Sue Doocy doesn’t mind being called a history geek, not at all.

For instance, she can talk about the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Memorial in Grand Meadow with knowledge and context. She knows how many other similar memorials there are in the country and where they are located.

For Doocy, it just comes with the wonderful territory of being a history lover.

The Grand Meadow woman, who is also a writer and poet, has loved digging into history since high school, when a teacher asked students to “write one line of our family genealogy.”

A world of the past opened and she was fascinated by what she found.

Doocy, who today is the research and archives manager of the Mower County Historical Society, was lucky in many ways. She had access to a 1915 family history that traced lineage back to the 1600s.

That was when her first American ancestor, Arthur Gary, landed in the United States from England.

To this day, she doesn’t know “if he was a sailor, a stowaway or an indentured servant,” she said. But she loves to imagine every scenario.

Although she has never been able to determine under what circumstances he came to the U.S., it remains a tale central to her love of history.

“I love the stories,” she said. “And when they mean something to me, personally, it’s even more interesting. I mean, Paul Revere was important, but what is his connection to me? You learn all these facts and figures in school — but when you learn your own relation did something exciting, that really means something. That’s when history comes alive.”

She was drawn to poetry as a young child and continues writing verse today. She self-published “I’m Going Home,” a small collection of her favorite pieces of prose and poetry.

In one, entitled “Warren Deo Whitney, My Grandfather,” she taps her love of things past:

“Many years have gone by

Since I saw him last,

A glint in his eyes

And a touch of a smile.

In a scrapbook.

A babe is shown in a

Fading photograph,

Dressed in white on a cart …”

Family is important to Doocy and nothing pleases her more than when a family finds a relative, or some important genealogy question is solved, on her watch at the historical society.

“Especially when they really don’t expect to find anything in our files; sometimes for me, all it takes is a few quick looks and I’ve got something,” Doocy said. “They’re so happy and pleased that they can make a connection.”

Doocy’s own connection to Mower County began when she was a young bride. Doocy, a native of Dodge Center, and her husband were living in Wyoming when her husband’s company eliminated his job.

They moved back to Minnesota and they found a rural property to lease just south of Grand Meadow. They later purchased the acreage.

It wasn’t long before Doocy was writing about the area for the Meadow Area News, which often involved researching that area’s history. Her column “Before My Time” featured different stories of Grand Meadow’s past. She reveled in research of the area, from the 1880s’ contests for how many rattlesnakes you could kill (one man reported 17) to the stories of the man by the name of Bussell, who was both a hotel owner and justice of the peace. When the newspaper of the day said someone was a resident of the “Hotel Bussell,” no one was sure if it referenced the hotel or the jail.

“Those are the tidbits I love finding,” she said.

She quickly learned that rural areas can yield big discoveries.

Among the most interesting was the discovery of the Chert Mine just north of Grand Meadow. The area was quarried for its chert, or silica-based rock, thousands of years ago by Native Americans.

The rock — more often referred to as flint — was material used for knives and spears. Contents of the quarry, which is actually a series of pits, have been found as far away as 500 miles, making the area a major destination for early natives. It remains an archeological find still being studied for its mysteries.

That connection to Grand Meadow stories led her to the historical society and her current job. She began volunteering her time; eventually, she was hired away from another job — school bus driving — to work at the historical society. She has served there for over nine years and loves every day.

“Because it’s something new every day,” she said.

Calls for research from citizens can come as often as “three or four a day,” but she also works on tour events, taking in photographs, memoirs and family histories. She collects county newspaper articles every day. She is particularly interested in veterans’ stories and she has recorded several oral histories and wants to do more.

She said she even gets excited when she has donations of mortgage deeds — they can have lots of information for genealogists. Another one of those small items that yield big historical rewards.

In some ways, Doocy is her own miner — who digs history.

“What I enjoy among the holdings isn’t necessarily anything that has value – value in dollars and cents. What I find exciting are the ones with historical value,” she said.

“To me, those stories are priceless,” she added.