Elizabeth Taylor Ayer's life spanned nearly the entire nineteenth century. In an era when women rarely had professional careers, her work as a teaching missionary gave her more status and independence than most women enjoyed.

Harriet Bishop, best known as the founder of St. Paul’s first public and Sunday schools, was also a social reformer, land agent, and writer. In the 1840s, she led a vanguard of white, middle-class, Protestant women who sought to bring “moral order” to the multi-cultural fur-trade society of pre-territorial Minnesota.

Libraries have been a part of Carver County history since the county was started. The earliest library began in 1858, and many more followed. In the twenty-first century, there are five full libraries and three express library branches. Total circulation is over one million books per year and rising.

Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it operated until 1942. It later became a satellite campus for University of Illinois forestry and engineering students; a Native American learning center; and an educational center for Chippewa National Forest visitors.

In June 1922, the Minneapolis Public Library book wagon made its first trip from Minneapolis to Excelsior, a small village on Lake Minnetonka. Riding aboard the book wagon was Gratia Countryman, the library system's visionary director.

Founded in 1971, the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota is the first of its kind in the Midwest. Rooted in social justice, the department is committed scholastically and pedagogically to centering Chicana/o and Latina/o histories and experiences.

In the 1880s, Minnesota farmers saw the need for education but resisted "book farming," or learning how to farm by reading instructional text. Farmers' institutes, lecture series that traveled to rural communities and taught practical farming skills, were popular alternatives in the 1880s through the 1920s.

From 1900–1915, the girls’ preparatory school Graham Hall catered to well-to-do Minneapolis families with an elite pre-college curriculum. The school also offered a general course of study and elementary education. Graham Hall was eventually reincorporated under a board of trustees as the Northrop Collegiate School for Girls, which, in turn, became a part of the Blake School.

Gustavus Adolphus College, the dream of Swedish immigrants, began as a humble secondary school in Red Wing with one student in 1862. Relocated to St. Peter in 1876, it has flourished as one of Minnesota's private liberal arts colleges.

Harmony’s first school, nicknamed the Little Red Schoolhouse, was a one-room structure built in 1864 in the village of Greenfield Prairie, a mile south of where Harmony would later be incorporated. The modest school, built by some of the area’s earliest immigrants, provided the foundation for what would become a thriving independent school district, a source of great pride, and a sign of prosperity for those living in and around Harmony for almost a century.

Carver County's history is documented in the records of its cities, city agencies, and government center. Schools, school districts, churches, and civic groups have archives as well. Four historical societies call Carver County home. These are the Chanhassen Historical Society, the Chaska Historical Society, the Watertown Area Historical Society, and the Willkommen Heritage and Preservation Society of Norwood Young America.

In 1930, the Jewish Community Center of St. Paul (JCC)—originally called the Jewish Education Center (JEC)—began the work it continues in the twenty-first century: providing for the educational, social, cultural, and recreational lives of local Jewish youth and their families.