Aplan to move the Old Gruetli Post Office to the Stoker-Stampfli Farm came crashing down in termite-damaged pieces barely a mile from its original location last month.

Built in 1925, the simple building at the corner of U.S. Highway 108 and 20th Avenue North was an iconic landmark in the Gruetli-Laager community for more than a century.

Denver and Shirleen Reeves Bryson’s daughters gifted the building outright in 2024 to the Grundy County Swiss Historical Society with a request that a memorial plaque be installed in their parents’ names and that the landmark be relocated to the farm, site of the annual Swiss Heritage Celebration.

Things literally fell apart Oct. 14 when the historical society attempted to move the old post office building, according to President Jackie Lawley. “It was a nightmare,” she recalled.

E ven t hough t hey’d h ired e xperienced structure movers, calamity struck rounding a curve when a section slipped off specialized moving machinery. Unable to reload it, the movers took the entire building off the machinery in the middle of the busy road. Later that day during a second attempt to move it, the termite-riddled building collapsed.

Although not the outcome anyone wanted, Jackie, as resilient as the Swiss immigrants who helped settle Gruetli, immediately began figuring how best to replicate the post office. She found a crew to disassemble what was left and move those pieces to a storage barn.

“The next challenge is getting together crews to sort through these piles and come up with as much salvageable material to reuse in the future rebuild,” she said.

Rebuilding the post office is work she’s well equipped to do: she’s a remodeling contractor. Her husband, Marvin, does the design work. “I’m a retired engineer,” Marvin said. “I try to solve problems.”

One opportunity that comes with rebuilding is that they’ll be able to take the post office back to its 1925 appearance. Over the years, the building’s had at least three layers of siding and multiple uses when it was no longer a post office: storage, someone’s living quarters … there are even rumors of illegal activity.

Its roots go even deeper to 1870 when the Swiss immigrants who’d come to Grundy County to establish a colony a year earlier opened their first post office with Christian Marugg as postmaster.

“The role of postmaster in a rural, immigrant-heavy town like Gruetli was vital,” said historical society member Brenda Ruehling, who grew up in the town and researched its postal history. “Postmasters were often local merchant leaders or bilingual community pillars who could help manage correspondence to and from Switzerland.”

From 1875 through the 1924 appointment of George E. Swindell, there were multiple postmasters, including a female, Margaret Greeter, in 1885, whose well-known family operated a lumber mill and general store.

“It was during Swindle’s appointment that the post office moved to its corner as we know it,” Brenda noted. “Swindle was a cornerstone of the community during the interwar period. He served through the late 1920s and into the Great Depression stabilizing local mail flow as families relied heavily on postal banking and correspondence.”

His assistant “Miss Bonnie,” a much -loved local figure, helped run the tiny post office during a time of shifting locations known as the “Country Store” Era from the 1930s to the 1950s.

“Anna Evelyn Moore was one of the most famous long-serving postmistresses in Gruetli’s history,” Brenda said. “Local residents remember that she purchased the farm site in 1944 and singlehandedly ran the post office for 22 years. During her era, the physical post office building stood at the cross roads of Highway 108 and 20th Avenue North – the exact historic structure that was donated for preservation.”

The society plans to honor its former postmasters on a plaque once the building is rebuilt.

Jackie would love to see the replica completed by next summer’s Swiss Heritage Celebration but knows it’s an ambitious goal. “That would be a stretch, but it would be nice,” she said.

For now, plans are focused on getting the post office rebuilt through donations, fundraising, grants, and manpower.

“We need help,” Marvin said. “We need volunteers to help us plan. We need people to help us deal with the material. And then we’ll need volunteers to help us raise money and build it.”

Neither Jackie nor Marvin has time to dwell on what happened to the building – its donation to the historical society came with the stipulation that it be moved, and no one realized the extent of years of termite damage.

Marvin lives by advice a former professor once gave him, “Don’t waste your energy on stuff you can’t change.”

For Jackie, seeing the post office rebuilt is more personal – it’s her family legacy to preserve things within the Swiss colony. She hasn’t missed the annual Swiss celebration in more than half a century except for the very first one.

“It’s a part of my family, and it’s a part of the history for the county too,” Jackie said.

“To Grundy County folks, the train and the coal are the most important,” Marvin added. “The Swiss were here before all that.”

To help with the project – whether it’s a gift of time, expertise, or money – email Jackie at jackie@lawleyfamily. net.

More information about the Swiss colony in Grundy County can be found at www.swisshistoricalsociety.org.