 Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm producer-director Scott Knudson. In this episode, sisters Kathy and Lynette visit the Otter Tail County Historical Society's Museum in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where they share their connection to a historic U.S. flag. Also, bake some bread with a grain of good. I'm Kathy Ebbelbold. I'm the curator of collections at the Otter Tail County Historical Society. And today, we had Kathy and Lynette, sisters, come to look at a flag that was made by their great-grandmother and others. The Otter Tail County Historical Society is located in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. We have a museum with 20,000 square feet of exhibits, and we also have a library where people can do research. We help the public find out their answers to any questions about local history. It is so meaningful to have descendants contact the Historical Society. Wanting to see an artifact that we've had here for 85 years just makes it that much more special. Lynette contacted me, and I just met her and Kathy today, and it was awesome. I'm Lynette Butler, and it was my great-grandmother Eliza was one of the seven ladies who handmade that particular flag, first flag in Otter Tail County. It was about 1870, July 4th. It was a big celebration. I'm Kathleen Smith-Coker. My great-grandmother Eliza Smith, she was married to Azariah in 1870. She and six other women made an American flag with 37 stars, and it was the first American flag that was in Otter Tail County. It flew over the general store in Parker's Prairie at that time. They celebrated the 4th of July, that year with that flag of raising it up the pole, and this was just a very new state. Women, seven women, got together. They wanted to celebrate not only the 4th of July, 1870, but also the first time mail delivery was being delivered to Parker's Prairie. So it was for that celebration that this was made for. I'm just so thankful that the curator and the museum there are caring for that flag after all these years. And it's just amazing that it hasn't fallen apart and that they are so gracious to let us see it and to touch it with our little white gloves on. It just means so much that that part of history, not only for our family, but for other families, but for the whole community that was struggling at the time. 1870 is quite early for things really happening in Otter Tail County. It wasn't until after the Civil War, so after 1865 that this county is wrapping up of people moving here, coming here, settling here, really starts happening. And I think, you know, we just came out of the Civil War. I think that might have something to do with the creation of this flag and the celebration that was going to happen. They were new to come to the area. They, of course, wanted the best for their community. They were just going to get mail, which must have been just a tremendous thing. Prior to this, they had to go to Osacus to get that mail. That was quite a trek. So this was really an important event for the people. The life in general at that time was probably very hard. They did everything by hand. They made their own quilts. They raised their own vegetables and didn't have many luxuries of any kind. Life was hard. There were a lot of deaths, of baby deaths especially. Babies didn't make it through the birth and many died shortly thereafter because of the hardship and no medical advantage in that area. They just worked really hard and forged a new land and a new area. It's amazing. And to think that they hand stitched every stitch. It's all hemmed too. The state became a state in 1858 and our relatives came. The men came first in 1868, so just 10 years after the birth of the state. They claimed their homestead, started to establish some things and then went back and got the family and brought them by covered wagon. And they settled here. Amazing, amazing what they were able to do with very little resources. They had the land. They had their knowledge of past farming. It was just amazing what they did with so little at the time. Where they came from was a little more modern than the area they went to because they had come from Iowa and some places east of the Mississippi because some of them were born in like Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. And so those people there would have had gaslight and all that kind of thing. These here probably would just have had like kerosene lamps or as Abraham Lincoln he read by the light of the fireplace. So it was very primitive, very primitive living. The first time we got to see the flag was in 2007 and we went, the three of us, we had another sister who has since passed away. It was tearful. We missed our sister this time because she was so, she was very much a historian of the family. So we've all joined in with her vision to do this and so we really, really missed our sister and still do after years. Just about makes me cry. The three of us were able to go and the curator graciously brought the flag out and unrolled it and it's huge. More than ten feet by more than six feet. I mean it's not a little postage stamp flag. It's big. And it was like touching a piece of sacred history. It just was amazing to us. According to the article it was wool flannel. The stripes were and then the blue part there was made out of a different fabric and then the stars were out of a different fabric. The fabric itself was interesting because it's almost like a flannel. The stripes are and the blue of course was very faded because blue tends to fade quicker than other colors. The blue is really faded because blue was a very difficult color to be produced. There's only a few countries in ancient times that even had a really pretty blue. Blue even nowadays will fade out fast too unless it's synthetic product. Cottons and stuff like that you'll notice the blue fades more often than the other colors will. And the white I notice is dulled with age I'm sure. It is more of a cream color. The red still shows really good. According to the records there were three different kinds of fabrics used. The same fabric for the red and the white stripes and then a different fabric for the blue and still yet another fabric for the little stars. I think the stars you said was chambray? Yeah. And it's a finer weave material than this. This is really quite coarse. Yeah this is almost like a feed sack. Not quite as coarse as