Quick Summary
The early history of Beltrami County is now accessible in the Minnesota Digital Library through a set of fully transcribed oral histories.
The Beltrami County Historical Society (BCHS) collections contain approximately 135 oral history recordings, made primarily between 1950 and 1955. The recordings were done on reel-to-reel tapes by Dr. Charles Vandersluis, a founding member of the Historical Society, historian, and author of several books of local history. Most of the interviewees were original Native American inhabitants, early settlers to the Bemidji area, and local community members and business owners. Many of the interviews were completed just before the subjects died.
The BCHS has digitized these recordings, but they were not fully accessible because they had not been transcribed or shared online. Over the last two years, the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) has provided transcription assistance, descriptive metadata training, and an online repository for these valuable local histories. BCHS reports, “In these tapes, there are stories, with content about Beltrami County, its history, and its residents, that we know virtually nothing about. These stories have the potential to add significant information to our knowledge of our own local history, before it’s permanently lost.”
MDL is pleased to provide free access to these stories through our website. Browse the new oral history recording collection and see what you can discover!
