Russell
ReidRussell
ReidRussell Reid (1900-1967) received the state level Pugsley Medal in 1954 “for a life dedicated to state parks development and historic sites preservation and his outstanding achievements on behalf of the citizens of North Dakota.” The gentle, sometimes stammering man who was superintendent of the State Historical Society of North Dakota from 1930 until 1965, after it was legally reconstituted, became a much admired public figure. At the time of his death July 9, 1967, few persons in North Dakota public life had received more popular approbation. He was persistent in maintaining high standards of scholarship in the interpretation of North Dakota history in the face of changing times.
The man, more than the scholar and standard-setter, has received acclaim. Reid possessed qualities to which people gladly pay homage. He was modest, steadfast and cooperative, very much a man of good counsel and of his word. He moved with an air of equanimity. Despite the occasional stammer, he was a good conversationalist and a good story teller, not too retiring to give any asker the benefit of a remarkable store of North Dakota lore, ready at tongue-tip. And it did not hurt his popularity that he went through life an unabashed believer that North Dakota was the best place in the world.
Those who observed him closest applied to him such hyphenated adjectives as clean-cut, straight-laced and non-contentious, referring to both his professional conduct and his personal life. They also recognized he was thrifty. Yet Russell Reid was not austere. The conduct of his office was unhurried. Thrift in no way rarified the atmosphere of the Society’s precincts. The atmosphere there seemed to be one of almost luxurious leisure. This was something other working scholars sometimes envied. In meeting the public Reid was generous. Probably there was never a public official readier than he to postulate good faith in anyone who came to him. Legislators particularly were always responsible men of goodwill who could be trusted to allocate the Society a fair share of state appropriations.
It was said of Russell Reid that rarely do we see an instance of a man more happily devoted to his work or of one whose work was more completely his life. He liked books and history and the lore of antiquities. He liked the role that the Society gave him and further shaped it to his liking. Late in life he would recall that his first job in the state museum in 1919 paid him $20 per month, and he would add, "I would have done the work for nothing."
It is easy to find the key to Russell Reid’s character in his origins. He was a native of North Dakota, born on a farm at Hannah near the Canadian border on Feb. 6, 1900, of Scotish Canadian parents, both from Ontario. They had come to North Dakota before statehood. Hannah, we are told, was a place where Robbie Burns’ birthday was observed with ceremony, where schoolboys played soccer, and bagpipes were patriotic instruments. Far from rich in this world’s goods, the Reid family had respect for nice things and old things. The simple virtues counted most. One gains an insight into his steadiness of life from the fact that Russell Reid’s father, Peter Reid, after moving his wife and four sons to Bismarck in 1913, became a deputy warden of the penitentiary. One of Russell’s brothers, Sterling, afterward had a notable career as an employee of the Kalamazoo, Michigan, police department. Another was a career man in the U.S. Army, retiring as a major, and the third brother became a public accountant. Russell was the son who stayed at home with his parents, and never married. After his father’s death in 1936, he remained at home and shared his mother’s interest in growing gladiolus and gourds.
The Reids moved to Langdon in 1903 and remained there ten years before they went to Bismarck. While they were there Peter Reid was sheriff of Cavalier County for two terms. An Aunt remembers Russell, as being quiet and shy with great curiosity about wildlife: "I never saw such a child for birds and animals," she said, and added that he was a boy who "would never harm even a fly."
After he finished high school Reid had a job with a surveyor, and then worked for a time in the Bismarck public library. During this period his intense interest in natural history was manifested through volunteering as a part-time assistant at the museum of the State Historical Society. In perhaps the only interlude of his life away from North Dakota, he went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a brief period and was employed there by Ernest Thompson Seton, the naturalist and author.
He was appointed a staff member of the State Historical Society in 1923, though he had worked at the museum earlier. As a young assistant to the curator, Reid learned quickly, and concentrated on mastering North Dakota history. He made the most of his opportunities for acquaintanceship with scholars he met, particularly those then responsible for the work of the Society. Without a college education he became a first-rate student, and earned the right to be regarded as a North Dakota scholar.
The Society was an active, energetic organization in the period when Reid was serving his apprenticeship. When he was made acting superintendent in 1930, the Society had a state museum of sorts, in which Reid was taking a leading hand. It was trustee of thirty historic sites and parks. It had a quarterly scholarly publication. It received a $25,000 appropriation for that biennium, and had a staff of four receiving some pay, however small.
Reid’s qualifications at this time perhaps were strongest in ornithology and photography. He had pursued ornithology as a young amateur to a point where he was a specialist in North Dakota birdlife. Thus, his curatorship the State Museum featured a fair-sized exhibit of mounted specimens of North Dakota’s perching birds, shore birds, waders and waterfowl. The amateur photographer often made birds his subject and became proficient. His art lent itself to the purpose of the Society and its desire to publicize characteristic scenery, historic places and Indian people.
