Montana Historical Society Digitizes Sheridan County Photo Collection
The Montana Historical Society is currently digitizing the photographs and scrapbooks of Henry and Edgar Syverud from Sheridan County. The collection, known as Lot 045, follows the brothers’ lives on the Montana-North Dakota-Canadian border.
Born in Osnabrock, N,D., the two brothers eventually homesteaded in East Coalridge, near Dagmar, and remained there for 50 years. The photo collection covers frontier scenes, agricultural images and community pictures in Sheridan County and the surrounding region. The Syveruds’ photo collection relays a narrative of hope and hard times on the Montana Hi-Line through a series of four volumes of scrapbooks, encompassing some 1,500 photographic prints, that track the two brothers awash in the tides of local, regional and national history.
Photos from the first, second and third scrapbook volumes are now digitized and available to those interested in the Syveruds’ story, and the history of the Montana Hi-Line and homesteading in Sheridan County. Photos can be browsed and searched on the Montana Memory Project, specifically the MHS Photo Archives’ “Photographs from the Montana Historical Society,” located at https://mtmemory.org/digital/ collection/p267301coll3/ search/searchterm/syverud.
Hundreds more Syverud photos will be added over the next few months thanks to the continuing financial support of the Sheridan County Historical Association and the Montana History Foundation, in partnership with MHS.
