‘You can’t just Google Wymer Lake and have it all be there’

By Robert Williams

Editor

Ever wonder why Wymer Lake has so many different spellings or who the Wymer was the person or entity that the lake was named after? Author Seth Hardmeyer recently completed years of research in searching for those answers that he shares in his book “Wymer Lake – A Written History.”

“It’s the history of the lake and the development of the lake and basically everything from the ice age to the modern day,” said Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer was motivated to find out the history of Wymer Lake because nobody had ever written about it before.

“If you go to the library or historical society there are books about different lakes, Cotton, Pelican, you know the bigger lakes,” he said. “They have history on those lakes and there are a lot of people that come together and write those books. It’s a group effort.”

Hardmeyer brought people together to create the historical recount of Wymer.

“Our lake is a small lake; not a ton of history is really out there on it, but it’s kind of my family’s lake too,” said Hardmeyer. “Wymer has a lot of history on it and my family, the Daggetts, have been on the lake since the 1940s and over the years have bought different properties. I grew up coming to this lake.”

Hardmeyer noted a lot of people make the jokes of calling the lake and portions of it Daggett Lake or Daggett Beach.

“It’s a great lake with a lot of great people on it and a lot of great history,” said Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer’s quest began five years ago. He has a writing background and decided to start researching the lake to see where it led to.

It began with Indian burial mounds that were near the lake and a dig done in the 1950s that was described in the University of Minnesota archives.

The more Hardmeyer dug and the more people he spoke to the more decisions he had to make on what was actually true.

“There was a lot of fact versus fiction,” he said. “I really wanted to get to the bottom of the question of where the name came from.”

The funny part about that question was having to figure out which is the proper spelling of the lake.

“I found 12 spellings!” he said. 

Hardmeyer brought up John Graham, who Graham Lake is named after, and Graham’s descendants Mary Etta and Ted Anderson. 

“Mary Etta is a historian and she said, ‘I heard it was a Catholic missionary,’ so I dug into that,” said Hardmeyer. “That’s a lead.”

Hardmeyer talked to all of his elder relatives and “anyone who lived on the lake.”

“What did you guys hear about the name?” he said.

That led to leads of immigrants from Weimar, Germany naming the lake or was there a guy named Wymer?

“It was tough,” he said. “You can’t just Google Wymer Lake and have it all be there.”

Hardmeyer tried the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and only came up with the last survey done on Wymer being in 2008.

“So, even they’re way behind; that’s 15 years ago,” he said. “They said, ‘that lake is so far off our radar.’ There are more than 1,000 lakes in Otter Tail County and Wymer is way on the other side of the county.”

Wymer is also a private lake with no public access, which makes it even more exclusive to those who live on it and perhaps more elusive to a government agency like the DNR. 

“We’re really fortunate,” said Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer continued interviewing lake residents to learn more.

“Some people were very responsive, some said they didn’t have much but I look forward to reading it,” said Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer also employed good friend Brikker Ware, who grew up on Wymer Lake. 

“He and I talk almost every single day, just very tight, and he was my right hand man in this whole thing,” he said. “He loves the history. Whenever I found something or had a little breakthrough he was the first person I contacted.”

Ware conducts the annual history walk of Frazee during Turkey Days and runs the Reminiscing…Growing up in Frazee, MN Facebook page.

“He’s a walking history book of the town; his family is the Trieglaffs, which is one of the pioneer families of Frazee,” said Hardmeyer. “I’d get a rough draft and he was the only one who had seen it. He was really instrumental.”

Hardmeyer credits the Otter Tail County Historical Society Museum in Fergus Falls for aiding in the research.

Hardmeyer and his wife Kari made their first trip to the museum in January of 2020 just to get an idea of what and how much information was available. Museum workers were excited about the project and willing to help find as much information as possible.

“And then COVID happened,” said Hardmeyer.

Much of the information was on microfilm or microfiche and not available online. This caused Hardmeyer to take a break from the project. He waited until everything opened back up.

“Now it’s time to get crackin,’” he said.

That meant getting as much work done as possible while managing a family and a job.

“I’d work on it and then I’d stop,” he said. “About a year ago I said it’s time; people were always asking me what happened to that book you started?”

