Paid city historian is history in Hastings

Cindy Thury Smith is hanging on as the city historian-curator for Hastings.

"It's a peach of a job," said Smith, who held the 20-hour-a-week post since 2002.

That changed this month as her $16,000 position was axed from the 2012 budget.

But Smith likes researching Hastings history so much that she volunteered to do the job gratis for six hours a week, while a few history-buff friends will cover another six hours.

So Smith, 59, still can be found Wednesdays in the high-ceiling Pioneer Room at City Hall, housed in the 140-year-old former Dakota County Courthouse. The two-story building, built in the French renaissance revival style, features a stained-glass Michelangelo dome and four smaller corner domes.

She fields history questions by phone, e-mail and in person. She also keeps an eye on 100-year-old books, Hastings Gazettes, Spiral Bridge pictures and handwritten City Council minutes dating back to the 1857 founding of the pioneer city on the Mississippi River.

Smith, who grew up in St. Paul Park and minored in history at the University of Minnesota, was apparently one of the state's few city-paid historians.

A lot of Minnesota history is preserved by county historical societies, one in each of the state's 87 counties, said Andrea Kajer, a deputy director at the Minnesota Historical Society. Smith said Hastings did a comparable worth study of city jobs about six years ago and found no other city that paid a historian. "So I never got a [comparable worth] raise," she said.

Why does she continue in her work?

Smith said closing the Pioneer Room and its adjacent vault would lead to deterioration of its century-old pictures, books, quilts and other artifacts.

With staffed hours reduced to 12 a week, some current history may go unarchived with less time to clip and digitize local newspaper obituaries, business and people news, said Dick Darsow, her predecessor and another Pioneer volunteer. Darsow, 85, had served gratis from the history room's opening in 1993 to 2002, when Smith was hired.

"She has been the glue to keep everything together," said Mayor Paul Hicks. "She has been able to compile a wealth of information about Hastings." He noted Smith has preserved 100-year-old and more recent photos from Hastings High School by digitally scanning graduation pictures. She also suggested the time capsule that was installed in the restored front portico steps to City Hall in 2007, he said.

"Unfortunately, we have budget realities staring us in the face," Hicks said. "The fact that the Pioneer Room remains open due to volunteers is important to us."

Smith isn't upset about the pay cut. "For the general public what's more valuable: having somebody who plows your snow in the winter or having a city historian?" she said.

Budget cuts aside, Smith loves the work.

"I like finding things that have been overlooked," she said, like the long-lost peacock window over the City Hall portico main entrance.

While the portico was being rebuilt during the city's sesquicentennial in 2007, Smith used her digital scanner to reveal details in old City Hall pictures.

Behind a blackened 1890s tin type photo, she noticed a lovely peacock feather-style window above the portico pillars. It had been replaced by a dull, crescent-shape window during a modernizing effort in 1912. She talked to city officials who obtained a national historic grant to replace the drafty crescent with an airtight peacock window replica.

"She is a great researcher," said Darsow, a published historian. "She is very good at ferreting out information." He noted Smith and Shirley Dalaska, another city resident, co-authored a book about Civil War veterans from Hastings.

Smith also is a good story teller. Ever hear about the Hastings covered bridge?

Darsow suggested she research the bridge, opened in 1866, that once crossed the Vermillion River by the present-day Con-Agra flour mill on Hwy. 61. The bridge lasted a dozen years until an ice-jam knocked it off and downstream over the nearby Vermillion Falls, she said.

"I researched it and found a lot of covered bridges were built in the 1870s and '80s," Smith said, "but I am pretty dang sure... it is the first covered bridge in Minnesota."

A picture of the bridge, sitting upstream from Vermillion Falls, was taken circa 1869 and appears on the state Historical Society website. Minnesota's oldest covered bridge still standing was built in 1869 in Zumbrota.

"I am sure the Vermillion bridge is older than Zumbrota," said Denis Gardner, National Register historian for Minnesota.

Jim Adams • 952-746-3283