Sue Sitter/PCT Michael Miller, emeritus director of the North Dakota State University Library, gives a slide presentation describing “Building a Life and Home on the Prairie,” a traveling exhibit on display at the Prairie Village Museum.

The Heart of America Germans from Russia and Prairie Village Museum welcomed Michael Miller, emeritus director of the North Dakota State University Library to mark the opening of its newest exhibit June 10.

Titled “Building Life and Home on the Prairie,” the exhibit will remain in the museum’s main gallery through Aug. 24.

The exhibit features a collection of photographs by the Rev. William Sherman curated by Wyatt Atchley.

Sherman, a Catholic priest and avid photographer, began a special project in the 1970s that forms the heart of the collection on display at the museum. He documented the lives of North Dakota families descended from German immigrants who had left the land they settled in the Black Sea Region of Russia and Ukraine for a new life in America.

Sherman’s collection shows a small number of sod homes that remained in the 1970s.

Sherman, who served as pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church in Grand Forks for 27 years, stayed active with his photography projects, published several books and taught classes on the history of the Great Plains at NDSU in Fargo. Sherman died in 2022 at the age of 94.

Collection in Rugby

Miller said he had chosen Rugby’s Prairie Village Museum for the exhibit because of the interest many residents with German-Russian heritage have in preserving their family stories.

He had visited Rugby several times beginning in 1978 to study settlements and document names in cemeteries to research the early residents’ cultural roots. He returned to Pierce County in 2021 for the dedication of the Germans from Russia Heritage Center at the Prairie Village Museum.

Homestead images

Miller spoke of the thousands of black and white prints, negatives and sketches produced by Sherman. He also mentioned Sherman’s fondness for snuff, and introduction to Red Eye, liquor favored by farmers after a long day of work.

“In 2012, (Sherman) donated all of his images to the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection to NDSU,” Miller said.

The collection includes not only depictions of homesteads on the Dakota prairies, but it documents the land in Ukraine where the settlers had lived as well, all digitized.

“From that, we developed them for this traveling exhibit,” Miller said.

Preserving history

Miller noted NDSU has been compiling a collection of digitally recorded stories told by early settlers and their descendants.

Mark Strand, son of Curtis Strand, who owned a photography studio in Rugby for many years, described how he preserved the story of Pierce County’s people through photography.

Strand, who grew up in Rugby, spent 17 years at NDSU and 25 years at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, in mass communications and photography.

He recounted working with Sherman, Miller, and his father’s studio.

“(Miller) was the one who informed me that (in Rugby), I lived at the peak of the Sauerkraut Triangle,” Strand said.

Strand helped Sherman publish his book, “Prairie Mosaic” in 1984.