It’s a very weathered wooden board about 14 inches wide and 20 inches long and about two inches thick. It was a grave marker. I say &uot;was&uot; because it was found in a river bed in Colorado and brought back to Minnesota where it lay in a garage for many years. Now it’s in the collection of the Freeborn County Historical Museum. What’s it doing there? Good question.

Our articles of incorporation say, &uot;The purpose of this corporation shall be to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge about the history of Freeborn County and the State of Minnesota and to perform all acts necessary to accomplish that purpose.&uot;

While that’s a very broad scope, it is also limiting. We only collect things related to Freeborn County. That’s why we should not have accepted the grave marker. However, some rules are made to be bent a bit, and when an artifact with this kind of a history is offered, we would be very foolish to turn it down.

&uot;This kind of a history&uot; is an odd choice of words to use. We know next to nothing about the piece. The marker is dark gray in color and worn in stripes according to the grain of the wood. It has been suggested that it is cedar, but we’re not sure. The bottom edge is uneven as if it had broken off, or rotted, at ground level and slowly tipped over. Many years ago, someone had taken the time to carve the surface flat with raised lettering, a significant piece to the puzzle. We can make out ARD and the number 9, and we can only guess at the other letters. How old is the marker? Whose burial site did it identify? Where was the grave? Who cared enough to carve the lettering? Was it for an adult or a child? How did he or she die? Birth date? Home? Family? Heritage?

When I was searching for a way to say what I want to say in this column, that grave marker came to mind. Without the Freeborn County Historical Museum, our history would be almost as much of a mystery as that marker. I say almost, because the Minnesota Historical Society does have newspapers and other official records on file, accessible to the public, as does the city of Albert Lea and Freeborn County. However, they cannot tell our story the way the museum can.

The residents of Freeborn County have been very generous with their donations. Within the last year, our accessions have included a painting on velvet of the &uot;Lone Wolf,&uot; a light green Depression glass butter dish, a replica of a mammoth tooth (the original was found east of Albert Lea and is now in the Science Museum in St. Paul), a photo of Dwight D. Eisenhower when he made a whistle stop in Albert Lea in 1953, cleats for horse shoes to make them more secure on ice, a hand crocheted necktie, a commemorative tea cup and saucer set with the 1887 courthouse on it, and a beautiful solid oak bed owned by five generations of the Ruble family that helped to found the city of Albert Lea.

I recently did a radio show based on some of the earlier businesses that are on file in the museum’s archives. We discussed the 27,253 dairy cows in Freeborn County in 1912 and the 28 creameries. We talked about the corset factory that made almost 500,000 corsets a year and sold them in a nine-state territory. We marveled at the business done by the American Gas Machine Company, the Albert Lea Hide & Fur Company, and the Western Grocer Company. We never even got around to talking about the culvert manufacturer, the wagon maker, the iron works, the ice-coal-wood dealers, the creosoted wood pavement block manufacturers, or the flour mill.

In 2001, the museum had visitors from 35 states and eight foreign countries. The numbers for 2002, while not completely tabulated, will run even higher. When these people enter the museum, they are immediately transported back in time &045; no matter what their age, adult or child.

One of the most delightful letters we have received was addressed to one of our volunteer guides following a second grade school tour. Its message is as true today as when it was written in 1989.

&uot;Dear Mr. Westgate, Thank you for letting us come, and giving us a tour of the museum. I have never seen the museum before, so I was glad that we got to see it. You gave us a lot of information and detail of all the things, so the trip wasn’t dull or boring. I didn’t have a favorite part, because I liked a lot of the museum things. It was very exciting and I had a lot of fun. Sincerely, Jamie&uot;

Your history will always be available to visitors, researchers, and the next generations of students. Your heritage is intact because of generous museum donors and their continued operating support. Your story will never be lost like the story on that mysterious weathered grave marker.

Bev Jackson is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum.