South Dakota
South Dakota is a U. S. state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who compose a large portion of the population and dominated the territory. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the fifth smallest by population and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States; as the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889 with North Dakota. Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 187,200, is South Dakota's largest city. South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Montana; the state is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing South Dakota into two geographically and distinct halves, known to residents as "East River" and "West River". Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the state's population, the area's fertile soil is used to grow a variety of crops. West of the Missouri, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending.
Most of the Native American reservations are in West River. The Black Hills, a group of low pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, are in the southwest part of the state. Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination, is there. South Dakota has a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation ranging from moderate in the east to semi-arid in the west; the state's ecology features species typical of a North American grassland biome. Humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a gold rush in the Black Hills and the construction of railroads from the east. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Key events in the 20th century included the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, increased federal spending during the 1940s and 1950s for agriculture and defense, an industrialization of agriculture that has reduced family farming.
While several Democratic senators have represented South Dakota for multiple terms at the federal level, the state government is controlled by the Republican Party, whose nominees have carried South Dakota in each of the last 13 presidential elections. Dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has sought to diversify its economy in areas to attract and retain residents. South Dakota's history and rural character still influence the state's culture. South Dakota is in the north-central United States, is considered a part of the Midwest by the U. S. Census Bureau; the culture and geography of western South Dakota have more in common with the West than the Midwest. South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles, making the state the 17th largest in the Union. Black Elk Peak named Harney Peak, with an elevation of 7,242 ft, is the state's highest point, while the shoreline of Big Stone Lake is the lowest, with an elevation of 966 ft. South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota.
The geographical center of the U. S. is 17 miles west of Castle Rock in Butte County. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is between Allen and Kyle, 1,024 mi from the nearest coastline; the Missouri River is the longest river in the state. Other major South Dakota rivers include the Cheyenne, Big Sioux, White Rivers. Eastern South Dakota has many natural lakes created by periods of glaciation. Additionally, dams on the Missouri River create four large reservoirs: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case, Lewis and Clark Lake. South Dakota can be divided into three regions: eastern South Dakota, western South Dakota, the Black Hills; the Missouri River serves as a boundary in terms of geographic and political differences between eastern and western South Dakota. The geography of the Black Hills, long considered sacred by Native Americans, differs from its surroundings to such an extent it can be considered separate from the rest of western South Dakota. At times the Black Hills are combined with the rest of western South Dakota, people refer to the resulting two regions divided by the Missouri River as West River and East River.
Eastern South Dakota features higher precipitation and lower topography than the western part of the state. Smaller geographic regions of this area include the Coteau des Prairies, the Dissected Till Plains, the James River Valley; the Coteau des Prairies is a plateau bordered on the east by the Minnesota River Valley and on the west by the James River Basin. Further west, the James River Basin is low, flat eroded land, following the flow of the James River through South Dakota from north to south; the Dissected Till Plains, an area of rolling hills and fertile soil that covers much of Iowa and Nebraska, extends into the southeastern corner of South Dakota. Layers deposited during the Pleistocene epoch, starting around two million years ago, cover most of eastern South Dakota; these are the youngest rock and sediment layers in the state, the product of several successive periods of glaciation which deposited a large amount of rocks and soil, known as till, over the area. The Great Plains cover most of the western two-thirds of South Dakota.
West of the Missouri Rive
1930 United States Census
The Fifteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau one month from April 1, 1930, determined the resident population of the United States to be 122,775,046, an increase of 13.7 percent over the 106,021,537 persons enumerated during the 1920 Census. The 1930 Census collected the following information: address name relationship to head of family home owned or rented if owned, value of home if rented, monthly rent whether owned a radio set whether on a farm sex race age marital status and, if married, age at first marriage school attendance literacy birthplace of person, their parents if foreign born: language spoken at home before coming to the U. S. year of immigration whether naturalized ability to speak English occupation and class of worker whether at work previous day veteran status if Indian: whether of full or mixed blood tribal affiliationFull documentation for the 1930 census, including census forms and enumerator instructions, is available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.
The original census enumeration sheets were microfilmed by the Census Bureau in 1949. The microfilmed census is located on 2,667 rolls of microfilm, available from the National Archives and Records Administration. Several organizations host images of the microfilmed census online, digital indices. Microdata from the 1930 census are available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Aggregate data for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. 1930 Census Questions Hosted at CensusFinder.com 1931 U. S Census Report Contains 1930 Census results Historic US Census data 1930Census.com: 1930 United States Census for Genealogy & Family History Research 1930 Interactive US Census Find stories and more attached to names on the 1930 US census
1890 United States Census
The Eleventh United States Census was taken beginning June 2, 1890. It determined the resident population of the United States to be 62,979,766—an increase of 25.5 percent over the 50,189,209 persons enumerated during the 1880 census. The data was tabulated by machine for the first time; the data reported that the distribution of the population had resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier. Most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in a 1921 fire and fragments of the US census population schedule exist only for the states of Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, the District of Columbia; this was the first census in which a majority of states recorded populations of over one million, as well as the first in which multiple cities – New York as of 1880, Philadelphia – recorded populations of over one million. The census saw Chicago rank as the nation's second-most populous city, a position it would hold until 1990, in which Los Angeles would supplant it.
The 1890 census collected the following information: The 1890 census was the first to be compiled using methods invented by Herman Hollerith and was overseen by Superintendents Robert P. Porter and Carroll D. Wright. Data was entered on a machine readable medium, punched cards, tabulated by machine; the net effect of the many changes from the 1880 census: the larger population, the number of data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the volume of scheduled publications, the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, was to reduce the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census. The total population of 62,947,714, the family, or rough, was announced after only six weeks of processing; the public reaction to this tabulation was disbelief, as it was believed that the "right answer" was at least 75,000,000. The United States census of 1890 showed a total of 248,253 Native Americans living in the United States, down from 400,764 Native Americans identified in the census of 1850.
The 1890 census announced that the frontier region of the United States no longer existed, that the Census Bureau would no longer track the westward migration of the U. S. population. Up to and including the 1880 census, the country had a frontier of settlement. By 1890, isolated bodies of settlement had broken into the unsettled area to the extent that there was hardly a frontier line; this prompted Frederick Jackson Turner to develop his Frontier Thesis. The original data for the 1890 Census is no longer available. All the population schedules were damaged in a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D. C. in 1921. Some 25 % of the materials were presumed another 50 % damaged by smoke and water; the damage to the records led to an outcry for a permanent National Archives. In December 1932, following standard federal record-keeping procedures, the Chief Clerk of the Bureau of the Census sent the Librarian of Congress a list of papers to be destroyed, including the original 1890 census schedules.
The Librarian was asked by the Bureau to identify any records which should be retained for historical purposes, but the Librarian did not accept the census records. Congress authorized destruction of that list of records on February 21, 1933, the surviving original 1890 census records were destroyed by government order by 1934 or 1935; the other censuses for which some information has been lost are the 1810 enumerations. Few sets of microdata from the 1890 census survive, but aggregate data for small areas, together with compatible cartographic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. Mayo-Smith, Richmond, "The Eleventh Census of the United States". In: The Economic Journal, Vol. 1, p. 43 - 58 1891 U. S Census Report Contains 1890 Census results Historical US Census data from the U. S. Census Bureau website Hollerith 1890 Census Tabulator by Columbia University "The Fate of the 1890 Population Census" from the National Archives website
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Hannibal Hamlin
Hannibal Hamlin was an American attorney and politician from the state of Maine. In a public service career that spanned over 50 years, he is most notable for having served as the 15th vice president of the United States; the first Republican to hold the office, Hamlin served from 1861 to 1865. He is considered among the most influential politicians to have come from Maine. A native of Paris, Hamlin managed his father's farm before becoming a newspaper editor, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, began to practice in Hampden, Maine. A Democrat, Hamlin began his political career with election to the Maine House of Representatives in 1835 and an appointment to the military staff of the Governor of Maine; as an officer in the militia, he took part in the 1839 negotiations that helped end the Aroostook War. In the 1840s Hamlin was served in the United States House of Representatives. In 1848 the state house elected him to the United States Senate, where he served until January 1857, he served temporarily as governor for six weeks in the beginning of 1857, after which he returned to the Senate.
Hamlin was an active opponent of slavery. In 1854, he opposed passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Hamlin's anti-slavery views caused him to leave the Democratic Party for the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. In 1860, Hamlin was the Republican nominee for Vice President; the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket was successful, Hamlin served as Vice President from 1861 to 1865, which included all but the last month of the American Civil War. The first Republican Vice President, Hamlin held the office in an era when the office was considered more a part of the legislative branch than the executive. So, Hamlin supported the administration's legislative program in his role as presiding officer of the Senate, he looked for other ways to demonstrate his support for the Union, including a term of service in a Maine militia unit during the war. For the 1864 election, Hamlin was replaced as Vice Presidential nominee by Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat chosen for his appeal to Southern Unionists. After leaving the vice presidency, Hamlin served as Collector of the Port of Boston, a lucrative post to which he was appointed by Johnson after the latter succeeded to the presidency following Lincoln's assassination.
