remove the green gunk, it is gently rubbed off using thin wooden dowels, skewers, and cuticle pushers. Additionally, brushes, cotton muslin, and cotton swabs are used for cleaning. It is finished off with a swipe of ethanol.

Before and after photos of the green gunk removal from a metal ring on a saddle (14682.2).  It took Melissa Thompson, Assistant Registrar, nineteen hours of work to clean all of the green gunk off the McClellen saddle.

Spew, or bloom, is a white powdery substance that appears on the surface of leather. Spew is formed when the fatty acids and oils in the leather migrate to the surface and are exposed to air. The powdery substance is easy removed with either a soft bristle brush or a cotton cloth.

Spew being removed from the strap of a saddle bag (09186) using a soft bristle brush.

Many metal objects are polished with a cream or tarnish remover while they are in use. We do not polish any of the metals in our collection for various preservation reasons. Over time, residue from the polish that was once used on the artifact turns white and can hide many of the decorative details of an artifact. Such is the case with these medallions on the sides of a bridle. The green gunk was removed using the wooden tools. Then, using distilled water and small wooden skewers, as much of the white residue was removed as possible to unveil the medallion’s detail.

Before and after removing brass tarnish residue from bridle (2007.00053.00049)

A condition report, which is a written description and visual record of an artifact’s condition, is completed before the object goes on exhibit. All defects are described, measured, and photographed. We look for fading, cracks, tears, deterioration, missing parts, chips, and any other types of damage depending on the artifact’s material make-up. Once an artifact comes off exhibit, condition reports are completed again to determine whether any changes occurred while it was on exhibit.

A Word document produced directly from our museum software database program. Click image for larger view.

Some of the objects selected for The Horse in North Dakota will need to have custom mounts created. These mounts may be soft mounts, which is Coroplast (corrugated plastic) covered in cotton batting and cotton muslin. They could be made out of Plexiglas, or they may be mannequins. Sometimes we make our mannequins from scratch. We use metal rods for the stand, Ethafoam (a closed cell polyethylene material), and either cotton muslin or cotton stockinette.

Jenny Yearous, Curator of Collections Management) carving ethafoam into a neck and shoulders with an electric carving knife.  B.  The neck and shoulders covered in stockinette, and the ethafoam waist. C. Finished mannequin with children’s Cowgirl costume (2017.66.11-12).

Come see all of these artifacts and many more in The Horse in North Dakota starting August 25th!  Let us know how many hours you think the collections staff spent getting the artifacts ready for display.

I’ll start by wishing you a very happy 2015! I hope that you had a marvelous time at the November 2, 2014, grand opening. If you missed it, plan on stopping by the North Dakota Heritage Center very soon because the exhibits are choice, the food is excellent, it’s warm, and there is ample available parking.

The start of a new year means we can get into full mode making more short film episodes, some about paleontology in collaboration with the North Dakota Geologic Survey team. So far, we’ve made videos about a public dig where a crocodile skeleton was excavated, digs at Pembina and Medora, and the cannonball concretions and petrified tree which can be found on the plaza.

Videos have a lot of competition these days, often in the form of cats doing anything online. In the olden days, making an educational video was easy. You recorded a narrator, stuck in a few shots of old pictures, then edited and covered the gaps with a piano piece. The whole affair took about 20 minutes over a cup of coffee.

Not anymore.

So what, you may be wondering, do we all do to make it happen?

As one example, we filmed sixteen large boulders (called Cannonball concretions) being moved to specific areas on the Pembina River Plaza at the east entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. Behind the scenes, someone had to coordinate with a construction company and find some large machinery to use for a couple of days. Then someone had to locate two moving crews from south of Fargo and get them out to Lake Hammond, near Mandan. Three paleontologists were involved in the move, and someone had to coordinate a video camera. While all this was going on, I was filming, tethered between being in the way and not falling over.

After the filming, I wrote the script. If that seems a bit backwards to write the script last instead of first, that’s because it is. But it sometimes works better to write after you’ve witnessed everything that happens to put an event in place.

A lot of people ask if these video episodes are set up. I promise you, here and now, they are not. We have stood in rainstorms, destroyed knees, driven into worlds far from any idea of roads, fallen off of large boulders with a camera in hand, and we don’t pull over for anything except fuel. We tend to take filming fairly seriously.

But not half as seriously as what it takes to edit all the clips, the audio, make the sound effects, create the arty segments, and find music for a show from start to finish. My goal is to show a high amount of science and “cool” within a relatively low budget. That’s the main reason why our channel’s videos don’t look like any other paleontological videos out there. Everybody works so amazingly hard to make something great.

