Category Archives: William Watts Folwell

Meet RG 217

It’s easy to imagine why Record Group 217 has been obscure. The nondescript name, “Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury,” promises little more glamorous than 19th-century auditors’ records. As the target of research, RG 217 is a last-picked-child … Continue reading

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A Fable Agreed Upon, part 3

Timothy J. Sheehan (1835-1913) as profiled in the Albert Lea Tribune in 2011. Sheehan immigrated to the United States in 1850 at the age of 15, an orphaned survivor of the potato famine in Ireland. By 1857, he had settled in Albert … Continue reading

Posted in Minnesota Historical Society, Return Ira Holcombe, Thomas J. Galbraith, Timothy J. Sheehan, William Watts Folwell | Leave a comment

A Fable Agreed Upon, part 2

Solon J. Buck’s mistake went uncorrected. At the outset, it wasn’t influential. The Bulletin was read by MHS members and collected by libraries. But I doubt anyone lost sleep over an annotation error. Indeed, without any correction, there wasn’t any … Continue reading

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A Fable Agreed Upon

Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have mused, “What is history but a fable agreed upon?”  ***** In July, 1918 the Minnesota historical community was buzzing: the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) Bulletin had just published a recently discovered letter written by John P. … Continue reading

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The William Watts Folwell Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society

In 1922, corresponding with Minnesota historian William Watts Folwell, Thomas A. Robertson mused, “This writing of history is, of course, a very particular and tedious work, but it seems sometimes that they catch too much at mere hearsay matters and … Continue reading

Posted in Doing Historical Research, Minnesota Historical Society, William Watts Folwell | 1 Comment