New group is forming to explore the past

• History club

Blanche Reichert, left, and Lindalee Miller-Nelson are looking for some more people interested in exploring the past to join a new history and ancestry group. The group holds its first meeting at 1:30 p.m. March 23 at the Rambling River Center.

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Lindalee Miller-Nelson spends a lot of time researching her own family’s history. Now she’s interested in branching out.

Miller-Nelson is one of two members of Farmington’s Rambling River Center teaming up to launch a new history and ancestry club at the senior center.

The club started as a casual comment during one of the center’s recent buildings and grounds meetings. Someone wondered out loud what the history of the senior center was. Miller-Nelson and Blanche Reichert, both of whom are members of the buildings and grounds committee, figured they should find out.

“That kind of perpetrated us wanting to have some kind of ancestry or history club at the center,” said Miller-Nelson, who has been fascinated with history most of her life. “What was more exciting is, we were trying to get more people involved in that. There’s people who love ancestry and genealogy.”

The group will hold its first meeting March 23 at the Rambling River Center.

Reichert has been a member of the Rambling River Center since she moved to Farmington 10 years ago.

The former Rambling River Center building on Third Street was an automotive garage at one point. The city turned it into a senior center at the request of the city’s seniors, who did a lot of work raising money and helping renovate the interior.

Reichert knows a little bit about the center’s history and it’s former home. But she’d like to know more about the work that seniors did to make it possible.

“We just feel we need to know that history about the creation of the senior center,” Reichert said. “We just want to get it down in writing.”

Reichert has some experience with historical research. She helped put together a history of her church, Farmington Lutheran.

“I kind of like looking and going back,” she said.

Reichert and Miller-Nelson hope to put together a book on the Rambling River Center’s history once they are done with their research. They plan to dedicate a room at the center to history — both the history of the center and the history of Farmington — and fill it with books and old photographs.

Where the group goes from there is up for discussion. Miller-Nelson said she’d like to see the group continue as a way for Rambling River Center members to get help researching their own family history.

Tags: news, seniors, farmington