However, Hamlin resigned as Collector because of his disagreement with Johnson over Reconstruction of the former Confederacy. In 1869, Hamlin was elected again to the U. S. Senate, he served two terms. After leaving the Senate in 1881, he served as United States Ambassador to Spain before returning to Maine in late 1882. In retirement, Hamlin was a resident of Bangor, where he died in 1891, he was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor. Hamlin was born to his wife Anna, née Livermore, in Paris, he was a descendant in the sixth generation of English colonist James Hamlin, who had settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. He was a grandnephew of U. S. Senator Samuel Livermore II of New Hampshire. Hamlin attended the district schools and Hebron Academy and managed his father's farm. From 1827 to 1830 he published the Oxford Jeffersonian newspaper in partnership with Horatio King, he studied law with the firm headed by Samuel Fessenden, was admitted to the bar in 1833, began practicing in Hampden, where he lived until 1848.
Hamlin married Sarah Jane Emery of Paris Hill in 1833. Her father was Stephen Emery, appointed as Maine's Attorney General in 1839–1840. Hamlin and Sarah had four children together: George, Charles and Sarah, his wife died in 1855. The next year, Hamlin married her half-sister, Ellen Vesta Emery in 1856, they had two children together: Frank. Ellen Hamlin died in 1925. Hamlin's political career began in 1835. Appointed a Major on the staff of Governor John Fairfield, he served with the militia in the bloodless Aroostook War of 1839, he facilitated negotiations between Fairfield and Lieutenant Governor John Harvey of New Brunswick, which helped reduce tensions and make possible the Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which ended the war. Hamlin unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1840 and left the State House in 1841, he was elected to two terms in the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1843 to 1847. He was elected by the state legislature to fill a U. S. Senate vacancy in 1848, to a full term in 1851.
A Democrat at the beginning of his career, Hamlin supported the candidacy of Franklin Pierce in 1852. From the beginning of his service in Congress, Hamlin was prominent as an opponent of the extension of slavery, he was a conspicuous supporter of the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the Compromise Measures of 1850. In 1854, Hamlin opposed the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. After the Democratic Party endorsed that repeal at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, on June 12, 1856, he withdrew from the Democratic Party and joined the newly organized Republican Party, causing a national sensation; the Republicans nominated Hamlin for Governor of Maine in the same year. He carried the election by a large m
South Dakota's at-large congressional district
South Dakota's At-Large Congressional District is the sole congressional district for the state of South Dakota. Based on area, it is the fourth largest congressional district in the nation; the district is represented by Dusty Johnson. The district was created when South Dakota achieved statehood on November 2, 1889, electing two members At-Large. Following the 1910 Census a third seat was gained, with the legislature drawing three separate districts; the third district was eliminated after the 1930 Census. Following the 1980 Census the second seat was eliminated. Since 1983, South Dakota has retained a single congressional district. Hillary Clinton of New York won the June 3, 2008 South Dakota Democratic Primary with 55.35% of the statewide/at-large congressional district vote while Barack Obama of Illinois received 44.65%. The state/at-large congressional district gave Clinton her final win during the course of the historic and drawn-out 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary season. U. S. Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who had endorsed John Edwards, decided to support Obama before her state/congressional district voted in the primary for Clinton.
John McCain of Arizona won the June 3, 2008 South Dakota GOP Primary with 70.19% of the statewide/at-large congressional district vote while libertarian-leaning Ron Paul of Texas finished in second place in the state/congressional district with 16.52%. Incumbent U. S. Representative Bill Janklow resigned the seat January 20, 2004, after he was convicted of second-degree manslaughter, triggering a special election. Democrat Stephanie Herseth was selected as the Democratic nominee for this special election and she defeated Republican Larry Diedrich with 51 percent of the vote in a close-fought election on June 1, 2004. Herseth's victory gave the state its first all-Democratic congressional delegation since 1937. In the November general election, Herseth was elected to a full term with 53.4 percent of the vote, an increase of a few percentage points compared with the closer June special elections. Herseth's vote margin in June was about 3,000 votes, but by November it had grown to over 29,000. Herseth thereby became the first woman in state history to win a full term in the U.
