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Russell Lee, who lived from 1903 to 1986, travelled through Koochiching County in the summer and autumn of 1937 as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. The Library of Congress holds his negatives from the county’s lumber towns and states plainly that they are in the public domain.
This week’s instalment is Ericsburg. It rests on 10 frames, all filed by the Library in Lot 1141, which it describes as 54 prints of lumber towns in northern Minnesota. The frames run from an excelsior mill to a general store, a set of artesian wells, a log barn and a sawmill. Everything below about them comes from the Library’s own captions.
Three of the 10 frames concern an excelsior works, and all three are dated 1937 Aug. None of the three captions names or mentions a person. They stay with the buildings and the equipment.
The first is a close view. The Library’s caption reads “Detail of abandoned excelsior mill. Ericsburg, Minnesota”. It gives a word for the condition of the mill and tells the viewer this is a detail, but it does not say which part of the mill is shown. It also does not explain what excelsior is, and this article leaves that alone too.
The second frame goes to the equipment. Its caption describes machinery inside an excelsior mill and uses the same word for the mill’s condition as the first, though the catalogue record spells it with a letter missing. The caption names no machine and no maker, so the picture is the only evidence of what the machinery looked like.
The third is captioned “Remains of boiler at old excelsior factory. Ericsburg, Minnesota”. Two of the three captions say mill and one says factory. The Library does not say whether the three frames show one building or more than one, and the article does not guess.
Three more frames, also dated 1937 Aug., turn to a store. Two of them are filed by the Library under Ericsburg alone, with no county, and the third under Koochiching County. Together they give a corner, a moment with a bill and a desk.
“Corner of general store, Ericsburg, Minnesota” is the caption of the first. It gives the kind of building and one part of it. It says nothing about what the store sold or which corner of the building the camera faced.
The next is “General storekeeper looking over bill, Ericsburg, Minnesota”. The caption gives a trade and an action, and it does not name the person, so this article does not either. What the bill was for, and who had sent it, the Library does not say.
The third, “Desk of storekeeper. Ericsburg, Minnesota”, is the one of the three that carries the county in its place line. The caption does not say whether the desk stood in the building whose corner appears in the first frame, so the article does not say either.
Two frames step away from the mill and the store. Both are dated 1937 Aug. One speaks for the town as a whole; the other looks at a single building.
The caption reads “Small artesian wells contribute to the water supply of Ericsburg, Minnesota”. It is the only caption in the set that describes the town rather than one building or one trade. The verb matters: the wells contribute to the water supply, which is not the same as being all of it, and the caption names no other source.
“Detail of log barn. Ericsburg, Minnesota” opens with the same two words, “Detail of”, as the first mill frame. The caption gives the barn’s material, logs, and its kind, and nothing else. It names no owner and no use beyond the word barn.
The remaining two frames carry a later date than the rest. Eight of the 10 are dated 1937 Aug., and these two are dated 1937 Sept., so the set runs across August and September of 1937. The Library’s dates do not say how many trips Russell Lee made to the town, and the article puts no number on them.
“Decay of sawmill at Ericsburg, Minnesota” is the first of them. It is the only caption in the set to name a sawmill, and the only one to use the word decay. It gives no date for the sawmill’s construction and no reason for its condition.
The last is captioned “Store at Ericsburg, Minnesota”. Where the first August frame says general store, this one says only store, and the caption does not say whether it is the same building. It is dated a month after the August frames of a store.
Taken together, the 10 frames give an excelsior mill, a store and a desk, wells, a barn and a sawmill, each in the few words the Library supplies. Readers who want the place as it is today will find it on the guide’s Ericsburg page. The pictures stop in 1937, and so does this instalment.
1937: Russell Lee in the Lumber Towns works through the Library of Congress’s 1937 survey of this county’s lumber towns one town at a time. The photographs are in the public domain; the captions are the Library’s; the article adds nothing the captions do not carry.
Every photograph above was made in 1937 by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration and is held by the Library of Congress. The Library states: “The contents of the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse.” Each item record carries the advisory “No known restrictions”, and the caption under each picture is the Library’s own, reproduced word for word.
Credit line supplied by the Library: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.
The frames in this instalment come from:
Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives at the Library of Congress · the Library’s rights statement for this collection
