08/31/2026
Beltrami County Historical Society releases second volume of North Country Journal, authors to read September 10
BEMIDJI, Minn. — The Beltrami County Historical Society will celebrate the release of North Country Journal, Volume 2 with a reading by its contributors on Thursday, September 10, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the meeting room at the Beltrami County History Center, 130 Minnesota Avenue SW in Bemidji. The event is free and open to the public. Copies will be available for purchase.
The new volume collects twenty accounts of how people came to northern Minnesota, spanning the 1880s through the 1990s and drawn from the Society's archives.
An Acadian family traces its line from the Great Deportation through New Brunswick to a homestead claim near the Red Lake reservation line. A Chinese laundry proprietor named Sam Kee works Second Street in Bemidji for nearly thirty years while the Exclusion Act is federal law. The Crookston Lumber Company arrives, and then the mill burns. Families plant crops in cutover stumpland. A man named N. Edward Johnson builds Babe the Blue Ox. A family arrives in Bemidji by way of Qatar, the United Kingdom, France, and Quebec.
"This county is made of people who came here and stayed. Some arrived in 1885 and some in 1995, and Volume 2 treats both as history worth writing down," said Emily Thabes, Executive Director of the Beltrami County Historical Society. "We publish it because these stories belong to the people in them, not to our archive."
The stories came from oral histories, transcribed interviews, family memoirs, diaries, letters, homestead records, and old newspapers held at the History Center. Most appear in print here for the first time. Contributors are county residents, local historians, and descendants of the families described.
Managing editor Sue Bruns worked with a volunteer publications committee to assemble the volume. Bruns retired after thirty-two years teaching English and serving as assistant principal at Bemidji High School, has written the monthly Generations column for the Bemidji Pioneer since 2010, and leads a Capturing Memories writing workshop at the History Center. Several accounts in the volume came out of that workshop.
Several contributors will read from their work and take questions. Copies are $15 and will also be available at the History Center museum store during regular hours after the release.
The Beltrami County Historical Society was founded in 1952 and operates a museum and archive in the historic Great Northern Railroad Depot in Bemidji. North Country Journal is its continuing publication series, revived in 2025 to bring the Society's collections to readers beyond the reading room.