a feed sack on the white and the red. If the history record is correct the man who owned the first store in Parker's Prairie went to Osacus and purchased the material. Now how he knew how much I don't know. So the fabric was supplied by this general store owner and his wife Catherine. She was one of the seven women to work on this flag. These women were aged between 18 and 28 years old at the time that they made this flag. And you know they were already by that time going to be good seamstresses. I mean that is a skill that was learned from a very early age especially among women. They were very young. Some of them were just 18, 20, 26 of the ladies that helped make the flag. We think nowadays of young people by that age they're probably still going to college or maybe still in high school but these women were already married and had children. I've often wondered just how did these seven ladies figure out how to make this thing. They didn't have a pattern. There was no flag close to follow no internet to look at the pattern or dimensions. They figured it out on their own and he donated the materials and they must have drawn it out or imagined it out or quilted it out but they did a masterful job. I would think that the creation of this was something like Quilting Bee. They probably all got together. What I wonder is why so large? I mean this was a statement piece. This is huge. This is a very large artifact. In fact when we were going to display it we had it on display in 2014 for an exhibit and when I had decided I wanted this artifact to be in that exhibit but I didn't know what size it was. So when we pulled it out and unrolled it then I was shocked by the size of this artifact. It's incredibly large. Why? Why did they make it that large? Although it was just that it was probably so much of a celebration that they really wanted to maybe outdo themselves. In coming together to make the flag I think there was much more a sense of close community between the families, between the women especially because they were isolated and community event they had quilting bees etc to come together as a community and these seven ladies and they were young fairly young women came together and made this flag. I think it was fun. The tiny stitches it just stands out because they're much tinier than I'd ever do. The seams were done so well that some of them were probably stitched at least three times where the stripes were connected to the background of the stars of the blue material. That was stitched almost three times in a flat fell scene that made it very strong because if it went up a pole on a windy day there's a lot of pressure on a flag and you can see how some of the flags nowadays as well as they're made and with very tough material nowadays they just rip apart after a little while if they're not taken care of. So that flag was very well made, very well made. The seamstress work in it is excellent. When you make a quilt or do hand work together or anything as a community group, like seven ladies together, they can do some talking, visiting, catching up with who had the last baby and all those things that were important. Did your potatoes grow this year? What about the squash? Are you going to be able to can something? I think they shared, it was a time of sharing those things that were so important to those ladies at that time which probably wouldn't be relevant to anyone this day and age but to them it was life, it was the heart of their life. And so this flag then flew over the Aslan store. They had a general store, he was the first postmaster. All makes sense, the history there. So that flag remained in the possession of the Aslan family until it was donated to the Historical Society. So it is the daughter of one of the women who made the flag that donated it to the Historical Society in 1933. They obviously thought a lot about this artifact. In fact, they even brought it out again in 1930 when they dedicated a monument to the community of Parkersbury. They moved with their family by covered wagon to the Parkersbury area which was at the time the terminus of the trails coming up from the south from St. Cloud and Osacus. Well, many of them were immigrants too from other countries and if they weren't themselves then their parents were because our country was so new at that time and just to move west and come from Pennsylvania, New York area. She had just arrived the year before after much tragedy in their own lives and had come west in a covered wagon with the family. They didn't have much. They did not have very much and yet to do this in respect for the country. It's just amazing, just amazing. I don't think that they really had a lot of time to think about the future. Just maybe into the next week or the next month. But to think of like sometimes nowadays we think of what it's going to be like in space travel and all that kind of thing. I don't think they would have ever given a thought to having a microwave that they could just punch a button and have hot water in a minute and all that. They had to go to the pump or the lake and get the water and they had to bring the wood in. Usually the men would chop down the trees but many times the women helped do the wood also. And those were just everyday things for them that they had to build a fire. I know when we first moved here on this farm my mom had a wood stove and how she ever baked bread and everything and made it all just absolutely perfect. I don't know if I can even do that in a gas stove. But probably they didn't have any idea of what it would be like. It would be very hard for people of today, 26 year olds and 30 year olds to go back to that kind of life. Although now there are some that are trying to live off the land so to speak and do things the old fashioned way and probably having electricity nowadays is one of the biggest advantages that running water does make household chores so much better. This object, this artifact had so much significance for the community at the time and by being able to preserve that, save that, we get to preserve a snapshot in our community history. Because it's a very unique flag because of the 37 stars and because it was the first one in Ottertale County and that it's handmade, that it's a beautiful flag. I'm glad someone has seen fit to preserve it all these years. I'm very thankful that my sisters and I have been able to see the flag actually twice now. Our