Do you see the park’s baseball field and the swimming pool on the postcard above? Vermillion is collecting stories about the park for the celebration. We will happily forward any stories you send to us to the committee collecting the stories. Help us assign a date to this postcard. We know it is after 1936 and before the late 1950s because the caretaker’s house in the park is present, but the water tower is not. Please also contact us if you know who took the picture or made the postcard. The image is an undated postcard from South Dakota postal cards: A collection of cards of early South Dakota. CHILSON COLLECTION F656 .S63x.

On this election day, Archives and Special Collections has created a list of Dakota Territory’s governors and delegates and a list of South Dakota’s governors, U.S. senators, and U.S. representatives. If you notice any misspellings or other errors, please let us know. This list is located with the I.D. Weeks online LibGuides. The location of South Dakota politicians’ archives can be found in The Plains Political Tradition: Essays on South Dakota Political Culture, Volume 3. This book is in the Chilson Collection.

“This book was created by the participants of the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute held at the University of South Dakota in June 2004. This is number 17 of an edition of 24. It contains fourteen black & white 14 x 14 cm linoleum prints. Its call number is SPECIAL BOOKS N7433.35 .U6 2004.

If you have wondered what it is like to work in an archive, here is an opportunity to do one of our common tasks, which is researching for dates of undated material. Help us research when the attached maps were made. One way to assign dates to the maps would be to read an USD history, like Cummins’ History of the University of South Dakota, 1862-1966 (copies are in the library, in the Archives and Special Collections, and online at the Digital Library of South Dakota) to find out when various buildings were built, and date the map by what buildings are or are not present. Another way would be to look through Coyote yearbooks (copies are in the library and in the Archives and Special Collections) to find pictures that match the pictures around the edge of the maps. Either way, the dates assigned would be approximate or circa dates. Let us know what you find.

Incipit laus Sancti Bernardi Abatis; Laus de Virgine Maria: Ave mater misericordie may be the oldest book in the Archives and Special Collections. Image is a page from Bernard, and Innocentius III. I found this description of the book on a sheet of letterhead paper tucked into the book: “Manuscript on paper, written in a fine formal book hand. 28 lines. 12 leaves (the last 4 blank). Initials in red. Rubricated. 4to. Boards. …Italy, middle XVth cent. A beautifully written manuscript of the Laus de Virgine Maria, one of a number of poems attributed to St. Bernard, is on leaves 1-8r. The balance of 8r and 8v, contains the poem Ave Mondi (sic) spes Maria, attributed to Pope Innocent III.” The full citation for the book is: Bernard, and Innocentius III. Incipit laus Sancti Bernardi Abatis; Laus de Virgine Maria: Ave mater misericordie. s.n., 1450. CHILSON COLLECTION BX890.B43 L3x. The Archives and Special Collections has books and manuscripts written in Latin. These are great for those who want to practice reading or translating Latin. Also, many of these will be of interest to researchers of the history of religions or bookmaking.

"For a time prospects for a park and artificial lake under a W.P.A. grant generated much interest in the southern part of the county. The idea first emerged in 1933 as a modest project involving a grant of $8,000 for work-relief purposes. During the following year the concept grew in proportion to culminate in a $23,000 grant from the federal agency for a 150-acre lake adjoining the grounds used at the time as the city golf course three miles north of Vermillion." The quote above is from Herbert S. Schell’s History of Clay County, South Dakota (Vermillion, SD: Clay County Historical Society, 1976), pp. 221-222, CHILSON COLLECTION F657.C6 S34x. Read Schell’s book to find out why the lake was not made. He also tells us about the other Great Depression era federal relief projects proposed or completed in Clay County. I hope you enjoy this book. It is a pleasant read and won an award of merit from the American Association for State and Local History. The base map is USGS Topographic map Vermillion, SD, scale 1:24,000, 1971 edition. The location of the dam and golf course is from Topographic Map of Proposed Lake Vermillion, catalog number 2025.16.01, and the map is located at the W.H. Over Museum. I wonder where the planners envisioned the park. The Archives and Special Collections staff have created a selected bibliography of histories and other resources about Vermillion, Clay County, Dakota Territory, and South Dakota. It is available online on an I.D. Weeks Library LibGuide.

ARCHIVESSPACE GAME – BEGINNER’S LEVEL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ DIRECTIONS : I found this questionnaire format in the South Dakota Academy of Science papers. Write the numbers 1 through 7 on a piece of paper. Use the search function on ArchivesSpace (https://archives.usd.edu/) to complete the following statements about our archival collections. Place your answers under the numbers. Find the collection about South Dakota union organizers. Place the first letter of the collection creator’s last name in spot # 6. Find the collection that has inkjet photographs of a protest movement against an energy pipeline. Place the first letter of the photographer’s last name in spot # 1. Find the collection about a South Dakota state representative for Clay and Union Counties. Place the first letter of her last name in spot # 7. Find the collection that has the Vermillion Community Artists’ Series programs. Place the first letter of the collection-creator’s last name in spot # 2. Find the collection about a woman who wrote scripts for television and movies. Place the first letter of her last name in spot # 4. Find the collection by a photographer of the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973. Place the first letter of his last name in spot # 3. Find the collection about tribal council activity listings. Place the first letter of the council’s name in spot # 5.

From the Charles and Frances Dillon scrapbook. Mr. Dillon was a member of the US House of Representatives from South Dakota (1913-1919).

Mary Beaty Edelen served in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 1973 to 1980 and from 1983 to 1992, representing Clay and Union Counties and becoming the first woman legislator elected from her district. She was the president of the National Order of Women Legislators in 1986 and on the executive board of the Legislative Research Council from 1975-76 and 1979-80 The Mary B. Edelen papers at the Archives and Special Collections are 2.5 linear feet and consist mainly of material related to her work in the South Dakota House of Representatives. Sources: Herbert S. Schell. History of Clay County, South Dakota. Vermillion SD: Clay County Historical Society, 1976. Page 260. South Dakota Legislature, Legislative Research Council, Historical Listings http://www.sdlegislature.gov/Legislators/Historical_Listing/default.aspx?Session=2018 (accessed Dec. 27, 2017). South Dakota. Legislature, Legislative Research Council. Biographical directory of the South Dakota legislature, 1889-1989. Pierre, SD: The Council, 1989.

Charles Hall Dillon was South Dakota’s representative to the U.S. Congress 1913-1919. He was also a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1900 and 1908, a member of the state senate 1903-1911, and an associate justice of the state supreme court 1922-1926. He was born near Jasper, Indiana in 1853 and died in Vermillion, South Dakota in 1929. The Archives and Special Collections has a scrapbook full of mementos from the events Dillon and his wife Frances attended while they were living in Washington DC. The scrapbook contains invitations, playbills, and other programs that might be useful to anyone who is researching the social life of a U.S. Congressman and his wife during the early part of the 1900’s. Contact the Archives and Special Collections for a partial inventory of the items in the scrapbook. Biographical information is from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congresshttp://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000348 (accessed January 7, 2015). Image is from the Charles H. and Frances J. Dillon scrapbook.