Saturday, March 24, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 24


March 24, 1977 – “Cindy Joy Elias, 19, was found murdered on [this date] off a logging road approximately eight miles north of Aurora, [Minn.]. Elias was found buried under a pile of brush at the scene, and initial investigations revealed she died as a result of multi-traumatic injuries to the head.

Elias was last seen in Virginia, [Minn.] at a local bar at approximately 12:30 a.m. A witness says Elias was looking for a ride home and had mentioned she was going to hitch hike.

Police believe the perpetrator or perpetrators are local people who were familiar with the area where she was found.”

http://www.spotlightoncrime.org/case_elias_cindy.cfm

               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
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Friday, March 23, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 23

March 23, 1904 – When D. C. Kissel opened the front door of his home this evening at 9:30 in response to a ring of the bell, he was surprised to find instead of a visitor, a small package wrapped carefully in a large woolen shawl, lying on his threshold.




Illustration by Slug Signorino*


 Bending over the bundle, he found it contained an infant, and upon hurriedly removing the coverings discovered the chubby face of a small boy, whose large blue eyes looked at him in wonder. Taking the baby in his arms, Kissel made an attempt to find the person who had left the infant, but the night was dark and no one was in sight. Buggy tracks making a sharp turn in front of his house led Kissel to the conclusion that the person who had left the child had made good his or her escape by driving away.


Kissel and his wife believed the baby boy to be about two-months-old, and looked to be- in the best of health. That his parents had been in good circumstances was indicated by the quality of the clothing, and the boy evidently had been well cared for.

Written upon a small piece of paper torn from the back of an envelope in a neat feminine hand was the following”

“This baby has been baptized in the Catholic faith.”

This note, the only information concerning the child, was tucked between the buttons of his little frock. There were no marks on the clothing that might lead to establishing the boy’s identity.

Kissel and his wife already have several children of their own, and decided they should not assume the burden of rearing the unknown baby boy. Therefore they called the police and the patrol wagon was sent and the baby was conveyed to the City Hospital. He was placed in the children’s ward, where he will remain until his parents are found or he is removed to an asylum.

The police believe that the persons leaving the boy on the Kissel’s doorstep made a mistake, and that they intended to leave it with Mrs. Henrietta Stenzel, a midwife living next door.


The St. Paul Globe; “Find a Boy Baby on Their Doorstep. West Central Avenue Family Presented With a Pretty Waif Deserted by Parents.”; March 24, 1904; p. 1.

*
https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2822/did-people-actually-abandon-babies-on-doorsteps/
               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
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Thursday, March 22, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 22

March 22, 1941Game Warden Charles Masoner suffered a fatal heart attack while conducting deer feeding operations in Itasca State Park.

He and other employees had been tasked with moving 80 pound hay bales through deep snow in order to prevent deer loss and to ensure a sustainable food source for local residents during the extreme winter months. Other wardens noticed he was feeling ill and began driving to Bemidji to seek medical treatment. He died while being driven through Hubbard County, approximately 10 miles south of Bemidji.

Game Warden Masoner was a U.S. Army Air Service veteran of WWI. He was survived by his wife and two daughters. 




Game Warden Charles Masoner 

https://www.odmp.org/officer/22520-game-warden-charles-masoner

               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
pjefamilyresearch@gmail.com





Wednesday, March 21, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 21

March 21, 1913 – For the first time in two days a Great Northern coast train puffed into Minneapolis’ Union Station at 2:40 p.m. today. The train was due into Minneapolis at 7:35 a.m. last Wednesday. During the period between Wednesday morning and this afternoon (Friday) when it was not attempting to cover the distance between Seattle and this city the train was standing in a snow drift eight miles west of Summit, Mont.

For 48 hours the train was stuck in the drift and it required the combined forces of a rotary snow plow and three big engines to remove it.


Example of train in deep snow1

Recounting their experience today, the passengers, of whom there were about 15, most of them bound for eastern and southern points, declared they had enjoyed the experience. The only disadvantage, they said, was the cold. The thermometer hovered around zero all the time, more often than not being several degrees below that. Their coal supply was nearly gone when the rescuing force of engines came.


There was enough food in the dining car for a siege of seven days in the snows for an ordinary load of passengers. But when the drift was struck, there were others besides the Pullman travelers to look out for, including the train’s crew, and rations were speedily being reduced.