S. Congress. Both elections were hard-fought and close compared to many House races in the rest of the United States, the special election was watched by a national audience; the general election was viewed as one of the most competitive in the country, but was overshadowed in the state by the competitive U. S. Senate race between Democrat Tom Daschle and Republican John Thune, which Thune narrowly won. Two seats were created in 1889, they were changed into three districts in 1913. One at-large seat remained after 1983. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present 2004 campaign finance data
Finnish Americans
Finnish Americans comprise Americans with ancestral roots from Finland or Finnish people who emigrated to and reside in the United States. The Finnish American population numbers about 700,000; some Finns, like the ancestors of John Morton, came to the Swedish colony of New Sweden, that existed in mid-17th century. Finns first started coming to the United States in large numbers in the late 19th century, continued until the mid 20th century. However, there were some Finns in the United States beforehand. Many townships were established by Finnish Americans, including Herman, located in Baraga County, Michigan; the town is named for Herman Keranen, of Finland. A significant number of Finnish immigrants settled in northern Minnesota in the Arrowhead Region, along with portions of Aitkin, Crow Wing, Carlton counties working in the region's iron mines. A number of the Finns fleeing the Russification efforts emigrated to many of the mill towns of New England where they became known for their woodworking skills.
The first immigrants to North America arrived to the New Sweden colony by the lower Delaware River in 1640. Finland was an integrated part of the Kingdom of Sweden at the time, a Swedish colony in the New World was bound to include subjects from Finland as well. In two years' time, the number of Finns in the settlement had grown to fifty, was increasing. New Sweden changed hands to Dutch control in 1655, but many Finns had entered, the Finnish community, while small, was growing. Among the Finnish settlers of New Sweden was Martti Marttinen, who came to North America in 1654 and changed his name to Morton. John Morton, the politician who signed the U. S. Declaration of Independence on behalf of Pennsylvania in 1776, was his great-grandson. Migration to North America from Finland continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was sporadic in nature and only a few individuals and groups dared make the move; this was due to the long distance between Europe and America, the difficulties associated with crossing it.
However, as the Industrial Revolution began with the turn of the 19th century, bringing with it such technological innovations as railways and steam ships, these obstacles began to disappear. While the rest of Europe was industrializing, Finland, by now a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, was to a great extent excluded from the revolutionary process; the society was agrarian, unemployment was rising, resultant from population growth and the fact that there was now little land left to cultivate in the country. America, on the other hand, lacked a work force. Rural life in Finland during the 1860s seemed doomed to remain laborious and forever at the mercy of unpredictable weather. In 1867, a severe crop failure in Finland drove masses of Finns from rural Ostrobothnia, into migrating to Norway, from where they moved to the United States and Canada; the Laestadian Finns longed for a rural way of life and religious toleration which they believed they would find in America. So a group of Laestadian preachers and followers immigrated to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan bringing their beloved sermons.
In 1873 the Finnish Laestadians started their own congregation at Michigan. By 1906 the Laestadian movement in America resulted in 68 churches and a communicant body of over 8,000. Today the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America remains in Michigan; the years between 1870 and 1930 are sometimes referred as the Great "Migration" of Finns into North America. In the 1870s, there were only 3,000 migrants from Finland, but this figure was growing. New migrants sent letters home, describing their life in the New World, this encouraged more and more people to leave and try their luck in America. Rumors began of the acres of land that could be cleared into vast productive fields and the opportunity to earn "a barrel of American dollars" in mines and railroads. There were professional recruiters, or "agents," employed by mining and shipping companies, who encouraged Finns to move to the United States. More than 90% of the Finnish immigrants lived in urban centers; this activity was frowned upon by the authorities of the Grand Duchy, was done in secret.
It was brought to an end in the late 1880s by legislation in the U. S. but the decade still saw a 12-fold increase in the number of Finnish migrants compared to the previous decade, as 36,000 Finns left their home country for North America. The movement was strengthened further in 1899, as the Russian government started an aggressive, coordinated campaign for the Russification of Finland. Many Finns chose to escape the repression by migrating into the New World, during the 1900s, there were 150,000 new migrants. Most Finns who left for America came from the impoverished rural regions of Ostrobothnia. Other prominent points of departure were the Torne Valley. Many of the emigrants left by ship from the port town of Hanko. In the years surrounding the turn of the 20th Century, settlement was focused around three specific regions: Several pockets of Finnish settlement appeared in New England. New York City was the prime destination for scores of general laborers. Cities such as Fitchburg, Worcester and Monessen, Pennsylvania attracted thousands of Finns to settle in both urban and rural settings.
In the Upper Midwest, a similar pattern took shape. Due to the region's similar geographic and climatic features to Finland, the heaviest levels of F
Hamlin County, South Dakota
