By Bruce Karnick

Hastings has always been a town that is proud of its history. There is a reason “Historic Hastings” is a slogan that has been used all over. Did you know that Hastings was legally incorporated March 7th, 1857? Process that for a moment. Eighteen fifty-seven. That was 19 years before the first telephone call was made by Alexander Graham Bell. 28 years before the first gasoline powered automobile was made in Germany by Karl Benz, 45 years before Kane Tanaka, the current oldest person alive at 117, was born. Bottom line, Hastings has been around a long time. With all this history, how do you keep track of it all? Easy, have a few volunteers maintain the Pioneer Room at City Hall. But it is not that. The Pioneer Room regularly takes requests for records searches and there are only three volunteers, working one day a week, 9:30 to Noon on Wednesdays. Who better to tell that story than the curator of the Pioneer Room and her two associates?

The Pioneer Room by Pioneer Room Researchers Heidi Langenfeld, Shirley Dalaska and Cindy Thury Smith.

The Pioneer Room opened in 1992. It was part of the renovation of the former Dakota County Courthouse into Hastings City Hall. It was started by four people each had been collecting artifacts/photos/information for decades and they needed a place to share it with the public: The “Fab Four” that started the Pioneer Room were: Hazel Jacobson-Theel: She collected general history about Hastings and artifacts Robert Olson: He collected genealogical records and information about Hastings residents Ethel Thieling: She was a librarian and collected books and magazines about the city of Hastings, Dakota County and the state of MN Dick Darsow: He was a researcher who also collected historical photographs The Hastings Historical Society was a local group interested in history; they started in 1985. When it became clear that finally the LeDuc House was going to be renovated and opened to the public many of the Hastings Historical Society members wanted to concentrate on helping the LeDuc and so the Friends of the LeDuc was formed. The LeDuc House opened in 2005 and within a few years became a definite part of the community. Friends of LeDuc morphed into the Friends of LeDuc and Historic Hastings. As the LeDuc got on its feet we started exploring the history of the Hastings Area more and we are now in the process of changing our name to the Hastings Area Historical Society so we can explore the history of Ravenna, Miesville, Nininger, etc.

The Pioneer Room has historical photos, books and magazines on in-state history, information on historical buildings in town and artifacts. We also have paper records, mostly gleaned from the local newspapers, broken down into biographical records and subject records. The subject records cover over 100 categories, such as businesses in town, local ecology, organizations, industries, churches, historical buildings, population, rivers/waterways, transportation, etc. If a person comes in and wants to research, say their family tree, we can pull records for them to look through (we also have census reports for the City of Hastings back to the 1850s).

We have some interesting artifacts in the Pioneer Room such as a GAR flag. GAR stands for Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Civil War veterans. the Hastings Chapter of the GAR was organized on Sept. 7, 1866 with John Kennedy elected first Commander. All honorable discharged veterans of the War of Rebellion were eligible for membership. The MN GAR was reorganized in 1881, and the Hastings Chapter was rechartered as Peller Post 89 on April 15, 1884. First Lt. John Peller was a member of the famed First Minnesota Volunteers and was wounded at Gettysburg. After the war he served as Adjutant General of Minnesota. Once an active and influential Civil War veterans organization, with 158 members in Hastings on their roster (including several black soldiers), the post passed into memory with the death of the last local survivor, Nathan Zeigler, on April 7, 1933 (he was 89). The GAR was responsible for the establishment of Memorial Day as a national holiday. (information from The Hastings Archives by Richard Darsow).

The room that is now the Pioneer Room has a vault in it and it was built to be the County Treasury. It has steel floor, walls, and ceiling and the one window has metal shutters (that weigh several hundred pounds) that can be closed and bolted for security. The vault door is painted to resemble wood as was a common custom in the day. This vault door is still functioning and is now used as the workroom for the Pioneer Room. There was a judicial treasury directly above this vault on the second floor, outside the Courthouse room. The judicial treasury was used to store monies and records from the judicial activities while the first-floor treasury kept money and county land records, etc. The second-floor vault has been renovated into a small office. It is assumed the Pioneer Room vault was used as the County Treasury well into the 20th century, probably until 1974 when most of the County moved out to the new Government Center (judicial had to move back temporarily but most of the functions went out to the new Government Center on highway 55).

Some of the other interesting things we have in the Pioneer Room is a complete collection of Rivertown Days buttons and a 1908 fully restored telephone. This telephone is a beauty. We also have a mint condition WWI Howard Chandler Christie recruitment poster and, of course, we have some really fun pre-1900 photographs (Hastings was lucky: as County Seat they were of course more prosperous; enough so that they had several photography studios operating).

A huge thank you to those 3 awesome volunteers for telling thatstory.ThePioneerRoomisworthavisit,especiallyifyoulove history. If you really love history and research, look into volunteering with the Pioneer Room. Just remember to do it on a Wednesday morning, 9:30 to noon.

The Pioneer Room at City Hall was the County Treasurer’s Office in 1923. Left to right, Mayme Olson, Mayme Kane and County Treasurer Maurice O’Brien. Photo Courtesy of the Pioneer Room – Hastings Historical Society