NYTimes 'Museums' (III)

choi

John Hanc, Making Do Without Civil War Battlefield; Minnesota highlights what Civil War veterans did after the war.
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/arts/ ... ar-battlefield.html
("Minnesota became a state only in 1858 — three years before the war began. 'This was our debut on the national stage,' Ms [Danielle ] Dart [of private, nonprofit Minnesota Historical Society] says. 'Minnesota went big for Lincoln in 1860.' The state’s governor, Alexander Ramsey, was in Washington when Fort Sumter was fired upon. He immediately offered President Lincoln 1,000 volunteers — supposedly securing the state’s position as the first to officially offer a volunteer regiment to the Union cause, a point of pride to Minnesotans to this day”)

Note:
(a) "The starting point for the tour is Fort Snelling, built in 1819 on the banks of the Mississippi and now a historic site operated by the society. The fort is famous for its role in the Dakota War or Sioux Uprising of 1862, but it is also 'the Civil War portal for Minnesota' * * * For 25,000 of these men, this is where it started, and for those who survived, this is where it ended.' About 20,000 Minnesotans returned; 2,500 of them were grievously wounded, most with missing limbs.”
(i) Fort Snelling
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Snelling
(located atop a cliff at the confluence of the Minnesota River and Mississippi River; Army colonel Josiah Snelling built)
(ii) Dakota War of 1862
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862
(Aug 17- Dec 26, 1862)
(iii) The English surname Snelling means “son of Snell.”
The English surname Snell: “Middle English snell ‘quick’, ‘lively’”

(b) The English surname Dart : “the river Dart in Devon, which is named from a British term meaning ‘oak’ and is thus a cognate of Darwin”
(c) “262 Banfil Street, a blue, two-story Greek-revival house with a white front porch. This was once the home of Henning von Minden, a cavalry officer. Ms Dart learned from her research that about 10 other German immigrants like Mr von Minden lived within blocks of this house and volunteered for the Union army as well. As was common in other parts of the country, they very likely enlisted together in a surge of patriotism for their new country.”

The German surname Minden is "from any of various places so named, for example in Westphalia."

(d) “Here on the exposed parade ground and drafty barracks of Fort Snelling is where [veterans returning from Civil War] adjustment to civilian life began. ‘Men would form up, get their last pay and then sit and wait for the paperwork to be drawn up,’ Ms Dart said. Once discharged, ‘they were on their own.’”

form up (v):
"to assume or participate in an orderly arrangement <the waiting crowd formed up in a long line> <the planes formed up over the airfield>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/form up

(e) "In 1865, St Paul was barely 25 years old"
Saint Paul, Minnesota
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul,_Minnesota
(capital and second-most populous city [after Minneapolis] of Minnesota)

Quote: "In 1841, Father Lucien Galtier was sent to minister to the Catholic French-Canadians and established a chapel, named for his favorite saint, Paul the Apostle, on the bluffs above Lambert's Landing. Galtier intended for the settlement to adopt the name Saint Paul in honor of the new chapel. * * * The Minnesota Territory was formalized in 1849 and Saint Paul named as its capital.

(f) “The tour ends at the Minnesota Veterans’ Home, originally called the Old Soldiers Home, in Minneapolis’s Minnehaha State Park — a government-funded precursor to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals of today”
(i) Minnehaha
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnehaha
("waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota [language])
(ii) Compare Minnesota
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota
(the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "clear water")

(g) "Summer tours include a picniclike lunch, with food from a local 1876 cookbook. 'Luckily for tourgoers,' Ms Dart says, 'late-19th-century picnic foods are remarkably similar to our own. Chicken salad and egg salad sandwiches, fresh fruit and carrot cake.' * * * 'Maybe next year,' she jokes, 'I’ll have everyone try hardtack.'”

hardtack
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack
(The name derives from the British sailor slang for food, "tack")