Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota Ethnic History Project.

The Minnesota Ethnic History Project (MEHP) operated under the auspices of the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) from 1973 to 1981, and culminated in the book, They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups . As explained in the preface, the project's main objective was to "bring together in a single volume information on the major ethnic populations that have resided in Minnesota during the 130 years from 1850 to 1980," but also to act as a launching point for further, more exhaustive treatment of Minnesota's ethnic history. Project records indicate that plans to collect and retain the data and research notes compiled and created during the course of the project, in order to facilitate additional research, existed from an early stage. As the press release touting the inauguration of MEHP in October of 1973 emphasized, the project was not only ground-breaking in the field of Minnesota history but, as the first such effort in the country, it set a new standard nationally.

The Minnesota Ethnic History Project began as the inspiration of Carlton C. Qualey, a former director of the Minnesota Historical Society, an MHS research fellow, and noted scholar in the field of immigration history. Discussion of the idea began as early as the late 1960s but financial backing, in the form of grants from the Minnesota Legislature and the Bush Foundation of St. Paul, was not secured until 1973. With funding secured the project proceeded in two phases. Phase One, directed by Qualey from 1973 to 1978, involved the creation of a statistical base and the gathering of additional pertinent research on all groups for the period from the beginnings of settlement to 1930. During this period initial drafts of most of the chapters were written and a general scheme of organization devised. Phase Two, from 1978 to 1981, encompassed the assembling of data for all groups from 1930 to the 1980s, as well as the bulk of the writing, and was carried out under the direction of June Drenning Holmquist, then head of the Minnesota Historical Society's publishing program, with the assistance of research coordinator Deborah L. (Stultz) Miller.

As illustrated in the records of the project, much of the research utilized the rich resources in the Society's own collections, which had benefited from an emphasis on ethnic history source materials in the collection policy of the preceding decades. In addition, researchers drew upon the materials in the University of Minnesota's immigration history collections and other local historical societies, as well as a great deal of field research including hundreds of interviews with immigrants and their descendants. As the project drew to a close in the late 1970s, efforts were made to reclaim as much of the research notes and other related material as possible from the various individuals involved in the study, resulting in a dense collection of data that documents both the ethnic groups that settled in Minnesota and the project itself.

Historical information on the Minnesota Ethnic History Project was taken from the preface of They Chose Minnesota and from the collection.

From the guide to the Project Records., 1969-1982., (Minnesota Historical Society)