Great Northern Railway Route Map2

In the drift at Summit there were several other trains, when Wednesday’s train arrived today. One of those was a through train for Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the others were local trains. Farther west than Summit on the banks of the Whitefish, five trains were snowbound. These and their passengers are expected to straggle into Minneapolis later today. Their passengers have had a much rougher experience than those of the trains stalled at Summit. Nearly all of those in the coaches at Summit are passengers bound from the Pacific Coast to the East and the South. Some of them had been on the trains for seven days, the first of the trains stranded in the canyon having left Seattle just a week ago.

The Minneapolis Morning Tribune; “Blocked Trains Released; Travelers Tell of Cold. Some Passengers Spent Week Coming From Coast to Minneapolis. Food Supplies Run Low and Coal Bins Were nearly Empty.”; March 22, 1913; p. 1.


1http://www.voxinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Train_stuck_in_snow-220x300.jpg

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)#/media/File:GN_Route_Map.png

               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
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Tuesday, March 20, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 20


*March 20, 1907 – Charles Howard, St. Paul, was stabbed in the breast with a butcher knife by his 18-year-old daughter, Fern Howard, early this morning, and is in critical condition at the City Hospital; physicians do not believe that he will recover.

The girl claims that Howard was threatening his wife with the knife and declares that she seized the weapon as her father poised it over her mother and wrested it from his grasp. Then followed a struggle during which the girl stabbed her father, the blade penetrating his left lung. Mrs. Howard and her daughter were remanded to the Ramsey County Jail today by Judge Hanft to await the outcome of the father’s injuries.




St Paul City Hospital
1

Mrs. Howard and her daughter’s statements of what happened were denied by Mr. Howard in his statement to Assistant County Attorney P. J. Ryan, who was called to the City Hospital this morning when it was decided that Howard was dying. He says that when his wife and daughter came home he wanted to know where they had been and accused them of visiting the home of a woman he did not like. They denied this and a quarrel ensued, he says, and that mother and daughter attacked him.

The police learned that mother and daughter had visited the home of a Mrs. Porter during the evening, where the father had suspected them of being. The daughter was later in the evening seen in a lunch wagon on West Seventh St., while the mother was standing outside. Early yesterday evening Mr. and Mrs. Howard called at the Central police station and informed Lieut. Henry Meyerding that their daughter was not at home and that she was in the habit of staying from the house.

Husband and wife separated after leaving the station and the mother evidently met the daughter afterwards, as they reached home together.

The records of the Humane Society show that the society had been asked several times to care for the children of Mr. and Mrs. Howard, and that Fern Howard had been sent to the Indian School at Morris, Minn. Each time she was sent there she was taken out by the father, who claimed that he was able to support her, and in 1902 he sent $25 cash to the society to show that he had sufficient means to care for his children. On a third application being made to the Indian School, Fern Howard’s admittance was denied by the superintendent on the ground that the young girl was only one-eighth breed Indian and that the law provided for none less than quarter breeds.



Indian School at Morris, Minn.2

Mrs. Jennie Howard is the daughter of Octave LeClaire of Mendota, where he is known as an industrious half-breed.

Charles Howard survived his attack.


The Minneapolis Tribune; “Remanded to the Jail. Mother and Child Placed Behind Bars in St. Paul. Charles Howard, Who Was Stabbed by Daughter, Continues in Critical Condition and Physicians Say He Cannot Recover.”; March 21, 1907; p. 6.

The People’s Press; “Daughter Stabs Father. St. Paul Man Sustains Probably Fatal Injuries.”; Owatonna, Minn.; March 29, 1907; p. 6.
_________________

May 29, 1907 – “She is my daughter, my own flesh and blood. I could not testify against her and place her behind prison bars,” said Charles Howard in St. Paul district court today.

“I want to plead guilty. If I stuck to the first story I told about wrestling the knife from my father and stabbing him in self-defense, I would be telling a lie, and I don’t want to go through life with perjury on my conscience,” said Fern Howard.

The Fern Howard case came to a sudden end in district court today when the youthful defendant pleaded guilty to assault in the second degree, was sentenced to the state reformatory and sentence suspended during her good behavior.