Ultimately the fossil digging season is over, all production is completed, we read through the script to make sure it’s not all in Dutch, and Paleontologist Becky Barnes fixes any errors. In the normal world, the credits at the end of a program roll for about five seconds, whereas the ones we place at the end of our paleontology episodes make you feel as though you’ve been watching Ben-Hur (1959).  The lengthy list of people either involved behind the scenes or on camera is often on an epic level. We finish editing the last snippets of footage in the Heritage Center space that we’ve made into a studio. And that would be the part where every normal human being would go home and relax. So, of course, that is when we start planning for next season’s films.

I love the volume of caffeine we go through and the stamina out on the fossil digs. And I love the energy of people who ask what the next episode will be and the way people positively react when shown the films we worked so hard to make. Good luck getting that sort of creative buzz watching a cat play the piano!

Guest Blogger: Jessica Rockeman

Jessica Rockeman is a New Media Specialist for the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Her duties include web, graphics, print, ND Studies materials, film and photography. She can often be spotted at the museum with a camera.

In 2000 historian Christian Warren published Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning in which he introduced his construct of “toxic purity” relating to historic lead paint. Warren explains that in the early 1900s, US citizens (most well aware of the toxic nature of lead paint) still wanted pure lead paint—leaded paint with no adulterants or additives. When we think of lead paint today, we immediately associate it with the toxic side of this construct. Most consumers at that time, however, were worried about additional ingredients diluting the purity of lead paint.

One hundred twenty years ago consumers perceived lead paint to be the best. Consumers wanted to know the contents of the paint cans they purchased. If they contained ingredients such as water, benzene, chalk, or any oils other than linseed oil, many considered them to be inferior paints.¹ There were no labeling laws; consumers did not even know the net weight of a can of paint. Although there were no standards set by industry or the government at the turn of the last century, consumers were hoping to purchase linseed oil thoroughly mixed with pure white lead powder and maybe some colorants.²

A label from one of many regional white lead paint producers. https://www.npr.org/2016/04/06/473268312/before-it-was-dangerous-lead-was-the-miracle-metal-that-we-loved

North Dakota was the first state to fully address informing consumers about the contents of a can of paint.³ In 1905 the state legislature passed “An Act to Prevent the Adulteration & Deception in the Sale of White Lead and Mixed Paints.”⁴ The legislature put the responsibility for carrying out this act on the capable shoulders of Edwin F. Ladd, the “fighting” chemistry professor at the North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State University), who also oversaw the publication of five bulletins on the subject of paint, its composition, and  clinical tests of various brands of paints.

Historian Elwyn B. Robinson characterized Ladd as a zealous and courageous publicity seeker, outstanding in an era of progressive reformers.⁵ Ladd had already led the charge against food alteration at the college’s Experiment Station⁶, publishing his results in the station’s Bulletin 53. His work was important in the passage of the federal Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.⁷

In his introduction to Bulletin 67 on white lead paints, Ladd calmly informs paint manufacturers who want to challenge his results published therein to “let the courts decide.”⁸

Dutch Boy logo and brand trademarked for the National Lead Company in 1907. Click the image to see the inside pages where happy children learned that lead was a most useful metal present in light bulbs, shoes, “tin” soldiers, baseballs, china, and other common household products.

In Bulletin 70 (1906) we learn the state court ruled in favor of the state’s right to regulate paint labeling. The Bulletin also provides the names of manufacturers who used up to 24 percent water in their paints, those who provided short weight adulterated or diluted lead in their paint composition, and those using up to 70 percent inert material, which was merely filler.⁹ In Bulletin 86 the Experiment Station analyzed many paints with mixed ingredients such as zinc oxide, a legitimate white lead substitute.¹⁰

At the time there were many small and regional paint manufacturers due to the cost of transportation of heavy ingredients. Ladd expected that manufacturers in the western half of the United States would provide inferior paints to those in the east, but found shocking results. Regardless of the region, “dope” paints were manufactured all over. North Dakota was the exception, as by the end of 1909 Ladd felt that the legal requirement to have truthful labels had greatly improved the quality of paint sold in the state.¹¹

1903 Advertisement for the New Jersey Zinc. Co. We wonder if master painters and others knew about the toxicity of lead in the paints they used at the turn of the twentieth century. Yes they certainly did, better than we can know today, as they felt the agony of stomach ulcers, intestinal binding, tooth loss, gout, and arthritis. Some symptoms sent them to their beds for weeks waiting out “painters colic” if they (or more likely their apprentices) inhaled or ingested too much of the chalky powder. From Warren, Brush with Death, 61, and Olga Khazan, “How Important Is Lead Poisoning to Becoming a Legendary Artist?” Atlantic, November 25, 2013,  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/how-important-is-lead-poisoning-to-becoming-a-legendary-artist/281734/.

