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.

Collection Care Grant - Phase One: Women's Clothing and Quilts

We've been most fortunate to receive three Minnesota Legacy grants this year.  A Minnesota Bookshelf Grant, funds to help pay for a Historic Structures Grant of the Thorstien Veblen Farmstead, and a Collections Care grant.  I"ll share more information about the first two list at a later time.  For now, however, I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the Collections Care grant work.

This grant, titled Collection Care: Phase 1, is focused on inventorying, photographing, repacking, and storing our quilt and women's clothing collection.  We will then integrate the photographs and location information into our PastPerfect database. This is phase one of a larger collections care project to transfer all collections management data to PastPerfect, photograph and inventory the entire collection, and improve over all collections care at the Rice County Historical Society. The dollars are helping to pay for the boxes, padded hangers, tissue, and a new clothes rack but most importantly, they are helping pay for a Summer Intern, Alicia Reuter, to work on the project. 

Here are some images of the work:

Here you can see the work room where Alicia is bringing the objects from the collections storage space, photographing them, and then rehousing them.















Every artifacts is photographed individually...


...and together (if its an ensemble)...


...then it is carefully packed away...


...labeled with the entire contents and a black and white photo for each item in the box....


...and then the boxes are stored in the attic.

Rice County and the Gunflint Trail

We received a call recently from a researcher who was looking into the history of the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota.  While doing her research she found some curious connections to a Michael Cook who was from Faribault, MN.  She asked if we could provide information on when exactly he lived here, which houses he participated in constructing during that time (her research had uncovered he was a carpenter), and if which, if any, of those houses were still standing.

Needless to say this was a pretty challenging, although not that a-typical. Some information we already knew.  The Faribault GAR post (Grand Army of the Republic, precursor to the American Legion) was the Michael J. Cook Post.  We knew he was a carpenter and had fought during the Civil War, but that he was connected to the Gunflint Trail or Northern Minnesota was news. 

One of the best parts of working here is that when a question comes up that is this surprising and challenging, we all start working to solve this mystery.  Like a finely tuned orchestra we all started to dig in.  Jean to the research files, Pat to the photos, and I went to the Internet.

As is always the case when doing history research, it isn't fair to say this is "new" information.  It is just that is was new to us.  Despite having worked with Rice County for over 20 years, I am the first to admit that the more I know, the more I realize I have to learn.  Such was the case today with this query.

Here are our findings:

• Cook County Minnesota is named for Major Michael J. Cook, a Civil War vet from Faribault, MN.
• The Gunflint Trail is located in Cook County, hence the connection
• Michael Cook was born in New Jersey in 1828, he settled in Faribault in 1855.  Quoting from the book, Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, “…and, being a carpenter, aided in building some of the first framed houses there…”
• He was also a Territorial and State Senator from 1857 to 1862.
• He was mustered into the 10th Minnesota in 1862.
• He was wounded at the battle of Nashville, December 16, 1864 and died 11 days later at the age of 36.

As we said to the researcher, although we can be sure he was here at the time that Faribault became a city (1855) and helped to build many of the first homes, he was not the contractor, architect, or developer so we can not definitively give her a list. 

Yet, how cool is that?   It make me wonder what other connections we can make to place names around the state.