UNI student, Lindsey Thuente, recently completed her Spring semester History Public Field Experience for the Garnavillo Historical Society. Lindsey chose a remote research project of gathering information on 8 early settlers to the Jacksonville/Garnavillo area. She then created profiles of each for posting on a new exhibit at the museum. Jane Thein, Garnavillo Historical Society board member, served as mentor and site supervisor. Thein stated, “Lindsey and I worked back and forth using email and zoom. She provided over 20 volunteer hours to complete the project. The task was tedious, pulling information from multiple sources, fact checking dates and places and then creating the profiles to post. We learned through the process that historically recorded information is not always accurate. You can’t just use one source.” Lindsey, who is from the Ossian area, stated “I learned a lot about Garnavillo and early settling in Iowa from this experience. It piqued my interest and I plan to visit the museum this summer.” Thein invites everyone to visit the Garnavillo Museum this summer and take in the new exhibit. “We have been so fortunate in the UNI students that have chosen our museum’s projects for their class work. We look forward to having both Lindsey and our on-site helper student, Erlin Bell (who was highlighted in a previous student article) visit the museum this summer.”
The settlers researched were John Gillet, Andrew Cooley, Frederick Andros, James Watson, Reuben Noble, Samuel Murdock, Elias Williams, and Alvah Rogers.