The historical society has a binder on each lake, but there was not much on Wymer. Hardmeyer did hope that maybe it contained where the name came from. He also consulted the book “Minnesota Place Names” first written by Warren Upham in 1920 and published in revised and expanded editions in 1969 and 2001.

“It had to be in here,” he said.

He found another book that had historical facts about local lakes that described how Lakes Five, Six and Seven were named after the township section and how Rose Lake was named.

“I was all, ‘here we go,’” said Hardmeyer. “And then it just skipped to Otter Tail and where’s Wymer? I thought I was so close.”

Microfilm provided research from Frazee’s original newspapers. There have been five different iterations: “The Frazee News” 1899-1904; “Frazee Free Press” 1905-14; “The Frazee Weekly Press” 1914-1927; “The Frazee Times” 1942-1956. “The Frazee Forum” ran from 1960-2005 before officially changing its name to the contemporary moniker “The Frazee-Vergas Forum.”

“There’s no little Control-F find, you could spend months,” said Hardmeyer. “So I started scanning.”

“I found a lot of fascinating articles, not just Wymer, but it’s a step back in time,” Hardmeyer said. “You could get lost and I certainly did reading the minutia of daily life 120 years ago. It wasn’t that different. People were doing the same stuff, it was just horse and carriage. People would still gather and sell stuff, and local politics. The articles were pretty biased. There were some really wow moments where I couldn’t believe they got away with that.”

Hardmeyer spent days at the museum in Fergus Falls.

“I’d get down there right when they open at 10 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. and I’d look down and it was 2:30 and I had gotten through one year!” he said. “I could spend years.”

Hardmeyer finally got to a point where he was satisfied with the work completed and began wrapping up the book. Late April of 2024 he was close to being done. He interviewed one last family with a lot of information.

“This is like a final puzzle piece,” said Hardmeyer.

The process of finishing the book was stopped when Seth’s father Ted passed away unexpectedly last May.

Hardmeyer spent all of his summers on Wymer Lake. He is a 2001 graduate of Moorhead High School, but always felt more at home on the outskirts of Frazee. He worked at Daggett Truck Line during the summer.

“I got to know the lake kids and the kids in town; I loved it down here,” he said. “I felt more at home. I felt more like I belonged.”

Hardmeyer earned a communications degree from the University of North Dakota and moved to Minneapolis for five years.

“It was the greatest few years; we were young and single,” he said. “By the end of five years people were starting their lives and we were growing up.”

Hardmeyer’s cousin Bill Daggett had started a company and was looking for a salesperson. That gave Hardmeyer an avenue to move back home.

“I came right to this lake,” he said.

Eventually, he met his wife Kari and the couple purchased a fixer-upper home across the street from Wymer Lake before moving into their current home on the lake.

“We’re on the lake now and we probably always will be,” said Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer has multiple writing outlets including a travel blog. While trucking, he uses any downtime to seek out adventures and historic places to document. He also started the Facebook group Quirky Minnesota Places that boasts nearly 400,000 members. His travels are also depicted on Instagram (highway_highlights) that has 13,000 followers.

“I’ve had this thing for about 20 years now, just writing and posting and connecting with people,” he said.

Hardmeyer also comes from a family of writers, including his aunt Lauren Donovan, a Bismarck Tribune journalist and author. Donovan helped edit Hardmeyer’s manuscript.

“My dad was a good writer; it was just in our family as a common pedigree, and then you have the Daggett side, with a lot of good, intelligent writing and documenting,” said Hardmeyer.

Donovan returned the edited manuscript and Hardmeyer was back on the job working through revisions.

“And then it was how do we get this published?” he said.

Hardmeyer consulted with Seth Varner, a travel writer who visits all incorporated communities in a given state per year. He is currently traveling through Minnesota with updates on Facebook (Wandermore in Minnesota). Wandermore pointed Seth to a Michigan publisher that fit the bill.

“It was a really fun journey and it was really interesting and it was tedious and frustrating, but at the same time it was fun work,” Hardmeyer said. “I have a degree in this; I have a background in this; it was fun to flex and use that muscle.”

Copies of “Wymer Lake – A Written History” are available from Hardmeyer directly for $40. Payments can be made in cash or check or via Venmo or Zelle. Contact Hardmeyer via email shardmeyer@gmail.com or call/text (701) 866-9243.