Benton County Historical society

The Benton County Historical Society in Sauk Rapid, Minnesota is a phenomenal resource for research! Not only has the Executive Director, Mary Ostby, acquired an impressive amount of original material, she has built a data base that provides her and her volunteers easy access to a majority of the information.

This organization has gone further than collecting newspapers, city directories, family histories, photographs, maps, cemetery registrations and local artifacts.  It is possible through their holdings to compile a more complete picture of people in the area and how they lived.  Acquisitions include county plat maps, land records, tax assessments, probate documents, and police records. But it doesn’t stop there. The local paper mill was a large employer that when the plant was closed provided company records including payrolls to the society. There are the original membership records for the Sportsman’s Club, church histories, high school yearbooks, an area history written by a local citizen and much more.

The Benton County Historical Society was a good place to learn about who lived in my ancestor’s neighborhoods, where they worked and shopped, as well as how they spent their free time. It was here that I learned that it was my 2nd great-grandfather, not my great-grandfather, that emigrated from Prussia to the United States and that the stories that everyone that lived “on the hill” were related, really were.  I also found my great-grandfather had a brother who died young tragically in an accident working a lathe at the local sawmill.  County records helped complete a picture of a popular young man whose death devasted his parents and resulted in a lawsuit that was eventually denied at the Minnesota Supreme Court. This is just one of the many stories to be found when records exist that go beyond where one was born, who they married, and where they died.
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