Works by and about Sarah Thorp Heald

Written Works by Sarah Thorp Heald

Legend of Waseya - 1934

This short illustrated book was created for Clarence E. Lum, a doctor from Duluth, and brother of Leon E. Lum, who donated $500 to start the Crow Wing County Historical Society. to explain the skeletons on his property: One of a woman and one of a disabled child. Heald asked Ojibwe elders in the area if they knew about the burial there on Gull Lake and they didn't, so Heald decided to write a story of her own explaining this. The story chronicles the life of one of Chief-Hole-In-The-Day's wives, Waseya, who feels neglected after Hole-In-The-Day marries a European woman from Washington State. Waseya moves out of the main house with Hole-in-the-day and his other Wives and goes to live on her own. Hole-in-the-Day's son checks on her repeatedly, but she will not move. Eventually, it becomes cold and Waseya and the child die, leaving their skeletons behind.

History of Old Crow Wing -1937

In this short piece, Heald goes through the area's history, first detailing trading posts and early settlers. Heald talks about the first white men who came to the area and what their lives were like. Heald talks about the tension and fighting between European immigrants and Native Americans. Heald also includes testimonials from "old-timers" and their descendants that she collected as a part of her position at the Crow Wing County Historical Society. Heald interlaces these oral histories with fact-checking through historical documents. At the end of The History of Old Crow Wing, Heald discusses the Battle of Crow Wing, which happened in 1768 when the Dakota and Ojibwe Tribes fought along the Mississippi River, after various run-ins and skirmishes. The document is very informational overall, and was a great resource for researching some of Heald’s historical paintings,

Mixed Blood - 1939

"Mixed Blood" was an unpublished manuscript that Heald wrote in 1939. The manuscript, if put into a paperback format, would be about three hundred pages long. The Novel is historical Fiction, and Sarah dedicates it to the fur traders, their families, her Ojibwe friends to the north, and "all-too-frequently vilified" mixed-race individuals. The Novel describes the fictional Captain Hall, the Alainson Family, and the Beauforts, as they navigate politics, racism, and romance in rural Minnesota.

Heald makes her views very clear in this novel through the characters' dialogue. The characters remark that the white men who have stolen their land don't take care of it. They talk about masculinity, and how many European men can't express their emotions. It is clear that the book was inspired by events that were happening in Heald's life. These views from Heald were very surprising considering the time, when most Minnesotans were incredibly racist.

These two Watercolors depict scenes from Heald's unpublished Novel "Mixed Blood."

An Indian Legend - 1941

This short story was written for the Camp-Lake-Hubert-for-Girls and shares political topics and vivid descriptions of the lake area that many of her other works include. The story chronicles the life of an Ojibwe woman named Nenaka, who lives on Lake Hubert in the 1700s. When she becomes a young woman, she has a dream about seeing the future of Lake Hubert. She sees girls at Lake Hubert laughing and dancing and swimming. This makes her feel overjoyed, but also worried. She talks about how women must always depend on a husband and how this is unfair and wrong. Heald's first-wave feminist views are reflected here. But Nenaka is also concerned, for many of the girls in her dream were pale-faced, not like the people in her community. Nenaka worries about what happens in her community to make this change. From here the story describes the rest of her life, from creating a home on Lake Hubert to her heroic death during the Battle of Crow Wing. This story is fascinating and adds more to the discussion of Heald’s outlook and personal politics.

Works that talk about Sarah Thorp Heald

Carl Zapffe - Old Timers Vol. I & II - 1988

These two volumes by Zapffe chronicle the history of Brainerd in astonishing detail. Heald shows up many times in each of the volumes, many times with a photo or a quote about different historical details. There are also a couple of dedicated sections to Heald: one on the Thorp Family, which focuses on Freeman and the family's move to Lake Hubert, and another on Sarah Thorp Heald and her husband Joseph Gerry Heald and their rocky marriage and family life. Zapffe is blunt and gives us great insight into the life of Heald and we can see it was not easy.

Crow Wing County Historical Society - Secretaries Notes - 1929-1956

This collection of minutes was taken by a dozen secretaries from the Crow Wing County Historical Society for a quarter-century. For about 13 of these years, the notes were taken by Sarah Thorp Heald. Heald was a principal member of the Crow Wing County Historical Society, serving under different titles for 15 years. For her first ten years, Heald's title was only secretary, despite working there every day it was open, accepting new items for the collection, hosting important guests who came to visit the museum, and sending out surveys to every county in Minnesota to ask about the state of their Historical Societies, and then compiling and presenting the results. The secretary's notes make this work that Heald did apparent and show her commitment. She is present at almost every meeting from 1929, at the Historical Society’s conception, to 1944, when she stepped down after a fifteen-year career.

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