It’s about home: A former Waseca County resident who had been on our website wrote, “Great website, it was like visiting home.” From our researching visitors, we get comments like, “I found my lost relatives here!” or “I didn’t know I had so many Waseca County connections.” When a first time visitor walks into the museum, they look up (and see our dome) and often say, “This is great, I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first time I’ve seen this museum.” The common theme here is in the word home and learning about home.

WCHS works to save the history of Waseca County for all time. This is only accomplished with a limited budget, part-time staff and volunteers. Operational funding is requested to the local government to try to provide some financial stability, so that fundraising, membership drives, and grant requests can happen effectively.

The work of WCHS: Behind the scenes, staff and volunteers are constantly processing information, new artifacts, family histories, oral histories, photographs, archival documents—it all must be processed. Each item must have a number assigned, description written and a record created. Photographs must be scanned, artifacts must be photographed, and everything must be archivally stored. To create an exhibit or an event, research is initiated, information gathered, photographs printed, labels written and printed, promotion planned and executed, volunteers organized, and so on. In 2010 the Waseca County Timeline should be finished as a semi-permanent, year-round exhibit. The research phase will begin on a Herter’s exhibit for 2011.

Our website, www.historical.waseca.mn.us averages over 2,000 hits per day. To date there are over 37,000 artifact records, 15,000 photographs, 3,000 archived records, family and business folders, family histories, probates, birth, death, marriage, baptism, cemetery records—all constantly being indexed and updated for website access. Our Bailey-Lewer Research Library has three microfilm reader/printers, newspaper microfilm from all Waseca County newspapers, maps, yearbooks, atlases, and still more.

Over 600 members support WCHS annually from all over the county, the state, across the U.S. and three foreign countries. Membership provides access to the website records and free research in the library.

The Waseca County Historical Society is a member of the Minnesota Historical Society, the American Association of State & Local History, the Minnesota Council of Non-profits, and the American Association of Museums. WCHS is one of only two non-church research sites of the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Minnesota!

Tremendous strides have been made by generous donors from the Waseca County community in the past. The Waseca County Historical Society was organized in 1938. The present museum building was a gift from the Edgar Johnson family in 1964. Our genealogical research library is housed in the 1868 house that was once owned by P.C. Bailey and Ewald Lewer. In 2007 the board of directors initiated the first-ever capital fundraising campaign to celebrate Waseca County’s 150th anniversary, and raised $150,000 in three years. Since 1988 WCHS has benefited from endowment funds held by the Waseca Area Foundation which is part of the Minnesota Community Foundation. To date WCHS has seven funds, which speaks well of the Waseca County community and its support for WCHS. These funds provide annual interest/grant income. They include: Phil Allen Memorial Fund, the Frank and Barbara Goodspeed Memorial Fund, the Edgar F. and Ethel Johnson Fund, the Wes and Carol Rethwill History Fund, the Jerry and Linda Rutledge Heritage Fund, the WCHS Endowment Fund, and the WCHS Lifetime Endowment Fund. And in 2008, Jerry and Linda Rutledge also created a generous charitable remainder trust to benefit WCHS in the future.

Please consider being part of the Waseca County Historical Society support family. Be part of the success it has had. Be part of the success in its future. We want to continue to educate and interpret for the next generation--to continue to collect the stories and artifacts, and to continue to make it all accessible for generations to come.