1922-2022
In many ways, the Anoka County Historical Society has grown up alongside Federal Cartridge Company—they celebrate birthdays only 12 years apart—sharing the same town of Anoka, Minnesota as community touchstones steeped in legacy of their own making. Like many nonprofits and businesses in Anoka, FCC maintains a generous partnership with ACHS, helping the organization grow. The trust, built through time, led to the centennial donation of 100 years of documents, photos, live images, and framed objects to the history center.
It’s difficult to accurately express the number of items in the collection—there’s 25 boxes of printed images alone—that have travelled through our archival process. From high-level “weeding” to sorting by decade and name, down to digitizing, labeling, and data entry into our online program, the FCC collection challenged our small museum’s resources. Now that it’s complete, available to the public at AnokaCountyHistory.org, we can move ahead to creating a physical exhibit at our history center as well as an online exhibit.
We invite you to visit either (or both!) repositories to appreciate more the legacy of Charles Horn, Robert Ehlen, their thousands of employees, and the impact FCC all had on not only Anoka as a city, but the United States as a whole. Through wars, economic changes, political crisis, and labor shifts, FCC supported its staff and the community, making itself relevant.
The physical exhibit will open in time for the actual 100th anniversary of FCC, June 2022. This display will include original documents signed by Horn, notes in his nearly illegible scrawl, and of course, his signature carnation laying on the desk. Visitors will experience one-of-a-kind blueprints for machinery and shells, an array of advertising, a full collection of The Monarch publication, and framed images of the factory. You’ll hear the experience of plant employees, some of whom have logged 600 years of combined service to FCC as a family group. Best of all, you can contribute to the next century of history by leaving ACHS your own story and experiences with Federal ammunition, as an employer, or as a community partner.
A centennial birthday only comes around once in, well…100 years. We’re lucky enough to witness this milestone, poised between a legacy of the past and the possibilities of the future. Celebrate with FCC and ACHS while learning more about the people who built the corporation we know today. Without the thousands of employees who clocked in for their shift, joined the company bowling league or choir, sponsored the picnics or brought treats for the children at the holidays—without the community of Anoka, Minnesota embracing Horn’s ideals—FCC would look significantly different today. But they did. That’s the story we get to tell.
