Toba (Mrs. Sam) Geller archive

File — Box: 1, Folder: 7

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection: One of Father William Sherman’s chief interests was to compile documentation about the early settlers of what became North Dakota, their particular ethnic roots, and information about their history and culture. One of ethnic groups studied by Father Sherman was people of Jewish origin and background. In doing this he collected clippings from leading state newspapers. He also did considerable research into legal documents, especially those dealing with the registered owners of specified tracts of land. He also gathered lists of Jewish settlers drawn up by survivors and descendants of the original settlers, as well as lists of names and other information from non-Jews who were interested in the topic. A few of the early settlers or their descendants wrote down their memories of the early days and occasionally these were published in book form or in journal articles. Father Sherman sometimes attended historical conferences where he networked with other historians and sociologists, obtaining names of people who might help in his research. On occasion he presented a paper himself. He was well aware of a handful of Jewish “colonies” around the state, and, armed with that knowledge, perused old land title documents for the relevant areas, often making his own plat maps and filling in with shading those pieces of land owned by Jews. Father Sherman always sought memoirs or informants, but when these were unavailable or could only provide incomplete information, he went by Jewish names in the land records. Father Sherman had organized these materials to a certain extent. The collection has been organized into four series: General overview, Named collections, Topical and Jewish settlements. The General Overview Series deals with the Jewish settlements in general and specific topics. The Named Collections Series is for specific individuals who gathered the material or who are the subjects of the material. The Topical Series deals with special topics, such as small town merchants, or isolated rural Jews. The Jewish Settlements Series covers Jews living in particular geographic areas, such as Fargo and Painted Woods. Even though the file titles in the series are helpful, there is a great deal of duplication within the collection. Anyone wishing to cover the material as completely as possible would be well-advised to at least scan through all the folders. An example of this is that there is a named file for Toba (Mrs. Sam) Geller, but her name appears in a large number of the files. Fargo based Toba Geller spent many years seeking out and preserving the early Jewish history of this region. The scope of her work cannot be understood only from the file bearing her name. There are references within the papers to other significant collections, such as at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest. A significant deposit of the Geller papers appears to be housed by the latter. The collection does not deal exclusively with Jewish efforts at farming, although that is one of the main themes. A good basic overview of this topic can be found in the paper Father Sherman presented at the Seventeenth Annual Northern Great Plains History Conference at Bemidji, Minnesota in 1982. For someone not already familiar with the early Jewish settlements in North Dakota, this paper is a fine introduction to the rest of the materials. It can be found in folder three. Finally, Father Sherman often jotted down notes on letter sized white paper. There are a great number of these. Some clearly relate to a certain area; others may have references to more than one place or topic.