Nellie finds a new home

By Mark W. Olson 

Nellie DuToit’s soulful brown eyes have gazed over about 130 years of local history.

In her painted portrait, she wears a white ruffle-collared dress, with her hair in braids and bright pink cheeks. Unfortunately, the girl suffered a sad demise, dying of diphtheria on Jan. 9, 1876, three months short of her fourth birthday.

She wasn’t alone. The early years in the Minnesota River Valley were poor when it came to child mortality rates. In 1876 alone, 73 other area children died of diphtheria - about 40 percent of Carver County’s deaths that year.

However unlike many parents of the time, this girl’s father, George, had an opportunity to memorialize his child for perpetuity. George DuToit owned the Carver County Bank, which he founded in 1870. The vault was probably built shortly after 1871 - the patent date on its combination lock.

George hired an artist to paint his daughter’s picture on his bank vault door, at its 112 East Second Street location. Under her image, the artist rendered a wreath and garlands of flowers.

Every time George opened the vault, until his death in 1923, he would have seen his daughter.

The vault door later traveled to the bank’s 206 Chestnut Street location and, most recently, was located in a basement conference room of the Wells Fargo Bank building (formerly Carver County State Bank), along Highway 41.

The painting hasn’t been forgotten about. In the early 1980s, the local historical society worked with an art conservator to touch up the portrait, which had begun to erode with rust and peeling paint.

After decades of witnessing the transfer of money and bonds, Nellie DuToit will now be company to a vault holding the city’s historical wealth.

On Monday, the vault door was installed into the wall of the Chaska History Center’s new Fourth Street location.

In November, the history center will move from the C.P. Klein mansion into the old brick livery stable, next to city hall. The bank vault door is the first artifact located in the building, and Historical Society Director Tracy Swanson said it is one of the organization’s oldest artifacts.

“It shows a little bit of how fragile life was in those days,” said Swanson, who is also a distant relative of the girl.

The public will be able to see the new history center, and the vault door, during an open house, which Swanson hopes will be next spring.

Wells Fargo made the move possible, by donating the door and the money to move the door. The donation was part of a “long standing commitment to the history of the community,” said Wells Fargo Branch Manager Joy Shellenbarger.

She also noted that, like the city of Chaska, Wells Fargo recently celebrated its 150th birthday.

The vault door move required four workmen and a dolly, climbing up the bank stairs and across Highway 41. Work men guessed that the door weighed as much as 500 pounds - not including the frame, which was also moved.

The Monday morning move drew a small group of historical society volunteers and Wells Fargo employees, who watched Nellie roll down the street.

Safe moving has always been an arduous process. When Carver County State Bank employee K.K. Klammer retired in 1947, he recounted moving a safe to a different location in 1904. He could have been referring to the “Hall’s Safe & Lock Co.” safe with Nellie DuToit’s portrait.

The Weekly Valley Herald reported Klammer’s story: “Herman Rosckes then in the dray business, agreed to move the safe to its new location, but he soon discovered that he overestimated the strength of his team of mules. They tugged and tugged, but couldn’t budge the heavy load. ‘Ferdinand Ohnsorg had a big team of dapper greys,’ the retired banker explained. He hooked the team to the stone-boat and soon the heavy safe was dragged to the main street headquarters. Moving the large safe was a big job back in those days we were told.”

This week, when the safe door finally made it to the new history center, Shellenbarger exclaimed to Swanson, “Well it’s here girl!”

Nellie DuToit's gravePostscript: Nellie DuToit’s grave is located in Carver’s Mount Hope Cemetery, along Mount Hope Road. Nellie’s grave, along with the grave of her mother, Mary, and an infant sibling, is marked with a metal statue and pedestal.Nellie’s portrait, on the safe, can be viewed at the Chaska History Center, in the historic livery, next to City Hall on West Fourth Street.