In the fall of 2022, the Prairieland Genealogical Society voted to dissolve their organization. Their resources and funds were donated to the Lyon County Historical Society. This last year, volunteers have been cataloging the resources and reorganizing the room. At the November 2023 board meeting, the LCHS board of directors approved naming the research room the Joseph A. Amato Research Center in recognition of Joe’s work in rural and regional history.

On Thursday, June 6 from 6-6:30 p.m., attendees may tour the research center on the main floor of the Lyon County Museum. At 6:30 p.m. in the conference room on the 2nd floor, Joseph Amato will give the talk, “How Southwest Minnesota Became Home: Forty Years of Living in and Studying a Place.” The talk will be based on his forthcoming autobiography, “Spring of Springs,” one of recent treatments of self, as he will explain.   

Amato, born on the eastside of Detroit, Michigan, received his B.A. in history from the University of Michigan in 1960; his M.A. in history from the Université de Laval, Québec, in 1963, and Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester, New York, in 1970. His undergraduate education was formed, as we read in his memoir “Bypass” and a recent article in Modern Age on Stephen Tonsor, the philosophy of history and German historicism, while his graduate study was directed by Hayden White and inspired by master 19th-century European history, A. W. Salomone. His dissertation, published as Mounier and Maritain: A French Catholic Modern World, was on the sources and plight of contemporary French Catholic thought in the first half of the 20th century. He also did post-doctoral study in the history of European cultures with Professor Eugen Weber at UCLA in 1975-1976 and became a long-time friend of the latter until his death in 2008.

In 1969, Amato began teaching at Southwest Minnesota State College (now Southwest Minnesota State University) in Marshall, where he was a founder and chair of the History Department. He taught a range of courses in European intellectual and cultural history and historiography, with a particular interest in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, German, Italian, and French histories and European rural life, as well as taught ethics and introductory social science courses.

Amato has given countless lectures and talks on a variety of subjects in the region, throughout the state, Midwest, and at national conferences. Reading and speaking a variety of European languages — Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, and German (and some Biblical Greek) — Amato is widely traveled in Western Europe from the British Isles and the Netherlands to southern Italy, Greece, and Sicily. 

The Lyon County Historical Society (LCHS) is a nonprofit, member-supported organization. LCHS operates the Lyon County Museum at 301 West Lyon Street in Marshall. The Lyon County Museum is open year-round to visitors. To contact us, visit our website: www.lyoncomuseum.org, call: 507-537-6580, email: director@lyoncomuseum.org, or on our Facebook page.