5/30/2008:
Between 1996 and 1999, the Library of Congress sponsored a competition that would provide funding to libraries, archives, museums or historical societies to digitize their primary source collections of historical or cultural importance. The twenty-three selected collections were then made available online through the Library of Congress’s American Memory website. One of two collections chosen from the North Dakota State University's Institute of Regional Studies was the F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collection.
Ferdinand August Pazandak was born in a Bohemian settlement in Iowa on this day in 1883. As a teenager, he moved to North Dakota with his parents and siblings, settling four miles north of Fullerton in Dickey County on a farm they named "Highland Farm." After the purchase of their first steam-powered tractor and steam-lift plow in 1908, the Pazandak brothers became convinced of the advantages of mechanical power over horse power. Selling their last horses in 1916, the Pazandaks had the first fully mechanized farm in the Fullerton area and one of the first in North Dakota.
In 1917, Ferd married a local school teacher, Vera Higgs, and they moved to their own farmstead, a short distance from Highland Farm. Even on his own farm, Ferd Pazandak continually modified his equipment to find new ways to save time and labor in his production of several types of crops as well as purebred Hampshire hogs, registered goats, sheep, and for a short time, chinchilla rabbits.
His interest in modernization and technology also extended beyond farm machinery.
Ferd, Vera and their daughter Elaine lived in a newly constructed Sears-Roebuck prefabricated house, which offered the most modern facilities in farm homes at that time. He also helped organize the rural electrification association in Dickey County and volunteered at the local telephone company.
But arguably his most important contribution was born out a life-long interest in photography. Ferd began taking pictures at the age of sixteen. Starting with his first camera, a folding 3A Eastman, and a tripod, Ferd recorded the mechanization of Highland Farm and, later, his own farm. With over 4,000 slides in his library, he captured on film the transition from horses to steam engines to gas tractors. He also photographed the agricultural laborers who worked the fields, as well as his Sears Roebuck prefabricated house.
Following the death of Mr. Pazandak in January of 1973, his daughter donated his collection of negatives and prints to the Institute for Regional Studies in 1983.
Today, over 100 of these images can be viewed at the American Memory website of the Library of Congress as part of the F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collection posted there by the Institute for Regional Studies.
Written by Christina Sunwall
Sources:
"F. A. Pazandak Photograph Collection", Institute for Regional Studies & University Archives, NDSU Libraries http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndirs/collections/photography/index.html (accessed 2008).
"The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections", The Library of Congress American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ndfahtml/ngphome.html (accessed 2008).