James J. Hill House

Match Holder.

Match holders such as these were hung near gaslight fixtures, so that a match and surface to strike it on were alway at hand for lighting the lights.

Sink foot.

Exterior masonry (with frost and snow).

Exterior door panel with dusting of snow.

Dining Room chandelier bowl (removed for cleaning).

Fireplace tile.

Door archway.

'H' marks the spot.

Mosaic.

Mantelpiece.

Happy Emancipation Day from the James J. Hill House!

In St. Paul’s African American community at the turn of the 20th century, January 1 was celebrated as Emancipation Day. Celebrating the day the Emancipation Proclamation officially went into effect on January 1, 1863, this holiday was once one of the largest annual celebrations in many African American communities, especially significant at a time when slavery was still in living memory.

In December issues of The Appeal, a St. Paul based African American paper published from 1885-1924, the pages often contained multiple ads for grand Emancipation Day celebrations. Banquets, concerts, and dances, vaudeville shows were held in venues across St. Paul. The advertisement below, published in 1901, lists “Mrs. R. C. Minor” as one of the performers; this is Addie Minor, wife of Robert C. Minor, the Steward in charge of James J. Hill’s personal railcar. Robert spent much of his time “on the road” with Mr. Hill. Addie, meanwhile, earned a living giving music lessons from their house in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood.

You can browse and search through issues of The Appeal and many other historic newspapers at MNHS’s Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub: https://mnhs.info/3TzDFMj

Image: Advertisement, The Appeal, 12/17/1901

Happy New Year from the James J. Hill House!

In the late 19th and early 20th century, middle and upper-class families commonly celebrated New Year’s Day by making or receiving ‘calls,’ or short visits. ‘Calling’ was a form of social networking practiced throughout the year, but New Year’s Day visits were expected.

Middle and upper-class families often exchanged calling cards—a small typewritten card that served a function somewhere between that of a modern business card and a “friend request” on Facebook. The exchange of cards was a formal indicator that the person was now welcome to call during the other person’s regular calling hours. Mrs. Hill’s calling card stated she was “at home” on Tuesdays, and she received callers in the Music Room. Visits were expected to be short, between five and ten minutes. The custom of calling served as a way to stay in touch with a wide array of people, similar to the function now served by online social networks.

On New Year’s Day, it was traditional to go through one’s calling card collection and visit as many as possible. Typically, men did the calling, while women stayed home to receive the callers. Mary Hill often decorated her main hall especially for the occasion, ordering floral arrangements from local greenhouses. In 1910, she ordered enough flowers to fill the main entryway, for a cost of $180.50—the equivalent of roughly $5,000 today.

Mary’s other New Year’s tradition was to begin a new diary. An avid diarist, she always began in a new journal on January 1st, regardless of how many pages were left in the previous year’s diary. The first pages were typically filled with a list of all her New Year’s callers, followed by the entry for the day. On January 1st, 1902, she wrote, “How fair these pages! May nothing dark mar them in the coming year.”



Photo: Postcard, ca. 1910.

in 1901, Mary T. Hill wrote in her diary, “Such a banging and ringing of bells as ushered in the new Year! It was a beautiful night.“

Noisemaking was one of many customs associated with the Scottish New Year’s holiday of Hogmanay, a tradition that informed American New Year’s celebrations via the influence of Scots immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries. Throughout the 19th century, many Americans practiced the Scottish tradition of “first-footing,” competing to be the first visitor to their neighbor’s homes in the New Year in the belief that it would bring good luck. The most lasting Hogmanay tradition brought to America was the communal singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ a 1788 composition by Scots poet Robert Burns set to a traditional folk melody.

At the turn of the 20th century, New Year’s Eve also became a favorite occasion for decadent parties thrown by America’s wealthiest families. In an otherwise rigidly formal culture, New Year's Eve became one of the few nights in which it was socially acceptable to "let loose." In 1910, Second Cook Celia wrote to her boyfriend to describe a New Year's Eve party the Hill family had held: "They had a supper at 11:30 and had a great old time at 12 o’clock. They all joined hands & danced around the table & sang songs acting just like a bunch of kids."

New Year’s balls attended by Gilded Age socialites in the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, and in the gated community of Tuxedo Park, New York, are credited with popularizing champagne toasts as well as a new style of men’s formalwear that would become known as the “Tuxedo,” named after the New York village. Many of these elite balls were attended by the children of James J. Hill.

While her children became consummate socialites, Mary Hill preferred a quiet New Year’s Eve at home. (“The girls...are busy arranging nonsense for the evening party, and I took myself out of the way,” she wrote in her 1910 diary entry.) Mary preferred to end her year in grateful contemplation, as exemplified by her 1902 diary entry:

“Last day of the year! How quickly the years roll around each one more quickly than the other as we descend the hill of life…. We have much to be thankful for at close of the year. We are all well.”

Photo: “A New Year’s Eve Celebration,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1914. (Wikipedia)

Table leg with Corinthian capital.

Heat register.

Pilaster.

Stained glass windows.

