Grand Army of the Republic Hall (Litchfield, Minnesota)
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Grand Army of the Republic Hall
Litchfield, Minnesota |
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| Location | 370 N. Marshall St. Litchfield, Minnesota |
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| Coordinates | 45°07′45″N 94°31′35″W / 45.12917°N 94.52639°WCoordinates: 45°07′45″N 94°31′35″W / 45.12917°N 94.52639°W |
| Built | 1885 |
| NRHP Reference # | 75000995 |
| Added to NRHP | May 21, 1975 |
The Grand Army of the Republic Hall in Litchfield, Minnesota is one of many original and authentic Grand Army of the Republic halls remaining in the United States. Built in 1885 for the Frank Daggett GAR Post No. 35, it is one of 4 remaining GAR halls in Minnesota. On May 21, 1975 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Meeker County Historical Society Museum building was added to the rear of it in 1960, but the Hall was left exactly as it was when the “Boys of ‘61”, as they called themselves, met there seventy-five years earlier in 1885.
After the Civil War, twenty-seven veterans from Minnesota’s Meeker County founded a chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, a service organization begun in Illinois in 1866 by Dr. B. F. Stephenson. Meeker County’s original organization was called the Edward Branham Post. The membership was limited to honorably discharged veterans of the Union Army, Navy, Marine Corps and the Revenue Cutter Service who had served between April 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865. With a motto of "Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty", the organization’s purpose was to maintain fellowship for the men who fought to preserve the Union and to help handicapped veterans and the widows and orphans of veterans.
A new Post was started in July 1883. It was named after Lt. Frank E. Daggett, the Post’s ranking member and later a Grand Commander of the Minnesota GAR. He had been actively associated with abolitionist John Brown and the commander of two all-black heavy artillery regiments during the Civil War. Daggett, who was only five feet six inches in height and weighed nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, came to Meeker County in 1872 and was the editor of the Litchfield Ledger, one of the earliest newspapers in the county. He died at the age of thirty-nine in 1876.
The Post met in the old county courthouse, which was next to the Howard House hotel on Sibley Avenue. Sadly, the hotel has since been torn down. A meeting hall was needed to accommodate the local membership, which had grown to one hundred and forty veterans. A suitable lot by Central Park was bought from Reuben S. Hershey. Henry Ames, a post member and owner of a brickyard northeast of Litchfield, donated the bricks to build the hall. Construction began in early 1885. The total cost was $5000. The hall was finished in the late fall and was dedicated on November 14, 1885. Shortly after the dedication, the members deeded the Memorial Hall, as they called it, to the Village of Litchfield with the condition that it be kept “as is” as a memorial to the Veterans of the Civil War and be opened to the public for reading. It became the first public library in Meeker County.
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