Gerald McNaught Family Photograph Collection

Collection

Identifier: Photo 2019

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Gerald McNaught photograph collection consists of 35 digital scans made by son Donald McNaught from original photographic prints in his possession. There is also one original photographic print of a threshing scene. The images document the McNaught family while they lived in the Mohall, N.D. area. The finding aid file also includes biographical and genealogical data on the McNaught family including obituaries, articles, genealogical forms and pages from a biographical write-up that includes a number of the images found in this collection. The correspondence file includes two letters written by Gerald McNaught. The 1915 letter is four pages to his parents in which he talks about what he is doing on the farm, also about raising bees and school. The file also includes the reverse of the image (1915?) of hogs on the farm on which a maternal aunt in 1928 wrote a short reminiscence about Gerald and sister Janet growing up on the farm. Laser prints of all the digital scans were made and constitute the images in the remaining files. There is a file containing the information sheets, completed by Donald McNaught, for each of the scanned images. The People Series contains formal portraits and snapshots of various members of the McNaught family, including Gerald and his sister Janet; their parents Roy and Amy McNaught; and even several of their grandparents, George and Hester McNaught. The images of Gerald cover from infancy to young adult. All are formal portraits except one. The Janet & Gerald McNaught file includes one photograph of her as a very young child, them with their pigeons, by a horse that is wearing a hat, and seated in a buggy hitched to two horses. The Roy and Amy McNaught file include them with son Roy in buggy on open prairie, and formal portraits of Roy and Amy, both as young adults and later in life. The George and Hester McNaught file contains a portrait of George as a young man, snapshot of him and wife as aged people. The Topical Series includes farming scenes, clearly on their farm Loop Acres Ranch, (except for Ole Pierson’s threshing outfit, the only original photographic print in the collection), a threshing machine in operation, plowing and seeding. The Loop Acres images include the farm buildings, Gerald and Janet with hogs they were raising, and abandoned buildings. The Minot, N.D. file is a digital scan of four images on a page from a photograph album. They include an image of the Great Northern Railroad depot, passenger train at the depot, building on the state college campus, and a panoramic view of the city. In the center of the page is attached a circular label titled ‘Why Not Minot?’ The Mohall, N.D. file includes an elevated view of the town, a number of people standing on top of the water tower, political rally in Mohall with numerous automobiles and people on street, North Dakota gubernatorial candidate Lynn Frazier speaking before the crowd, new threshing machine on railroad car, large group of students on school steps, and snapshots of early teacher and girl from Carpio, N.D. Concluding the series are two social scenes, including boys swimming in the Souris River while girls are seated on river bank and group of adults at 1946 reunion seated around table outside to eat a meal.

Dates

1890-1924, 1934-1935, 1946, 1995

Creator

McNaught, Gerald, 1901-1976. (Person)

Access

The collection is open under the rules and regulations of the Institute.

Copyrights

Copyright to the images held by the donor, with permission granted to the Institute to make reproductions from the digital scans for researcher use.

Biography

Gerald McNaught was born at Glidden, Iowa June 6, 1901, the son of Roy and Amy (Olive) McNaught. The McNaught family moved in 1904 to Mohall, N.D. where they farmed the ‘Loop Acres Ranch’ in Brandon Township. He attended school in Mohall but graduated from high school at Glidden, Iowa in 1919. He returned to Mohall and taught for a short time. Later in 1919 he began working for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. His home office was at Othello, Washington and worked between Zane, Idaho and Spokane, Wash. The McNaught family left the Mohall area in 1927 but continued to own the farm until sold in 1976 after the death of Gerald.

Gerald graduated from the University of Michigan and married Gladys Teggerdine in 1925. They lived in the Detroit, Michigan area and retired to Boca Raton, Florida where he died October 29, 1976. They raised three children, Donald, Barbara and Marilynn. Gladys died May 23, 1997 at Boca Raton.