In Minnesota at the turn of the 20th century, the days between Christmas and New Year’s were considered prime time to go Julbukking—a Scandinavian Christmas tradition in which people donned disguises and traveled door-to-door, singing in exchange for candy or other treats.

In some communities, neighbors would have to guess who was under the disguise—or risk getting a trick played on them. In another variant, each person visited was expected to quickly don their own disguise and join the traveling band of Julbukkers, until the whole town had joined the procession.

Also known as “Christmas Fooling” or “Christmas Ghosting,” this tradition was brought to Minnesota in the mid-19th century by Norwegian immigrants. In Norway, the practice likely had its origin in ancient pre-Christian rituals surrounding the holiday of Yule, and is thought to have once honored the Norse god Thor. Julbukking originally involved bringing a goat’s head from house to house (“Julebukk” translates as “Yule Goat” in Norwegian), in reference to Thor’s goat-drawn chariot. In more recent centuries, the practice became associated with Christmas across Scandinavia.

In America, Julbukking declined in popularity in the 1930s and 40s due to the increased cultural assimilation of Scandinavian Americans, and the rise in popularity of Halloween and the similar ritual of trick-or-treating. However, in some communities Julbukking continued well into the 1960s and 1970s.

Have you ever gone Julbukking, or any similar traditions? Let us know in the comments!



Photo: “Julebukker, Norwegian Christmas foolers,” ca. 1908.

Blanket chest.

Overmantel.

Happy St. Stephen’s Day, Boxing Day, and Wren’s Day from the James J. HIll House!

Since medieval times, The Feast Day of St. Stephen (December 26), the second day of Christmastide, had been a traditional day to collect charity donations and give gifts to the poor in countries across Europe. By the early 19th century, the practice of collecting “Alms Boxes” had given rise to the holiday of Boxing Day in Great Britain and other Commonwealth territories (including the Canadian province where James J. Hill spent his youth). On Boxing Day, it became customary for middle and upper class families to give gifts to their domestic employees, and sometimes even host special “Servant’s Balls” for their staff. In the 20th century, Boxing Day became more and more associated with shopping and retail sales.

In Ireland and other parts of the British Isles, December 26 is also Wren’s Day. Local youth would traditionally hunt or capture a wren (or create a papier-mâché effigy if none could be found) and then parade the wren in a holly branch from door-to-door. These “Wren Boys,” “Mummers,” or “Strawboys,” as they were commonly called, would often wear masks and disguises and beg for treats in a ritual similar to Halloween Trick-or-Treating. This tradition briefly flourished in some Irish-American communities in the 19th century before largely disappearing from the US in the 20th century. Today, Wren Day traditions are experiencing a revival in much of Ireland and Wales.

Are you someone who has to work during the holidays? You’re not alone. At the turn of the 20th century, people employed as domestic servants (this included over half of all working women) did not generally get time off for the holidays. If anything, holidays were typically marked by more work than usual.

In one exception, in 1910 the Hill family did allow their cook, Lena Peterson, to take Christmas Eve off to be with her family. However, the next morning, Lena “missed her car” and was unable to make it back to the Hill House to prepare Christmas meals for a gathering of the extended Hill family. This meant twice as much work for Second Cook Celia Tauer. As Second Cook, Celia’s usual role was to prepare food for the domestic staff (even when the Hill family was not home, there were 10-15 mouths to feed among the staff alone). To her surprise, this Christmas she was also tasked with making a lavish multi-course meal for eleven guests.

Celia chronicled her busy Christmas in a letter to her fiancé, Henry Forstner, in her hometown of New Ulm: “I guess as far as work was concerned I got my share....Then I got mad & disgusted & didn’t get in good humor till I got out in the afternoon…I never before spent a more disgusting Xmas then [sic] this trip. But it’s all over now….Xmas morning I dreamed that I was in New Ulm, but only had a few minutes time, and I met you on a bridge & I was going to speak to you. The alarm went of & that was the last of it. Thats the way it goes when ever I have a civilized dream. Guess thats all for this trip. Wishing you a Happy Hew Year.”



Photos: Celia Tauer, 1910; Christmas Day menu saved by Celia Tauer Forstner. The handwriting is Mary Hill’s.

Main staircase balustrade and crown moulding (with wreath).

Merry Christmas from the James J. Hill House!



Photo: Gertrude and Walter Hill in front of a Christmas Tree, 1891.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, a perfect night for. . . telling ghost stories?

While many today prefer to keep this season “merry and bright,” for the Victorians, Christmas Eve was considered the best night of the year to share a spine-chilling tale. “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” observed writer Jerome K. Jerome in 1891. “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.”

In her 1904 ‘Book of Indoor and Outdoor Games,’ domestic advice writer Florence Kinglsand explained: “The veil that separates the realm of spirits from that of mortals has always been held by reverent tradition…to be thinner on Christmas Eve than at any other time of the year. Ghosts are said to revisit their old haunts and homes; hence the Christmas custom of relating stories of spectral visitants.”

