June 9, 2021

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently visited our Germans from Russia Heritage Collection (GRHC) to review the Father William C. Sherman Photograph Collection. View the full story at NDSU News here.

Anna Andrzejewski, Bradshaw Knight Professor of Environmental Humanities and director of the Center for Culture, History and the Environment, along with art history doctoral student Travis Olson, came to NDSU on June 8, 2021 to research homestead photos from Dunn, Hettinger, and Stark Counties in southwest North Dakota.

“We have wanted to visit this collection since March 2020 – a visit delayed by the pandemic. However, it was worth the wait,” Andrzejewski said. “This collection of photographs and related material documents buildings that have been demolished or fallen into complete ruin. We now have a much better picture of what Germans from Russia homesteads looked like than we did before.”

According to Michael Miller, Director of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, “Sherman’s photographs of central and western North Dakota provides one of the most comprehensive collections of homestead images worldwide. The collection includes 13,000 black and white photos, negatives and color slides.”

The GRHC will develop a traveling and virtual exhibit to premiere in Fall 2022.

The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection was established in 1978. The collection houses numerous books, manuscript collections, photographs, oral histories and other historical material about Germans from Russia culture and ancestry.

More digitized files from NDSU Libraries Special Collections can be viewed online at Digital Horizons.

Father Sherman pictured in 1974 at the George Weller farm built in 1903, New Leipzig, ND. The house-barn is an abandoned stone building with a gable roof. View twenty-six images of the George Weller farm near New Leipzig, North Dakota.