Guide to the ARCHIVES of The Norwegian-American Historical ...

Commission during World War I.
451. HANSON FAMILY. CORRESPONDENCE, 1891-1896. 11 items. P 131.
Letters written from Norway and from Vienna, South Dakota, by members of the
family to relatives.
452. HANSON, GUSTAV S. RECORDS, 1889, 1891, 1897, 1906. 4 items. P 132.
A Sunday school class attendance record by Gustav S. Hanson, a Norwegian-born
pharmacist in Canton, South Dakota.
453. HANSON, HARRY BURTON (1884-1963). PAPERS, 1976. 6 items. P 877.
Genealogical information, a photograph, and clippings describing the work of a
Norwegian American who was the chief engineer for the Ford Motor Company and
the designer of the Willow Run bomber plant near Detroit, Michigan.
454. HANSON, JENS CHRISTIAN MEINCH (1864-1943). BIOGRAPHY. 2 items. P
1153.
Photocopy of an untitled 284-page typescript autobiography, and of a 3-page entry
in the Dictionary of American Biography of a Norwegian-born librarian. An offprint of
his review of John A. Hofstead’s American Educators of Norwegian Origin, in Library
Quarterly, July 1932. The 30-some clippings (1907-1943) titled “Erindringer fra
ottiaarene” were published in Scandia in 1934. “Reisen til Minneapolis
Valdrisstevne” appeared in Skandinaven, August, 18, 1939. See also articles in
Samband: September 1931 and March 1934.
A graduate of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, Hanson was chief of the Catalog
Department of the Library of Congress from 1897 to 1910, where he “was directly
involved in or responsible for...the Library of Congress Classification, Library of
Congress subject headings, new catalog of the Library of Congress, the form and
system of distribution of printed catalog cards, and formulation of catalog rules.”
From 1910 to 1928 he served first as assistant director and later as acting director of
the University of Chicago Libraries. From 1928 to 1934 he taught in the Graduate
Library School of the University. In 1928 he, together with other American
cataloging experts, helped to reorganize the Vatican Library.
455. HANSON, JOHN F. (1841-1917). PAPERS, 1978. 2 items. P 1138.
“Notes on Life History,” an autobiographical sketch of an immigrant from
Stavanger whose life was largely spent in the Quaker ministry. A diary kept by
Estella Hanson Watland (1872-1950), whose diary entries expand upon her father’s
story at several points and also give a graphic description of her childhood, youth,
and married life in Iowa, South Dakota, and Oregon.
Hanson’s book Light and Shade from the Land of the Midnight Sun (1903) is in the
NAHA books collection.
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