Telling ghost stories was a Christmas Eve mainstay throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. If people didn’t know any frightening tales of their own, they had plenty of literature to read from: every year, magazines published large “Christmas Annuals” that were invariably packed with ghost stories. It is no coincidence that the most famous 19th century Christmas story of all– Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’-- is also a ghost story.

Christmas ghost stories belong to a long lineage of frightening wintertime folk traditions found across the Northern hemisphere. In many areas of Europe, Christmas was viewed as a time when terrifying entities would visit, including the demonic Krampus (central Europe), Grýla the Christmas Witch and her henchmen the Yule Lads (Iceland), the shapeshifter Perchta (the Alpine regions), and the mischievous rhyming horse skull known as Mari Lwyd (Wales). In a way, both the season’s merry festivals and these more frightening customs can be seen as different responses to a season when nights are long and the weather cold.

Christmas Eve ghost stories declined in popularity around the same time as Halloween, brought to America by Irish immigrants, grew in prominence. In many ways, Halloween as it exists today has taken on many of the creepier elements formerly associated with Christmas.



Image: “Marley’s Ghost,” illustration by Charles Green, 1912.

in 1913, Mary T. Hill wrote in her diary, “Not at all cold. Busy as one always is on Christmas Eve. Tree all ready this morning. The children are all well. How they did enjoy the tree, and all belonging to it.”

Decorating and lighting a tree on Christmas Eve was a Hill family tradition. Granddaughter Georgiana Slade Reny recalled, “I don’t remember all the different decorations because its importance was largely the colored cornucopias filled with hard candy. Norman [her brother] and I were not allowed to eat candy, so we would quickly remove a cornucopia and go behind the tree where Axel [the houseman] stood with pails filled with water in case the tree caught on fire from the candles. Axel wouldn’t tell on us.”

Some Christmas tree history from our friends at the Alexander Ramsey House.

The Christmas tree originated in central Europe during the Middle Ages, with possible roots in older, pre-Christian traditions. For centuries, decorating a tree was a regional custom found mostly in Germany, Estonia, and Livonia.

The first recorded Christmas tree in North America was put up by Hessian soldiers stationed in Quebec in 1781. For the next sixty years, Americans would occasionally make references to Christmas trees, usually seen as a peculiar custom unique to German-speaking immigrants.

In the 1800s, the custom became fashionable among nobility across Europe. In 1841, Britain’s Queen Victoria placed a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle. The custom had first been brought to Britain by the German-born Queen Charlotte in 1800, and was enthusiastically adopted by Queen Victoria and her husband, the German-born Prince Albert. In 1848, an engraving of the royal family around their Christmas tree published in the Illustrated London News caused a sudden craze for Christmas trees in households across Britain.

In 1850, in the US, Godey’s Lady’s Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale published the same engraving of the British royal family, but altered it to remove Queen Victoria’s crown and Prince Albert’s sash and mustache. This image (pictured here) turned the royal family into a generic American family. As it had in Britain, the Christmas tree surged in popularity in the US following the publication of this image.

By the 1870s, Christmas trees were fast becoming an ubiquitous symbol of the season, no longer just the practice of German Americans. Popular decorations included candles, strips of tinsel, popcorn strings, and homemade paper ornaments. In 1880, Woolworth's became the first major store to sell mass-produced glass Christmas ornaments, imported from Germany. By 1900, Woolworth's alone was selling over 200,000 ornaments each year.

Among the 14,000 original historic artifacts in the Alexander Ramsey House collections are dozens of original Ramsey family Christmas tree ornaments. Follow along with the hashtag as we'll be posting pictures of some of our favorites over the next couple of days!

Among James J. Hill's papers and financial records for December, 1910, there is a receipt for $50 to Robert C. Minor, Steward on Hill’s private railcar, the A-18. The receipt comes from Hill’s personal account and is labeled, “A Gift.” Robert Minor was the only member of the Hill family’s staff to receive such a gift or bonus that year.

Robert C. Minor was born to African American parents in Louisiana during the Civil War (it is unknown whether his parents were free or enslaved). In 1895, he began working for the Great Northern Railway as a Cook and Dining Car Waiter, and, in 1897, became the Steward for James J. Hill’s private railcar. In this role Minor carried all the responsibilities of cook, butler, secretary, and valet in a railcar that served as Hill’s personal office, restaurant, and hotel on wheels.

Like many African American railroad workers, he maintained a home in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, though he was often absent as his work took him “on the road.” His wife, Addie Minor, was much more present in the local community. She worked as a piano and singing instructor, and was deeply involved in the local AME church and various civic organizations.

When Robert Minor died in 1947, James J. Hill’s son Louis wrote to Robert’s son Walter, “He [Robert] was a dear friend and I do not think I have many friends who I have known as long. We had a lot of fun together, and believe me I have many happy memories of my association with him.”



Photos: Robert C. Minor with fish, 1912; Interior of the A-18, James J. Hill's private railcar; December 1910 receipt for gift of $50 to Robert C. Minor.

Duel gas/electric lighting sconce with bobeche.