Minnesotans used to raise minks? Steele County murder mystery parties bring history to life
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About 20 people gathered in the Victorian-era parlor room of the historic 19th century Dunnell House in Owatonna — about an hour south of the Twin Cities — on a recent Saturday night. They came here to solve a murder.
Amy Lowery, the Steele County Historical Society’s archives and collections manager, sets the scene for her guests:
“We're transporting you back to the 1940s. Oct.17 is the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of Eunice and Wayne C. Lydell. They are getting married shortly after the untimely demise of Eunice's husband, Everett Boucher, also known as Fred.”
Fred wasn’t really murdered, but he was a real person, as all of the characters in this series of fictional murder mystery parties are based on real people who lived in the region nearly a century ago. This is the historical society’s second year throwing these live-action dinner parties, in which they enact a “Clue”-like whodunit to teach residents about the history of their community.
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The party guests, some of them dressed in 1940s apparel, spend the night searching for clues hidden around the two-story home built in the 1860s as they try to solve the mystery and deduce where the murder happened and the weapon used. The clues and premise are fictional, but Lowery wrote them based on local historical research.
Lowery said the parties were so successful this year that they added extra events.
“We like to do things that are fun and engaging and are a new way for people to learn about the local history in the area,” Lowery said. “This has definitely been successful in that regard.”
This year, the sleuths learned about a little known fact in Owatonna’s history: Farmers in the area here now raise dairy cows and cattle and grow corn and soybeans, but 80-plus years ago, there were several mink farms in Steele County. The murder mystery’s victim, Fred, raised minks in Owatonna in the 1940s.
“The practice itself was developed after the Civil War in America, and Minnesota is the perfect climate for raising mink because they prefer more of a cool climate,” Lowery explained. “They were harvesting the fur for fur coats and fashion accessories of all sorts.”
Fred — again, he wasn’t really murdered — operated a mink farm on Hazel Lane in Owatonna, about two miles from where this party took place. Lowery cast other local mink farmers in her fictional murder mystery plot, as well as a fur merchant and the wife of a local dry cleaner. Lowery explained that it was common at the time for people to put their mink coats in cold storage at the cleaners to preserve the quality of the fur.
For that reason, party guests Chad and Karen Lange, both 88, had a hunch one of the characters isn’t the murderer. They knew Irene Wentworth, who was the real wife of the owner of Enterprise Cleaners & Launderers in Owatonna back in the day.
“Her daughter was a classmate of mine — good friend. So we know it's not her,” Chad Lange joked.
Every possible murder weapon in this fictional murder mystery are tools that were commonly used in the once popular weasel fur industry, such as a tail splitting guide (which makes it easier to cut the fur off the mink’s tail), a knife used to skin the animal and a fur stretching guide.
A couple of the party goers actually know these tools intimately. Jerry Ganfield, 83, is one of them. He worked on a mink farm in Iowa in the 1960s. He says he still remembers the weasels trying to attack his gloved hands when he fed them.
“The biggest fear was that they’d get out,” he recalled.
But most of the party guests are not familiar with this aspect of the region's history, and they said it’s been a great way to discover and interact with their own history and better understand how a little-known industry like mink farming helped shape the community they live in today.
Diane Wilson, for one, said she’ll be back next year — even though she didn’t correctly solve the murder this time around.
"I'm still confused, but that's beside the point,” Wilson said, laughing. “It was great fun."
The murder mystery-history parties in Owatonna are now done for this year, but the Steele County Historical Society is planning to hold several more of them next year.
