Hettinger County

File — Box: 1, Folder: 22

Staff Only

Scope and Content

From the Collection: The Thomas Newgard Collection consists primarily of the North Dakota county atlases that he photocopied from published atlases and used to document ethnicity of many of the farm owners for his book Patterns on the Prairie: A History of Worship in North Dakota published in 2017. The book is a “reference book on the past and present locations of all houses of worship in North Dakota.” The collection is organized into two series: North Dakota County Atlases Maps and General Files.

The North Dakota County Atlases Series consists of the county and township atlases that are photocopied from published atlases and that he used to document ethnicity of many of the farm owners. The original atlas pages do include name of property owners. Some files include two county atlas versions. He marked ethnicity by letter and some also by color. Examples include Danish: red color and ‘D’; German: green color and ‘G”; Norwegian: blue color and ‘N’, Swedish: yellow color and ‘SW’; Many also show location of the churches. They are organized by the name of the county and some alphabetically by townships. The publication date of the original county atlas is included in the listing if identified. Some county files also include photocopies of other documents and correspondence he received.

The General Files Series includes several maps he developed for his book and general reference material. The Church maps are photocopy of the map pages from Patterns on the Prairie: A History of Worship in North Dakota that show the location and name of churches of North Dakota. It also includes county maps of ethnicity of the state. Both were within the same binder. The Ethnicity maps from a binder include six sets of North Dakota county maps on which with various colors he indicates the ethnicity of various properties. The labels are ELIOS, Scan 1893, German, ABDFLS, BPR, and BJS. The general reference items includes maps, newspaper clippings and page copies from various publications.