Volunteers are needed to help sort through historic documents in Tofte Township.
On August 12, 2010, town supervisor Jim King recommended to the town board that someone sort through old documents currently sitting in the fire hall attic. Those worth keeping could possibly be stored in the climate-controlled area of the Tofte Fishing Museum, he said.
It’s a big job, King said, but it could be tackled one box at a time. Perhaps it would be a good project for some of the “more tenured” citizens of Tofte, he said.
Jerry Gervais, sitting next to John Nelson, said, “You’ve got two old tenders here right now saying yes!”
“I’m not volunteering anything!” Nelson replied.
King suggested to Gervais that he recruit some volunteers at the Birch Grove Community Center senior lunches. “At our local senior citizen lunches,” Gervais said, “we do talk a lot about history.”
James recommended that the fire chief send some of the “young bucks” up into the attic to bring down one box at a time. King said he would talk to Fire Chief Nelson about it.
Paul James suggested scanning and storing electronically the documents that are not deemed worthy of keeping.
Cemetery grave
markers
Another method of preserving history
” is being sought for the Tofte cemetery. Some of the older graves are marked only with deteriorated wooden plaques, and John Nelson is trying to make sure grave markers will identify for years to come those buried there.
Nelson reported that he found metal grave markers on the Internet for $100 apiece that could replace the really old, decrepit wood ones in the Tofte Cemetery. Town treasurer Mary Jane Huggins suggested asking family members to pay the cost of replacing the wooden markers.
Metal markers would keep graves from being “lost to time,” Paul James said. “I think this is a great idea. …I think it’s a worthy cause for sure.” People’s grandkids will come around trying to locate their ancestors someday, he said, and this would help them find them.
The board discussed developing a list of criteria that people must fit in order to be buried in the Tofte Cemetery. Their plots are so cheap that he feared families unrelated to Tofte would want to bury family members there. Town clerk Barb Gervais said everyone who has called her requesting a plot so far has had a story about how they are connected to the township.
The cemetery has 257 people buried in it, D.C. Olsen said.
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