Dakota Resources - South Dakota Historical Society Press...262 South Dakota History cial records,...
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Dakota Resources: Religious Archives at the Center for Western Studies ALAN M, SCHWARTZ The Center for Western Studies, an agency of Augustana Col- lege, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is the official repository for the Archives of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota and is the South Dakota District Archives of the American Lutheran Church. A huge storehouse of historical information can be found in these two church archives, and many aspects of the history of South Dakota, the Northern Great Plains, and the United States are well documented in these collections. The Archives of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota are sub- stantial in both size and content. They consist of 90 collections of various documents, occupying 135 cubic feet, plus 128 oversize volumes, 79 church registers/registers of church services, 68 sets of blueprints, 2,000 photographs, and 18 scrapbooks. The individ- ual collections range in size from three letters to twenty cubic feet of material and cover the years 1862 to 1982, Documents found in the collections include correspondence, notes, journals, diaries, manuscripts, minutes, reports, lists, school records, finan- Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
Transcript of Dakota Resources - South Dakota Historical Society Press...262 South Dakota History cial records,...
Dakota Resources:
Religious Archives at theCenter for Western Studies
ALAN M, SCHWARTZ
The Center for Western Studies, an agency of Augustana Col-lege, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is the official repository for theArchives of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota and is theSouth Dakota District Archives of the American LutheranChurch. A huge storehouse of historical information can be foundin these two church archives, and many aspects of the history ofSouth Dakota, the Northern Great Plains, and the United Statesare well documented in these collections.
The Archives of the Episcopal Church in South Dakota are sub-stantial in both size and content. They consist of 90 collections ofvarious documents, occupying 135 cubic feet, plus 128 oversizevolumes, 79 church registers/registers of church services, 68 setsof blueprints, 2,000 photographs, and 18 scrapbooks. The individ-ual collections range in size from three letters to twenty cubicfeet of material and cover the years 1862 to 1982, Documentsfound in the collections include correspondence, notes, journals,diaries, manuscripts, minutes, reports, lists, school records, finan-
Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
262 South Dakota History
cial records, photographs, printed materials, newspaper clip-pings, and scrapbooks. To better facilitate retrieval and usage,these materials have been grouped into the following recordseries: (1) records/papers; (2) church registers/registers of churchservices; (3) photographs; (4) scrapbooks; (5) blueprints/buildingspecifications; and (6) printed materials.
In the Episcopal archives, the most important research materi-als are located in the records/papers series, which has been fur-ther divided into various subseries: bishops' papers; archdeacons'papers; officers' papers; clergy papers; governing-body records;committee, department, and institutional records; churchrecords; and mission records. One highly important subseries con-tains the bishops' papers. Included in this area are the papers ofthe best-known Episcopalian in South Dakota —William HobartHare, the first Episcopal bishop of the state. The papers of hissuccessors, George Biller, Jr., Hugh L. Burleson, William BlairRoberts, and Conrad Gesner, are also available. The papers of theEpiscopal bishops provide an abundance of historical informationon such varied topics as the Great Depression in South Dakota.the home front during the first and second world wars, the impactof the Missouri River dams, and the rise of the civil rights move-ment.
Another valuable group of documents in the Episcopal archivesare the records of committees, departments, and institutions. Thedocuments generated by the Episcopal church's efforts to pro-vide educational facilities for both white and Sioux children areincluded in this subseries. Separate collections exist for AllSaints' School (Sioux Falls), Bishop Hare School (Mission), SaintElizabeth's School (Wakpala), Saint John's School (CheyenneRiver Indian Reservation), and Saint Mary's School (Springfield).Additional materials on the schools can also be found in other col-lections, such as the papers of William Hobart Hare. Of increasingvalue to family historians is the collection of Episcopal churchregisters. The collection contains volumes for Episcopal missionslocated on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Santee, Standing Rock, andYankton reservations. Many of the registers date back to the1870s. The remainder of the volumes in the collection come frominactive churches and older parishes.
While the Center for Western Studies has been quite success-ful in obtaining and preserving the historical records of the Epis-copal church, one of the region's oldest church bodies, it has alsobeen successful in saving the records of a relative newcomer tothe area, the American Lutheran Church (ALC), South Dakota
Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
Dakota Resources 263
District, which was established in 1960. The ALC archives at thecenter is small compared to the Episcopal archives, but the mate-rials are equally important. The ALC archives contains twelvecollections, occupying twelve cubic feet, as well as approximatelyfive hundred bound journals and loose volumes and seventy-twolantern slides of rural churches and homes. The materials datefrom 1853 to 1980, Items in the ALC collections are similar tothose found in the Episcopal collections. However, the Lutheranarchives also contains various printed materials, such as annualreports, minutes, bulletins, directories, yearbooks, and histories.Many of the items are written in Norwegian and were publishedby the Norwegian Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Luther-an Church, predecessors of the American Lutheran Church.
Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
264 South Dakota History
The ALC collections of original materials include the records ofthe ALC district office files, the Luther League, Lutheran Out-doors, Lutheran Brotherhood, Home Missions, and the Women'sMissionary Federation/Ladies Aid Society historical project. Thelatter collection is by far one of the most important sources of in-formation on the history of the Lutheran church in South Dakota,The project files contain manuscripts, annual reports, corre-spondence, printed materials, newspaper clippings, and photo-graphs collected by the society from 1930 to 1960. The manu-scripts in particular are important as they record the activitiesand recollections of the early settlers and other important indi-viduals.
These examples barely cover the numerous materials to befound in the two religious archives at the Center for WesternStudies. For additional information, please contact ArchivistAlan M. Schwartz, Center for Western Studies, Augustana Col-lege, Sioux Falls, SD 57197; telephone (605) 336-4007,
Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
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Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
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Typewritten Text
All illustrations in this issue are property of the South Dakota State Historical Society except those on the following pages: p. 189 (right), from Stella Gilman, A Gumbo Lily and Other Tales (New York: Abbey Press, 1901); p. 197, from South Dakota State Library, Pierre; p. 209, from Dorinda Riessen Reed, The Woman Suffrage Movement in South Dakota, 2d ed. (Pierre: South Dakota Commission on the Status of Women, 1975); pp. 250, 251, from Memorial Library, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis.