¹ E. F. Ladd and C. D. Holley, “Paints and Paint Products,” North Dakota Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin 67 (1906): 575–77.
² Christian Warren, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 44–45, 52–53. The first ready-mixed paint came from Sherwin-Williams in 1880, but some master painters were still having their apprentices mix barrels of dusty white lead into linseed oil in the early 1900s. “The First Paint Revolution,” Sherwin-Williams, [accessed July 11, 2018, https://www.sherwin-williams.com/painting-contractors/business-builders/paint-technology-and-application/sw-art-pro-paint-revolution].
³ Warren, Brush with Death, 54. Nebraska passed a paint labeling law in 1902. It was backed by the lead-based paint manufacturers, who wanted to influence consumers to think of any new paint formulas that introduced new ingredients as inferior to lead paint. The labels did not require the disclosure of the amount of white lead.
⁴ Laws Passed by the Ninth Session of the Legislation Assembly of the State of North Dakota, 1905, Chapter 8 SB 49, 13.
⁵ Elwyn B. Robinson, History of North Dakota (1966; repr., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 261.
⁶ https://library.ndsu.edu/ir/bitstream/handle/10365/23594/ndfr_19500501_v12_iss05_162.pdf
⁷ Warren, Brush with Death, 282.
⁸ Ladd and Holley, “Paints and Paint Products,” 575.
⁹ E. F. Ladd and C. D. Holley, “Paints and Their Composition,” North Dakota Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin 70 (1906): 53–65.
¹⁰ E. F. Ladd and G. A. Abbott, “Some Ready-Mixed Paints,” North Dakota Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin 86 (1909): 80–89.
¹¹ Ladd and Abbott, “Some Ready-Mixed Paints,” 80–81.

In processing and organizing collections to make them accessible to researchers, the staff at the State Archives stumbles across unique items with their own stories to tell. While many of these documents and photographs relate to prominent people from North Dakota, or those who spent time or rendered some service to the state, we sometimes find an interesting connection to an important figure in American history in unlikely places.

We recently made one such find. Probate case files are important archival records at the county level that find their way to the State Archives as county governments across North Dakota need to make room for more current records. Older records are sent to us for storage and preservation and are great tools for researchers (especially genealogists) to trace the history of an ancestor’s estate and find other relatives.

In September 2017, Barnes County transferred some of their older probate records to the State Archives. Bev Keesey, one of our volunteers, worked on processing them. One afternoon she stumbled upon Case #599 from 1885 related to Anne Charlotte Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James Fenimore Cooper, author of the Leatherstocking Series, which includes the novels The Pathfinder and The Last of the Mohicans.

Ms. Cooper’s probate case is an interesting read, as her heirs included her other surviving siblings, most who resided in and around the Cooperstown, New York, area. This begs the question: how did a descendant of one of America’s most influential nineteenth-century authors, with no known connection to our state, come to have a probate case in North Dakota? The likely answer links her to one of the major power players of North Dakota early settlement--the railroad.

Cooper’s probate case concerned, according to several case documents, “An undivided one-half interest in the North West quarter (N.W.1/4) [sic] of Section number Fourteen (14) in Township number One Hundred thirty-nine (139) North of Range Fifty-seven (57) West of the Fifth Principal Meridian, in Barnes County, North Dakota.”¹ This land is located southeast of Valley City and, based on the fact that Cooper has “An undivided one-half interest” in said tract of land, suggests that the land was part of the large swaths of land given to the Northern Pacific Railroad (NP) during the late nineteenth century along their route through North Dakota. That parcel of land was purchased in the Fargo land office by Anthony Gemmet on October 20, 1882.²

According to the case file, the interest Cooper held was valued at $1,500, which would be worth just over $39,000 today when adjusted for inflation. Further, John Noack, acting as administrator of the estate, was the petitioner to the court on the behalf of Cooper, who was deceased. As the case was probated, the land became Noack’s property, and, according to the Standard Atlas of Barnes County, North Dakota (1910), Noack (spelled Noach in the atlas) owned the entire northern half of the section in question, as well as the eastern half of section 12 in the same township.³

It is fascinating to see how a simple case related to a small piece of land in southeastern North Dakota can link investment, settlement, and the descendants of one of America’s most well-known authors. While I have no indication that Anne Cooper ever visited North Dakota, the connection of her (and by extension, her famous father) to the state is special, given the frontier nature of North Dakota in the late 1800s, North Dakota’s important role in the settlement of the West, and James Fenimore Cooper’s love of the frontier in American history.

View a PDF version of the case file.

¹ Anne Charlotte Fenimore Cooper probate case file, Barnes County Probate Case Files, State Historical Society of North Dakota.
² “Patent Details,” U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records, accessed June 27, 2018, https://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=ND0350….
³ Standard Atlas of Barnes County, North Dakota, Chicago:  Alden Publishing Co., 1910, 55.