North Dakota (Includes "Pageant of the Prairies," by Hildreth), 1917-1927

File — Box: 21, Folder: 14

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection: The Hildreth collection consists of correspondence, attorney dockets, case files, financial records, and various subject files. The bulk of the Correspondence Series is the letterpress collection of outgoing correspondence from 1893 to 1909 which is quite complete. This collection fully documents Mr. Hildreth's career for this time period. Almost all is typed thus facilitating reading. Only two folders of incoming correspondence, 1894, 1896, and 1923, to 1926, have been preserved and are very scattered. The State Bar Association of North Dakota correspondence includes both incoming and outgoing letters from 1932 to 1935 and is very complete. It deals mainly with the membership problems of the American Bar Association in North Dakota including its delinquent members and the national headquarters. The remainder of the correspondence, which is very complete, consists of Mr. Hildreth's official correspondence while serving as president of the State Bar Association of North Dakota from 1935 -1936. The attorney docket ledgers basically cover most Mr. Hildreth's career from 1884 to 1943 although there is overlapping of years. Most of the volumes include an index to the cases with all actions taken listed for each case. Another major series is the Court Case Papers Series. The major case papers include those of Katherine Rotenburg vs. Arthur Fisher, and Mr. and Mrs. Fisher (1926-1927) for which Mr. Hildreth represented the defendants; Myron R. Kent, whom he defended (1894), and the Movius Land and Loan Company, et. al. of Lidgerwood, North Dakota (1925-1927), whom he also defended. The papers of each case have been organized alphabetically by type of document and all are quite complete. Other cases include the transcripts for Henry von Bank (1918), Kate Richards O'Hare (1917), and A.D. Weeks, et. al. vs. Charles Hetland and City of Fargo (1924). The financial ledgers cover only the years 1891 to 1893 and 1904 to 1910. They are mainly business related although some do contain personal expenses. The Subject Files Series, arranged alphabetically, cover many aspects of Mr. Hildreth's career. It includes pamphlets on the 1924 Davis-Bryan presidential campaign, prohibition and other miscellaneous topics including a copy of Townleyism Unmasked. There are six law notebooks of his son Melvin from while attending Columbia University from 1914 to 1916. The scrapbooks, composed of newspaper clippings and some pamphlets, deal primarily with political topics mainly national, New York and the Democratic Party. Other topics include North Dakota, especially early statehood, women's suffrage, and death of former President Ulysses S. Grant, and legal articles. Several of the scrapbooks have indexes. The newspaper clippings, arranged by subject, are not very extensive. There are also several of Mr. Hildreth's speeches and various State Bar Association of North Dakota publications.