We are trying to get as much as we can out in the public, that will be the goal in the next couple of years”

Executive Director of the Dakota County Historical Society Matthew Carter.

For more information about the LeDuc Historic Site, visit https://www.dakotahistory.org/leduc-historic-estate

The LeDuc Historic Site has received a slew of artifacts, furniture and antiques original to the LeDucs and the LeDuc Mansion from the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS). The more than 1,600 new items include furniture like William and Mary’s bed and William’s desk, as well as various other items like William’s breastplate from the Civil War and trunks and boxes used by the family.
Despite the fact that the items are original to the house, they were donated to the MNHS by Carol Simmons, an antique dealer who owned the house after the granddaughters of William and Mary LeDuc. The objects were donated by Simmons in 1958, with the LeDuc mansion becoming the first MNHS site in 1986.
The LeDuc Historical Site has just recently gotten many of these items back, most arriving in August of this year.
“Moving them is a lot more work than people realize,” said MNHS Curator of 3D Objects Angelica Maier.
Maier spoke to not only the physical needs of these objects including the use of a special moving company, but also in working with the site to ensure that they are able to receive, store, display, and care for the items being transferred.
“It was a process that we’ve been working through for about a year or so to try and figure out what items and how, literally how, to get them here,” said Executive Director of the Dakota County Historical Society Matthew Carter.
While the touring season of the LeDuc is officially over, ending the weekend of Oct. 19, staff plan on spending the off season unpacking, cataloging, and displaying the pieces so that they can be fully incorporated into tours for the 2025 season.
For many of the returning pieces of furniture, photographs exist of where exactly they used to be in the LeDuc, and so the furniture is able to be placed in the same spot it once stood, replacing many of the period-accurate replicas that populated the LeDuc previously. Leduc Estate Site Supervisor Ryan Kutcha estimates that with all the new additions, the number of original furniture pieces now out weighs the number of props at the site.
While the addition of these new artifacts, ranging from crates to furniture to William’s breastplate from the Civil War, won’t overhaul the LeDuc’s tours, they add a new bit of authenticity to the site. For example, an original trunk, brought to an upstairs bedroom of the LeDuc still has the address it was shipped to of Willie LeDuc in Washington D.C., a house that still exists to this day.
“If we had a prop trunk, these little bits of information from the family wouldn’t show through,” said Kutcha.
Other details like how William and Mary’s bed was propped at an angle because they thought sleeping that way was a health benefit are windows into the period and family.
“We are trying to get as much as we can out in the public, that will be the goal in the next couple of years,” said Carter.
The MNHS has a collection of over 250,000 items that are displayed in exhibits, at their 26 sites across the state, or available to view online. These items include Prince’s Purple Rain costume, a 1960s butter carton dress from the Minnesota State Fair and worn by Princess Kay of the Milky Way, and many, many more.
“As a 3D objects curator, I really believe in the power of objects to tell stories,” said Maier. Starting in 2025, tours of the LeDuc will be full of those new stories.
For more information about the LeDuc Historic Site, visit https://www.dakotahistory.org/leduc-historic-estate