During the apprentice period Reid began to do some writing. Reid’s best writing was in the form of short monographs authoritatively summarizing aspects of North Dakota lore and history in which there was popular interest. Examples are the pieces he wrote for the Museum Review. His most valuable literary contributions, however, were in editing memoirs, reminiscences and particularly early diaries and journals. Most notable, perhaps, was his editing of portions of the original journals of Lewis and Clark, including pertinent excepts from the Biddle text, for North Dakota readership.
The economic crash of 1929 and the drought years in North Dakota combined to produce real financial stringency with political revolution in the state and in the nation, but the Society did not suffer as severely as it might have. With an exceedingly thrifty superintendent, the museum, library and related activities continued. In 1935 he assumed additional duties as secretary of the North Dakota State Parks Committee, which operated under the authority of the board of directors of the State Historical Society. When federal relief programs were launched in the aftermath of the Depression, Reid seized the opportunity to cooperate with the NPS and Civilian Conservation Corps to develop a system of state parks and historic sites which was recognized as a model of its kind.
Job-making projects had to have state or local sponsors. The State Historical Society was in a position to be a sponsor, particularly for work programs to improve historic sites and parks, but also for work related to the museum, the reference library, the collection of locally prepared histories, and archeological surveys. In a matter of months the superintendent found himself involved as administrator or coordinator of a variety of undertakings. The Society suddenly became important as an agency for helping to bring federal money and employment. Reid took advantage of many possibilities, and obtained more creative benefit for North Dakota from these projects than most other Great Plains states managed to get.
Reid coordinated the planning by which state parks and historic sites were developed for public appreciation and use. The labor came from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the planning was substantially assisted by the National Park Service. Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park (with Fort McKeen) is the outstanding example of this development. The sites of Fort Clark, Fort Rice, Fort Abercrombie, and Pembina also received substantial attention. Such valuable state parks as Turtle River and Lake Metigoshe were among the outstanding park developments which stand as testimony to Reid’s imagination and enterprise. Reid also obtained CCC labor and federal planning service for a unique recreation area, the International Peace Garden, and served as the NPS’s disbursing officer in the state. A still larger achievement was his part in arranging acquisition for the state of the sizeable acreages of Little Missouri Badlands which eventually became Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. His personal relationship with the Duke de Vallombrosa gave the state its remarkable old house museum at Medora and the Marquis de Mores packing plant site. Meanwhile sites at Fort Union and Fort Buford were held in reserve with a view toward national recognition. It was for these accomplishments, and for an expanded acquisition program that included many other sites in the state, that Reid was awarded the Pugsley Medal.
The State Museum at Bismarck became an institution of which the people of North Dakota could be proud. With the help of trained assistants from time to time but largely under Reid’s own curatorship, the museum organized praiseworthy exhibits, intelligently displayed, of the natural history of the state and of the cultures of Plains Indians and Missouri River tribes.
In North Dakota in those years it was comparatively easy to acquire historic sites for the state if one had initiative and a little foresight. There was as yet though, no thinking in terms of large acreages for public use. It was easy, as well, to make valuable acquisitions for the museum. In these things Reid was alert. The time came, however, before his retirement, when the Society had assumed responsibility for many more sites than it could maintain within the limitations of its state budget after federal work and acquisition programs were withdrawn. The time also came when the Society held in its possession stores of artifacts, antiques and frontier and pioneer mementos beyond its immediate ability to provide advantageous space for display. What to do about these properties and collections was one of the unsolved problems of the 1950s and 1960s. Subsequently, the state legislature created a special parks committee and appropriated funds to address these issues.
In addition to his lasting contributions as an administrator in the fields of historical preservation and park conservation, Reid demonstrated great versatility as an authoritative historical writer and editor, ethnologist, ornithologist, and photographer. At the time Reid became superintendent there were few books in print on North Dakota which were available to the popular reader. Today there are many, on bookstands throughout the nation and in libraries, which are informative about North Dakota, its history, its treasures of romance, its resources and memorable personalities. It is significant how many of the authors have acknowledged their indebtedness to the cooperation of Russell Reid and the State Historical Society, recognizing the major effort Reid made to establish a state historical reference library.
Reid was editor of the Journal of the Northern Plains for 20 years. North Dakota History took its present name after he succeeded to the editorship, and under his guidance it enjoyed a wide circulation. For 35 years North Dakota’s State Historical Society had an admirable custodian and old-fashioned administrator in Russell Reid, who maintained worthy standards while he patiently made a very little go a long way.