Thank you for tuning in the winter 2025-2026 edition of the Murray County Historical Society Newsletter. A special thanks to everyone who made it to our 2026 Annual Meeting at Key Largo back in October. We had Janet Timmerman speak on all the stories she couldn’t put in her latest book Halcyon Days: Leisure on Lake Shetek. At the meeting Colleen Gengler re-upped for another three years on the board. We thank her for her service and are looking forward to three more years working with her.
This past December we had several events. On a snowy Saturday we were pleased to welcome visitors to the annul holiday open house where we had 18 beautifully decorated trees. Thank you to everyone who came out to the event and a special congratulations to the Friends of the Slayton Public Library for being the people’s favorite tree. Following the open house, we partnered with the library to host a series of “Scan for Keeps” events, during which the public could bring in photos, documents, pictures, etc. and get their items digitized using a large archival scanner borrowed from the Minnesota Digital Library. We enjoyed seeing everyone’s old photos and documents that were brought in and hopefully will offer the event again in the future.
As you may have heard, in December the Murray County Historical Society was awarded a grant in the amount of $14,040 to develop a collection storage plan. This plan is the first step in upgrading our collections storage area. It is not all good news however. We had also applied for $186,000 in grant funds to repair windows at the Dinehart Holt House, which was not awarded to us. In the large grant round there was $11 million in requested funds, with only $4.7 million available to be awarded. Despite not being awarded the funds to repair the windows, we are still grateful that Minnesota has a program in place for awarding millions of dollars a year for historical preservation. As a state, we are blessed to have such strong support for local history, and we hope that continues.
Looking forward, 2026 is a notable year in American History. While Murray County did not exist until well after 1776, we will be still be planning several events this summer to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.