Within six years of the founding of Northfield in 1855, Northfield proudly flew its first U.S. flag. The Continental Congress had adopted the nation’s

For 20 years the Lockwood Opera House on Division Street had been the primary place where early Northfielders gathered for entertainment. But by 1892

Dad, why doesn’t Carleton play metric football?” That question, from Carleton chemistry professor Jerry Mohrig’s teenage son David, sparked a very special and unique

When I heard that Paul Niemisto was retiring this year, I have to admit I could not believe it. Would this month’s 10th anniversary

“Speaker Ushers in Black History Month.” So read the headline of The Carletonian of Feb. 12, 1999. A picture with the story shows Barack Obama at

If you are a visitor to Northfield for this year’s Defeat of Jesse James Days, Sept. 9-13, you can perhaps be forgiven if you

When I lived in New York and told anyone that my alma mater was St. Olaf, more often than not the response was, “Oh,

Let’s get this out of the way from the start. You can’t pay me enough to watch the 40 or more mostly mediocre (and

On June 16, 1899, more than 6,000 visitors streamed into Northfield on a dozen regular and special trains and marched in a mile-long parade.

In the spring of 2015 the Northfield Historical Society and The Entertainment Guide teamed up to publish volumes 2 and 3 of selected Historic Happenings columns about St. Olaf and Carleton. (Volume

I guess I am easily entertained, because my idea of a good time is to look at microfilm of old newspapers at the Northfield

What would have been on the covers of the February Entertainment Guides had they been around in the 19th century? In 1892, we may have

When I moved to Northfield from New York in 2004 and took an interest in researching and writing about the history of the town

Way back in the historic mid-1960s, when I was attending St. Olaf, my friends and I would head down to Sayles-Hill Gym at Carleton

Dundas residents got an early glimpse of the precocious talent of 3-year-old Marilyn Sellars when, in the middle of a Sunday sermon at the

“No matter where you go in the United States, it has been said, you will find someone who knows that Jesse James raided a

Just two months shy of being elected president of the United States, Ike Eisenhower gave the only college address of his campaign in Northfield.

Researching historic happenings can be time-consuming. It can also be as easy as “googling” a  topic on a computer. Occasionally, it is a matter of

Two years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, Minnesotans had the chance to vote for the first woman ever to

Northfield could hardly have been more welcoming. It was front page news when the Northfield News announced on June 18, 1898, that “Miss Baker’s boarding