by Becky Kingsley, who is a volunteer at the Casselton Heritage Center

We often get visitors at the Casselton Heritage Center who are searching for family history information. We have a variety of sources in our archives to help with such queries. We are fortunate to have many county and city histories available, not just from Casselton, but the surrounding areas as well.

In addition, we have a large collection of Casselton graduation pictures which we have indexed so we can find pictures of family members that way as well. We also find ourselves at the Cass County Reporter from time to time looking for information in their archives when we strike out in ours.

Several of Mrs. Potter’s notebooks; the open page contains information on the Wallace Grosvenor, who was the original builder of what is now known as the Woell Mansion.

The Reporter is the source of one of our most unique collections, which we refer to as "Mrs. Potter’s notebooks". The Potter family owned the Reporter for many years, and Clark Potter’s mother Helen had her own way of keeping information at hand for use in preparing the paper. She had a set of black binders alphabetized with pages of handwritten notes about many of the residents of Casselton and the surrounding rural areas. She wrote about townspeople, including birth, death, and marriage dates, as well as other information.

The Potter family donated these notebooks to the Heritage Center several years ago. We often can find information in the notebooks that help our family history visitors fill in gaps. The notebooks have been a great addition to our collection. I am sure Mrs. Potter would be surprised to see us using them so many years after she compiled them.

If you are interested in researching any of our collections mentioned, we are open by chance or appointment. We love visitors and enjoy sharing our archives and our beautiful stone church with people. Contact us through our Facebook page or by calling any of our board members whose contact information is found at www.casselton.com/casselton-heritage-center.