Legendary Locals of Crookston

My paternal great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, is mentioned in a new book about the legendary men and women of Crookston, appropriately titled Legendary Locals of Crookston (Arcadia 2014). There is a page about him in the chapter about music and entertainment, and a 1902 photo of him with the community band he directed.

The page came about because of this blog and our modern ability to make connections over the internet. Although the book’s author, Kristina Torkelson Gray, is a Crookston native, she had never heard of G. Oliver. But as she was working to meet her deadline, she discovered my blog through a post I wrote in December 2013 about Ted Thorson and his brother Nels (Encyclopedia Riggs and A Tale of Two Thorsons).

T. W. ‘Ted’ Thorson was a longtime band director in Crookston who died in 1973. He is featured in the new book, too, and is also featured in Kristina’s previous book about Crookston history: Images of America: Crookston (Arcadia 2013).

Once she learned about the important contributions G. Oliver made to Crookston’s history, Kristina knew she wanted to include something about him. So I am grateful to her for making it happen. She also found a photo of the band that I had never seen, and she sent it to me. It was too large for the scanner, so she scanned it in two pieces.

Steve connected the pieces through the magic of Photoshop, but I like the way it looks when viewed in two pieces, too – it has kind of a stereoscopic effect.

G. Oliver and his wife, Islea, were such movers and shakers in the city’s early cultural life, it seems unfortunate that they could become so nearly forgotten a century later. But that’s what can happen when people who remember you are no longer around to tell those stories. It reminds me of a passage from Ian Frazier’s book Family:

And soon all the people who had accompanied me through life would be gone, too, and then even the people who had known us, and no one would remain on earth who had ever seen us, and those descended from us perhaps would know stories about us, perhaps once in a while they would pass by buildings where we had lived and they would mention that we had lived there. 

And then the stories would fade, and our graves would go untended, and the graves of those who had tended ours would go untended, and no one would guess what it had been like to wake before dawn in our breath-warmed bedrooms as the radiators clanked and our wives and husbands and children slept. 

I don’t want these stories to fade. I don’t think Kristina does, either, which is why she is getting the word out about her new book. She is signing copies of it this weekend during the Crookston All School Reunion. Kristina will be at the Crookston Carnegie Library today (Saturday), June 28, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The building, which is no longer used as a library, has G. Oliver connections. When it was dedicated in 1908, G. Oliver’s orchestra provided the music. Also, the building was designed by his friend, architect Bert Keck. Keck, like G. Oliver’s wife, Islea, grew up in the Illinois town of Aledo, and Keck played in G. Oliver’s Aledo cornet band in the mid-1890s before the two men moved to Crookston.

I wasn’t able to attend the events in Crookston this weekend, but I bought an autographed copy from Kristina and she mailed it to me earlier this week. I look forward to reading about some of the town’s other local legends and helping keep their stories alive.