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The city of Marshall is blessed with two great cemeteries (Calvary and the Marshall Cemetery), two places that offer many windows into the community's past.
They should be visited, even by people who don't have a loved one buried in them. They should be enjoyed. They should lead to learning experiences.
All of that will happen today with cemetery walks at the Marshall Cemetery. Walks planned for 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. will feature information collected by project coordinator Maureen Keimig. In between the walks there will be a presentation at the Marshall Lyon County Library by author Adrian Lee.
I'm sure the event will spell out how gravesites can become a first step in learning about the lives of ordinary people.
Someone who becomes curious after seeing a grave can look through public records. In the past several years there's also been additional storage of obituaries online. It's much easier to find an obituary thanks to growing databases continually compiled by funeral homes, museums and genealogical societies.
Those resources tell interesting stories. They guarantee that individuals can be rediscovered even after many years.
The obituary is the main opportunity in many cases because it was often the only time an average person was spotlighted. People usually didn't write things down, either about themselves or their families. They were modest. They saw themselves as average individuals who weren't noteworthy.
I have ancestors who were modest. The one reason a historian might take an interest in the Knoben family plot at Calvary Cemetery is that my great grandfather Louis died at a young age in 1934. His wife, Jeanette Versluys Knoben Schmidt, outlived him by 57 years and died at the age of 98.
Through my family's oral history, I know that he helped to lay the bricks of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Marshall in 1916. I think everyone who did that is important. Even though a famous French architect designed Holy Redeemer, it took many laborers to build.
The Muchlinski family plot in the Ivanhoe Cemetery has graves from three generations. It could make a historian curious about my great great grandfather, Frank Muchlinski, who homesteaded a quarter section in Hansonville Township, Lincoln County, in 1893.
The farm was a combination of upland and lowland. Usually at least one of the two would have a good crop. Both might if a year had balanced weather.
It never became a Century Farm, so there was never a full documentation if its history. Instead of farming my grandfather, Lucien Muchlinski, owned a service station in Ivanhoe.
Those are just two of the stories of my ancestors that are worth keeping alive. My paternal grandmother, Alma Muchlinski, was a librarian. My other grandfather, Orval Spanton, hauled produce and was a dedicated Minneota fireman. My grandmother Blanche Spanton was a legal secretary before getting married and was later a school secretary.
The point I'm making is that every family has an interesting history. It's sometimes not enough to just tell stories at family gatherings.
We need to write it down. Even people who aren't inclined to write should make the effort. Stories can be lost in 50 years or 100 years. Written documentation is more likely to last forever.
I feel sad on Memorial Day when I see many graves that have no flowers. Nobody ever visits them. The distant relatives, or those who are three or four generations removed, no longer live within driving distance.
Maybe today's cemetery event will help to spark interest. It might lead more people to get involved in the research. We can never have too much of it.
There are many worthwhile stories waiting to be told. A huge amount of progress has occurred in the past 50 years. America's 1976 Bicentennial had a side benefit of helping to awaken interest in the history of our own communities.
The important thing now is to keep building on it. I'm sometimes discouraged by how information is becoming so electronic and so temporary. I'm encouraged by bright spots such as ancestry web sites, databases for veterans, and 150th anniversary events.
We should all hold on to our pasts. We should be thankful to our ancestors for what they gave us. Keeping their memory alive is the least we can do.
-- Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent