Dakota Datebook

In 1897, under the advice of her father, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun asking if there was a Santa Claus.

Elders who were children in the 1930s at Turtle Mountain remembered Midnight Mass as the main celebration of Christmas. Families traveled by sleigh to the church, with children bundled under blankets. Most people were Catholic, their roots tracing back to the late 1700s fur trade when Indigenous women married French and Scottish workers.

The Twentieth Century was a time of rapid change. Americans were beginning to take to the roads in their automobiles, and daring young men and women were taking to the skies in their flying machines. Advances like the phonograph came fast and furious, and talking motion pictures and the radio were just around the corner. But some people had a difficult time adjusting to the fast pace of societal changes.

On this date in 1944, Lieutenant R. C. Hagen, United States Navy Reserve and Senior Surviving Officer of the USS Johnston, wrote a letter to John Gillis of Dunseith, detailing the death of his son, Frank, who was killed in action during the Battle of Samar in the South Pacific.

Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, when the country was enjoying the booming economy of the Roaring Twenties. It wouldn't last long. The stock market crashed just a year later, and a full-scale economic depression set in.

America is a land of immigrants, and the U.S. is unusual in world history because people from all ethnic groups try to live peacefully side by side. One of those immigrants was Harry Imai, who, on this date in 1891 was born in Kyoto, Japan.

The middle of December, the people of North Dakota are filled with anticipation for Christmas and the New Year. With winter in control, opportunities for recreation help people face the cold and longer nights. Winter sports are a wonderful pastime in North Dakota.

What do James Russell Lowell, Edward Greenleaf Whittier, and Longfellow all have in common? Apart from being renowned poets, they all had the pleasure of sharing company with Wild Rose, also known as Anna Dawson, a young Boston socialite and a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes. She would later become an activist during the relocations caused by the Garrison Dam.

On this date in 1948, a flood of oratory marked the closing of the trial of August Pusch, who was charged with the poisoning death of his wife. The jury began deliberations in what was headlined as Wahpeton’s most bizarre murder trial.

The start of a new school year brings excitement and a fresh beginning for both students and teachers. At Mandan High School, the announcement of a new school librarian was just one part of the excitement surrounding the return to school.