Apprentice: Noah

The Rice County Historical Society has recently begun a new high school volunteer program, the Museum Apprentice Program. The next round of orientation will begin on September 25. Apprentices in grades 8-12 will meet every Tuesday from 3:30-5:30 and learn what is involved with work at a museum, and will do independent projects involving research, collections, exhibits and more!

Below is a testimonial from a current MAPster:

My name is Noah and I have been volunteering at the Rice County Historical Society for the last three months as a member of the MAP program.  During the MAP program I have been kept busy doing many different kinds of interesting tasks around the museum.  Recently, I have been repairing old, worn books in the Rare Book Room.  My time hasn’t just been about repairing books though.  I have helped catalog photos, move files, and research bikes as well.  Another job I have had was helping with the log cabin during the fair.

I currently live in Faribault, with no intention of moving away.  I am homeschooled, and in the eighth grade.  Being the eldest child, I have three younger siblings; two sisters and one brother.  Some of the things I enjoy are playing games and reading.  Spending time with my family is also something that I enjoy.  I have fun doing things in my homeschool group.  Currently I have been going over to a friend’s house every two weeks to play games with him and a few other friends.  I have recently caught wind that our film group may be starting up again soon.  The group stopped making films for a while because both the director and producer/main cameraman got behind on their schoolwork and had to catch up.  Our group (Phantom Films) has turned out a number of short movies, and it’s a blast doing them, so I can’t wait to start doing it again.

It has been enjoyable experience volunteering here at Rice County Historical Society.  I’ve gotten to work on interesting projects, sit around all day at the fair, and spend time with different people.  Who knows what I will be doing here next!

Volunteer Spotlight: Brian Schmidt

Brian Schmidt became connected to the Rice County Historical Society through his passion for collecting artifacts from the former Fleckenstein Brewery. After getting to know the staff at the RCHS Museum, Schmidt decided he wanted to be part of “a wonderful group of people that likes to preserve the history of Faribault and Rice County.”

Schmidt, who lives in Faribault, has been a volunteer for the past three years. He gives of his time as a member of the collections committee, fair committee, buildings and grounds committee, and helps in any other way he can such as hanging signs in Heritage Hall prior to the 2012 Rice County Fair.

For just over 20 years, he has worked for MOM Brands (Malt-O-Meal). He also worked at the former Treasure Cave blue cheese factory in Faribault for 11 years and for the United States Postal Service for one year. During his high school years, he worked for Larry Bhur at Sears (where Napa is located today).

Schmidt was born in San Jose, Calif., in 1962, and moved to Faribault in the early 1970s with his family. Today he is married with a house in Faribault, and he and wife, Toni, have two sons, Derek and Jarid.

His main hobby is learning as much as he can about Fleckenstein Brewery and collecting artifacts from that former Faribault business. He also likes to fish, travel, browse at garage sales, and learn new historic facts about Faribault and Rice County. 

Volunteer Spotlight: Shirley Rockman

Shirley Rockman of Faribault enjoys her volunteer duties of filling in at the reception desk at the Rice County Historical Society Museum on days when the part-time administrative assistant is off.

What she likes best about volunteering is meeting and helping people who phone or stop in at the museum. She has been a volunteer at the RCHS Museum for the past six months. She learned about volunteer opportunities that fit her interest while attending a volunteer appreciation event at the RCHS with her husband, LeRoy Rockman, who is also a volunteer for the organization.

Shirley worked for 19 years at the Faribault Daily News; five years at Sheldahl in Northfield; and five years at Hoffmann Printing in Faribault, before retiring. She has much experience working with people, which has been a valuable help to RCHS. She also has computer skills, so helps out not only by answering the phone at the RCHS Museum, but with a variety of computer task as well as filing.

She and her husband have two daughters and two grandsons. They both grew up in Rice County. Shirley is also a volunteer for the Faribault Hospice program, and her summertime hobby is home canning.

Volunteer Spotlight: Marilyn Garwood

Marilyn Garwood of Mendota Heights travels weekly to Faribault to volunteer at the Rice County Historical Society Museum.

What she likes best about volunteering is meeting new people and learning about the museum functions, and facts about Rice County history, even though she didn’t ever live here.

Garwood grew up in St. Paul. She has lived in Mendota Heights for many years. She began volunteering at the RCHS Museum 8 ½ years ago when her daughter, Sue Garwood of Northfield, became executive director of the RCHS.

She does a variety of work during her weekly trips to the museum, filing, typing, proofing, cleaning, shopping, answering the phones - doing just about anything her daughter, Sue asks her to do.

