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American Swedish Historical Museum Amandus Johnson collection
Notifications
Held at: American Swedish Historical Museum [Contact Us]1900 Pattison Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19145
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the American Swedish Historical Museum. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
"Amandus Johnson (1877-1974) was a prominent figure in the Swedish American community for many decades. He was recognized for his historical research and publications, for his vigorous promotion of national Swedish American celebrations, and for founding and serving as first curator of the American Swedish Historical Museum. He became well known in the Swedish-American community while still a doctoral student. He was well into his seventies before he concluded that the strain of cross-country fund raising travel had finally outweighed the merits of publishing additional volumes of his History of the Swedes in America. This decision marked Johnson's retirement from organizational activity."
Bibliography:
Quoted text from: Felsten, Judith. "Register of the Papers of Amandus Johnson." Historical Society of Pennsylvania: MSS 41. September 1982. Accessed March 19, 2012. http://www2.hsp.org/collections/Balch%20manuscript_guide/html/johnson.html
This is an assembled collection of records relating to Johnson's role in the American Swedish Historical Museum, as well as some of his private papers and scholarship. There are correspondence and ephemera regarding the opening of the museum; correspondence, meeting minutes, and memos regarding Johnson's later conflicts with the museum; and honors given to Johnson and obituaries. There are also carbon copy drafts of Johnson's books The Swedish Settlement on the Delaware (1911) and The Swedes in Pennsylvania (1938), and a small number of receipts for imported Swedish books.
The collection also includes a large number of glass plate and film negatives of pages of documents, exhibits, and places in Sweden, circa 1920-1940. These negatives were likely made by Johnson, either to track museum objects or to use in lectures.
Additional Johnson materials may be in the American Swedish Historical Museum's institutional records, but were not included in this survey.
Materials collected by the American Swedish Historical Museum.
People
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- American Swedish Historical Museum
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Michael Gubicza through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact American Swedish Historical Museum for information about accessing this collection.