One hundred and fifty-plus years before the internet age where digital data is stored on servers in off-site locations, history was methodically recorded by pen, ink and paper.
Sometimes, those handwritten records contained information about the leaders busy building a sense of place, like those who founded Greenvale Township in 1858, back when it was called Green Vale, two words.
The township, located just north and west of Northfield, has strong ties to the British Isles, with specific ancestry matches to the Isle of Man.
That’s just a glimpse into what a group of Greenvale Township residents discovered when they elected to take a deeper dive into the leather bound, handwritten record books that date back to the 1850s.
“We’re proud of those books and the people who were committed to recording their history,” said Wayne Peterson, the current supervisor for the township.
The records from these meetings were written in cursive in ledgers that date back to 1858, the same year Minnesota became a state. The ledgers from the township planning commission were stored either in residents’ homes or in the former one-room schoolhouse on Cedar Avenue where the meetings were held before the current Greenvale Township Town Hall was built in 2008.
The volunteer researchers, Dean and Geralyn Odette, Patricia and Eric Christianson, and Wayne Peterson, said they enjoyed working together on the project which culminated in four commemorative panels detailing the names of each supervisor, treasurer and clerk who served on the township planning commission since the beginning.
The handsome panels that hang on the north wall of the light-filled township office are divided into four sections: from 1858-1899; from 1906-1949; from 1950-1999; and from 2000-2049. Donations from Greenvale Township residents helped defray the cost, said Dean Odette.
“We were regular sleuths,” joked Wayne Peterson.
The group first got together in March 2022 but didn’t start their research until last year, said Christianson. They enlisted help from the Dakota County Historical Society in order to round out the full names of the board members that were often shortened to initial. The local researchers said they used Google, Find-A-Grave.com and other ancestry search engines to complete the records.
“It was a fun project,” said Dean Odette.
The group also learned that, in 1905, Greenvale Township not only had a treasurer on its Planning Commission, but it also had a dog catcher; and that the first clerk on the commission was Henry Marsh; and the first woman to serve on the township board was Dean’s mother Mae Odette in 1967; and the longest running clerk was Edith Nelson who served from 1982 to 2013.
“They were obviously proud of their record books,” said Geralyn Odette, pointing to the neat notations on the yellow pages.
“Many of the clerks had beautiful handwriting,” added Patricia Christianson.
Rebecca Snyder, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society for Dakota County, said in a phone interview that she’s helped other groups with similar historical searches.
“They had some holes they needed to fill,” said Snyder. “We did the exact same thing for Eureka Township.”
One complicating factor was that, when the Greenvale Township folks tried to bring some of the old, fraying records to be examined, their offices were closed for remodeling.
Snyder said she conducted a thorough search using old Dakota County newspapers to help the group find some of the missing names.
Colin Dunn, a reference technician at Minnesota Historical Society, said research projects like the one Greenvale Township undertook are generally less complicated when researching events and people that came after the Social Security Act was established in 1935.
The Act enforced proof of citizenship and complete first and last name listings, not just initials as was more common in the 19th century, Dunn explained.
For Dean Odette, the research project was especially worthwhile when he learned a piece of family history he had not previously known. Through the old records, Odette found out that it was his very own grandfather and two uncles who were paid to grade and maintain the main township road.
“That was exciting to discover,” he said. “In fact, the old grader they used sits outside the township office today.”
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