younger sister came over here and found out about it. And I think she researched the records here in the museum. So the museum is a wonderful source of those kinds of things and just really ties the past with the present and hopefully we pass it on to the future of our kids. As far as any of our descendants that might want to see it, I think they'll just have to watch this video and see that because that'll be some really good pictures of the flag and why it's there, how it got there and the people that preserved it in the process. It could have just been thrown away a long time ago. You know it's important for people to have a better idea of what historical societies do. This is one of those things that we do. We try to preserve artifacts for future generations so that they can come and see them and this is exactly what happened today. We had two people come here that got to see an artifact that was made 148 years ago. That's just amazing. That's what we do. As a worship instrument, we're very often accompanying hymns and there are creative ways that organists can vary what's called the registration to enhance the words of those hymns. I love to have little light sounds like the birds you probably hear in the background and then to talk about thunder, to talk about a flowing river. The texts of our hymns are connected to our faith but they're also connected to nature. One of the things about this is it is what it is and you get what you see. There's no hidden anything. It is a mobile wood-fired brick oven. There's no propane. There's no outside electricity. There's nothing but wood keeping this thing hot. Right now I'm making salsa. We had a gig last night and so the oven's piping hot and instead of wasting that energy and that heat, utilizing it to do some fire roasted salsa. It's canning season so you get to put some food by for the winter and nothing tastes better than fire roasted tomatoes. I would still consider myself a visual artist doing watercolor or mixed media, anything with two-dimensional in mind. But the transition, I guess I wouldn't consider it a transition because I've always been a cook. My first real job being on payroll was in a kitchen in a little cafe back where I grew up and it was something that felt natural. My grandma cooked with my mom and we lived in a house with wood-fired heat so my dad taught me how to build fires and chop wood so it's kind of been second nature my whole life. I also have a big old pan of garlic roasting in there right now which I really need to check on. This is just candy. Well, it's about to be candy. It's still a little sharp right now, but that's going to go in the salsa. Half of it will go straight into my mouth and the other half will go into the salsa. So those are looking good. Keep the tin foil on them otherwise they will scorch before the inside gets any sort of caramelization. And that would be a waste of really good garlic. I also have a potato that's baking in there. So the floor of this oven is significantly cooler than the dome. If you want to know if it's hot, you stick your head low enough because it's hot in the dome and when it's white, that means it's hot to the point of 800 to 1000 degrees and it's been white for about two days now so it's hot for sure. When we did our pizzas last night, they took about 30 seconds before they caught on fire. Knowing where your hot spots and your cool spots are is the real trick to cooking anything in this because you can overcook part of your food and undercook the rest of it really easily but it's been two years now and I'm getting the hang of some of it. I still do lose a couple of things to fire every once in a while but who doesn't, you know, a hot dog or a marshmallow and a bun fire, a pizza and a break oven. It's all relative. The one thing that I wanted to try that I haven't done yet is to put a cast iron skillet in there and make some flatbread. So I want to make this Algerian flatbread on a cast iron skillet. It's my grandma's skillet. Most of my cast iron is and I'm going to stick it in there so it gets nice and hot and then we'll try throwing some dough on there. So this is just a big tub of really loose dough so I'm going to throw some flour on there, make a quick little ball of dough and add some spices to it. And one of the dreams that I have for this is to do something kind of like a CSB which if you're familiar with a CSA which is community supported agriculture it'd be fun to do a community supported bakery and have standing orders for baked goods every once in a while. I don't know if you can hear that oil sizzling but that's getting nice and hot. So this is a spice blend. It's cumin and paprika and cayenne, salt and turmeric. So it's a little spicy. I guess I'd say it's Algerian so it's got some of those warm spices to it. Just roll it up kind of like a cinnamon roll. You could just mix it right in with the dough but mixing one big batch of dough that doesn't have anything but flour, salt, water, and yeast and it allows you to diversify different things like with the rest of this dough I could put some of these beets in there and make little beet buns or make a bunch of flatbread or make some pizza or some effy rolls or something like that. So I like to keep my options open. Alright, so like I said, I've never done it so we will see if anything happens. A charcoal grill is a lot easier to cook on, that's for sure. This takes a lot of time and a lot of energy just to get going. Oh, what a cool idea! I would love to have one of those in my backyard and eat pizza every night and you'd be waiting a lot for your dinner than every night because it takes hours and hours to get this thing hot enough to cook a pizza as fast as you want it. That being said, it makes some of the best pieces I ever taste. But it's definitely not something that you fire up on a whim. When I do fire it up for a job I like to think next day what am I going to put in it? What am I going to use that heat for all that wood? Thank you so much for watching. Join us again on Common Ground. If you have an idea for Common Ground in North Central Minnesota, email us at legacy at lptv.org or call 218-333-3014. To watch Common Ground online, visit lptv.org and click local shows. For episodes or segments of Common Ground, call 218-333-3020. Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations, member FDIC. Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.