Her initial reason for volunteering was to spend time with her daughter, who was looking for volunteer help after she took over as director of the RCHS. As the years went on, she became friends with other volunteers. She also worked during most of the past eight Rice County Fairs, helping with the task of overseeing the historical buildings on the fairgrounds that are open during the fair and include the log cabin, one-room school house, church and Harvest and Heritage Halls, besides the museum.

Garwood is a widow with three grown children, who include two sons besides her daughter, Sue. She has five grandchildren, three boys and two girls. She is a retired nurse and currently serves as a parish nurse for the Episcopal church she attends. Her hobbies are reading, walking, travel and spending time with family and friends.

Indian Artifact Exhibit Re-Design

Hello, I am Bridgette Reuvers-Slinger, a student from Hamline University, majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Sociology. I have been interning at the Rice County Historical Society for about two and a half weeks now. Sue Garwood has asked me to help out with a display that they have that she feels is not up to speed. This has become my daily project.

The collection at hand is a set of archaic stone tools that were donated in the 1930s that were not cataloged and very little was known about the tools. I am in the process of cleaning old museum wax off of the tools, putting new accession numbers on each tool, measuring and documenting them, and writing descriptions about each individual tool. The descriptions that I have been writing include things such as potential names and how they were made. I have also spent a lot of time reading and researching not only the time periods but also the material of the tools.

One of the neat things that I have encountered thus far is one of the tools that I had initially thought was used for animal hide scraping. I had thought this because of the shape of the tool and the way that it compared to the other tools. After some more investigating and research I realized that the tool was not only categorized in the wrong time period but that it was not a scraping tool at all. After my research, I determined it to be a knife from an earlier time period. Thus far I have found three more tools that were incorrectly categorized as far as time periods. I have been using the physical evidence of the tools to try and decipher the time period. There are many books that are available that have visual representations of the tools that I have used for comparisons. 

My end goal is to have the exhibit completely re-designed by the end of the month. One of the modifications includes a new way to display the tools in the collection. Perhaps instead of setting it up chronologically it would be more visually appealing to display the tools by the function. With some volunteer and staff assistance, I have already taken the background fabric off of the display and replaced it with new clean fabric. Soon I will start to write draft exhibit labels that will accompany the display.  

Volunteer Spotlight: Loren Dahle

Loren Dahle of Morristown began volunteering eight years ago for the Rice County Historical Society after he became a RCHS board member representing the Morristown Historical Society chapter. 

For many years he was a farmer and milked cows. Then, he earned an associate degree in food inspection and manufacturing from the former University of Minnesota, Waseca, a college that specialized in offering various agricultural-related degrees.

After receiving his associated degree, Dahle was hired by Beatrice Cheese to be the field man for the former Treasure Cave Blue Cheese plant in Faribault. He worked with suppliers of milk to the plant to assure quality milk being delivered to the plant. He held the position until the Faribault plant closed in the mid-1990s and production of Treasure Cave Blue Cheese was shifted to Wisconsin.   Today he is retired, and the cropland on his family’s farm north of Morristown, rented out.

Dahle is vice president of the Morristown Historical Society. He also serves as secretary for the RCHS Board, on the RCHS’s buildings and grounds committee, and as a member of that committee, volunteers for many hours for projects helping maintain the society’s buildings and grounds around them.

Dahle’s passion is the Morristown Feed Mill, which is open for tours during the community’s annual Dam Days Festival. He helps keep the grind stone working so grain can be ground in the old mill as a demonstration to children of today as to how small town feed mills used to operate. The mill’s stone is turn by a recreated water-wheel that uses water from the Cannon River.

Anyone interested in volunteering to help the Rice County Historical Society can call the museum at 507-332-2121.

Volunteer Spotlight: Carol Ponto

Carol Ponto began volunteering five years ago for the Rice County Historical Society when someone was sought who would be willing to clean the museum. She has been a faithful volunteer ever since, cleaning at not only the society’s museum, but she elps out with periodic house cleaning at the historic 1853 Alexander Faribault House as well.

She began volunteering after she retired because she had the time to give to a good cause, and decided the RCHS was a good organization to help out.

”The museum has always been of interest to me. I volunteer at several other places, too, but enjoy helping out at the museum a lot,” Ponto said.

She helps with schoolchildren tours, too, during the spring field trip season to the museum.

”What I like best about volunteering is meeting children n and adults who visit the museum and its other buildings,” she said. “I always enjoy the people.”

Ponto worked as an educational assistant with the public schools, and prior to that, held several jobs related to automobiles. Her big interest is history, especially reading about British history and watching history programs on television.

Anyone interested in volunteering to help the Rice County Historical Society can call the museum at 507-332-2121.