Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022
Elizabeth Betty Anne Schmitt was born Jan. 7, 1930. She was the daughter of Theodore Ted Schmitt (1882-1935), who grew up in Shakopee, and Kathryn Fritz (1887-1972), who grew up in Chaska. Betty was the youngest of 13 children.
Betty’s father died of silicosis when Betty was five years old. While they were living in a house not far from St. Mark’s Church, her mother had to confront the fact that, during the Great Depression, she had 13 children to feed. Her mother rented rooms at the house. And then her mom went around the town and asked people who had vacant land if Kathryn and her family could plant gardens there. And so, every day, the children had to go around town to take care of the vegetables. From earliest childhood into her late 80s Betty lovingly tended her vegetable and flower gardens, and canned and froze her harvests. No one could stretch a dollar like she could.
Like others of her generation, Betty said that she “learned at an early age, what some people never learn – that if we wanted something out of life, we had to go out there and make it happen. We learned how to be self-sufficient.”
Betty also was a devout Catholic and a lifetime member of St. Mark’s Catholic Church. But as for school, Betty went to St. Mary’s School.
David Schleper asked her about this, and she explained that at St. Mark’s, students had to pay for books. When St. Mary’s School started in 1935, the students did not have to pay for the books, which was important during the Depression. And so, Betty, like others, went to St. Mary’s for school.
Betty married Earl William Dols on June 3, 1947, at St. Mary’s Church. Earl was born Jan. 16, 1919, to Leonard Dols (1873-1957) and Mary Ellert Dols (1878-1955) on their dairy farm six miles north of Glencoe, Minnesota. He attended local schools and completed the automotive course at Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis. He worked at the Ford garage in Glencoe before going into the Army in 1941. He served in the 175th Field Artillery attached to the 34th Infantry Division called the Red Bulls in England, Ireland, Scotland, North Africa, and Italy. At the end of the war in 1945, he came home and worked at Shakopee Ford for the next 35 years. He learned to fly on the G.I. Bill at Flying Cloud Airport and had his own plane with a partner for a time.
The couple had two children, Leonard and Linda. When Leonard, her older child, was in college, Betty went to work for the Mertz Insurance Agency, later called Mertz-Horeish Insurance Agency in Shakopee for 25 years until her retirement in 1990. During that time, she achieved licensure as CPIW and CIC. After she passed her board certification, she taught classes in her spare time to help others achieve certification. She was recognized as Insurance Woman of the Year 1980 by the Insurance Women of Greater Minneapolis, according to the Shakopee Valley News on May 21, 1980.
After her retirement, she began a second career as a professional genealogist. She was president of the Minnesota German Genealogical Society and traveled to Salt Lake City and Germany to do research. As a lifelong resident of Shakopee, Betty loved her community and volunteered countless hours for many organizations, such as Meals on Wheels, Friends of the Library, Scott County Historical Society, and Shakopee Heritage Society. Betty was a proud member of the historic Shakopee Book Lovers Club.
Betty was one of the founding members of the Shakopee Historical Society in 1992. Later the name of the society was changed to the Shakopee Heritage Society to avoid confusion with the Scott County Historical Society. For more than a decade Betty worked to build the Shakopee Heritage Society, and she held several offices for multiple terms and brought many interested and informative programs to the meetings.
Several articles from the Shakopee Valley News discuss Betty, the genealogist, who volunteered at the Stans Museum effort to catalogue the death and marriage records of residents. Over 650 thousand entries, and 120,300 handprinted entries were written on 3×5 cards by Betty and nine other volunteers who took three years and eight months to make the information available. Some of the articles from the Shakopee Valley News include “History at Your Fingertips” by Shannon Fiecke, April 24, 2008; “She’s the Area’s Family Sleuth” by Kristin Holtz, April 30, 2009; “Roots of Family Trees Surface at County Historical Society” by Nicole S. Colson, Jan. 3, 2013, and “Finding Your Family History” by David Schueller.
David Schleper remembered going to the Stans Museum every Thursday while she volunteered there. The two of them spent hours and hours talking about the history of Shakopee. Over time, Betty willingly produced over 100 families’ ancestry charts, and family group sheets documenting births, marriages, and deaths. But she didn’t write the family’s stories, which is best done by family members. She still loved doing research, and it’s fun to come across a black sheep. “Every family has someone they would rather not have, but those people generally make it more interesting,” said Betty, grinning.
Betty Anne Schmitt Dols, 91, died peacefully on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, at St. Gertrude’s Nursing Home. After a mass of Christian Burial on Nov. 15, 2021, at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, she was buried next to her husband at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.