Watercade has a new event this year — a cemetery tour featuring living history characters.
Free to the public, a walking tour of Lake Ripley Cemetery on the south side of Litchfield will be given from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday.
Presented by several volunteers, who will incorporate historical information and dress into an interactive presentation, giving observers a sense of stepping back in time, the tour is jointly sponsored by the Lake Ripley Cemetery Citizens Committee and the Heritage Preservation Commission.
Visitors should enter the west (highway) side of the cemetery, where they will be directed to park. Chairs will be available at each of the six stops. Free-will donations will be collected and used for cemetery improvements.
The sixth and final stop on the tour will be the grave of Louie Roberg, a successful Meeker County farmer and philanthropist whose legacy carries on in the educational pursuits of local scholars.
Mayor Keith Johnson will portray Roberg, who died in 1979 and left a $1 million estate to the Louis A. Roberg Endowment Trust to provide for post-secondary scholarships students at Litchfield, Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City, Dassel-Cokato, Eden Valley-Watkins, Hutchinson and Kimball high schools.
Since 1979 the Roberg Trust has awarded more than $1 million in scholarship grants. Interest earned on the perpetual trust fund provides $500 and $1,000 scholarships for students electing to attend Minnesota state colleges and universities, according to Johnson.
“Louie Roberg, for many years, has made a huge educational difference for Meeker County high school graduates,” Johnson said. “His scholarship gifts have helped countless young people achieve their post-secondary dream for an education. His philanthropy will be appreciated for years. What a legacy to his name!”
The first stop on the tour will be the graves of three Civil War veterans: an early photographer, a man who was active in Grand Army of the Republic organizations and a Grand Mason of Minnesota.
The second stop will be the graves of the late Sen. John Shields and Abner Comstock Smith, an early attorney.
Smith, who will be portrayed by Rep. Dean Urdahl, penned a historical book in 1876, through which he interviewed people involved and obtained first-person accounts of the formation of Meeker County and the Dakota Conflict. Born in Vermont in 1814, Smith came to Forest City after he was appointed registrar of a land office there. Smith moved his office to Litchfield in 1869, a year in which “Litchfield was a booming town” and “land transactions totaled $106,550.”
In 1862, as the Forest City settlers organized, Smith wrote to Gov. Alexander Ramsey requesting assistance. “In advance of the news from the Minnesota River, the Indians have opened on us in Meeker County. It is war! A few propose to make a stand here. Send us, forthwith, some good guns, and ammunition to match.”
The third and fourth stops on the tour will be the graves of well-known individuals and families.
The fifth stop will be the graves of a World War I nurse and a World War II nurse.
At the sixth stop, cemetery tourists will also see the grave of a World War I aviator.
More living history characters can be seen during a second walking cemetery tour Oct. 12 during Harvest Madness.
Copyright 2017 Litchfield Independent Review/Crow River Media/Media News Group.