FLABBERGASTING FOLKLORE ABOUT WACONIA

    Imagine your husband coming home one day and saying, "Honey I'm going to look  for a job overseas.   Here's a steamer trunk.  Pack it with everything you want to take with you.   Say goodbye to all your relatives here forever because we we will not be coming back.  By the way, this journey to Minnesota could take months. It is wrought with disease, hunger and discomfort and there's good chance that all of us will not make it there alive." 

    As melodramatic as this may sound, this is what the ancestors of Waconia and most of Minnesota for that matter, had to endure before reaching their destination. 

   Visit the Carver County Historical Society across from Bayview Elementary School, they have a display of the old trunks brought over from Sweden and Germany as part of the Civil War Exhibit running through April 15.  Maybe you have one of these at home?