There were two reasons for the abrupt closing of the trial. The wounded father and his daughter had become reconciled and the parents refused to go on the stand and the girl asked to be allowed to plead guilty so that she would not have to perjure herself on the stand.

There was a touching scene in Judge O. B. Lewis’ courtroom when the girl entered her plea. Following the request from Attorney F. L. McGee and K. D. O’Brian, county attorney, the father, with tears in his eyes, told of his forgiveness of his daughter and asked that the court be as easy with her sentence as it could.

Fern Howard was indicted on the charge of assault in the first degree for stabbing her father in March. Her first story was that she had stabbed him in self-defense, wrestling the knife from his hands. She now admits, however, that this was not true and that upon hearing her mother cry for help she rushed out of the room, seized the knife and rushed back, plunging the weapon into her father’s breast.

The Minneapolis Tribune; Father Pleads For Erring Daughter. Girl Who Stabbed father in Court. Now Changes Her Plea to One of Guilty. Father Prays Court for Forgiveness for Daughter’s Act.”; May 30, 1907; p. 6.
________________

In 2018, we would view this as a very dysfunctional family. In the 1900 U. S. Census, Jennie Howard and her three children, Fern, Florence and Alfred are living with her father, Octave LeClaire, in St. Paul, not her husband.

In the 1905 Minnesota State Census, Fern and her sister Florence are living in the Indian School in Pipestone.


Indian School, Pipestone, Minn.3


1
http://www.lakesnwoods.com/StPaul/1910s.htm

2https://library.morris.umn.edu/collections/american-indian-boarding-schools-collection

3http://www.lakesnwoods.com/PipestoneGallery.htm

               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
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Monday, March 19, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 19

March 19, 1913 – Soo Line passenger train No. 4, east-bound, was wrecked for the third time within six weeks at North St. Paul this evening. It ran into an open switch shortly after 10 p.m. The locomotive left the rails and partly buried itself in the mud, the mail car was derailed, and passengers shaken up. The engine crew jumped. No one was injured.

The train was traveling at about 20 miles an hour when the crash happened. Passengers were piled up in the cars, windows were broken, and one trainman was thrown several feet. The track was ripped up for more than 100 feet. Wrecking crews expect to have the line cleared early tomorrow.

The three wrecks of the train have been mysterious. All have been caused by an open switch. After the first on, nearly six weeks ago, detectives were placed on the case.

The Minneapolis Morning Tribune; “Soo Line Train Is Wrecked. For third Time in Six Weeks No. 4 Mysteriously Runs Into Open Switch.”; March 20, 1913; p. 1.



http://www.netn.com/RRs/heralds.html

               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
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Sunday, March 18, 2018

On This Date in Minnesota History: March 18

March 18, 1901 – Andrew F. Rockwell, former overseer of the St. Louis County poor farm, was indicted today by the grand jury for taking property from the poor farm that is claimed to belong to the board of county commissioners. Four indictments were returned against him, two for petit larceny and two for grand larceny in the second degree.

The indictments were returned by the grand jury this afternoon when it made its final report and adjourned. Bench warrants were issued against him under the indictments, and Rockwell was arrested and brought into court; bail was fixed at $1,500, divided between the four indictments.

The indictments cover alleged larcenies during the month of Jan. 1901, the last month Rockwell spent as overseer of the poor farm. One of the grand larceny indictments charges that on Jan. 17 he took away from the poor farm a cow worth $50, belonging to the board of county commissioners. The other charges that on Jan. 27 he took 200 pounds of pickled pork.

The petit larceny indictments were for taking chickens and potatoes. One charges that on Jan. 30 he took 24 hens and 2 roosters belonging to the county board and appropriated them to his own use. The other charges that on Jan. 26 he took ten bushels of potatoes. All of the indictments allege that the property was taken while Rockwell had it in his custody in his capacity of overseer of the poor farm.


St. Louis County Poor Farm 1904*

The Duluth Evening Herald; “Rockwell Has Been Indicted. Former Overseer of Poor Farm Charged With Stealing Property of the County.”; March 19, 1901; p. 1.

*http://zenithcity.com/st-louis-county-poor-farm/
               __________________________________________________________

If you are interested in finding out more about your family history in Minnesota, I specialize in researching  genealogical and historical records in Minn. and western Wis., including:
census records,  birth records,  death certificates, obits, grave site photos, ship passenger lists, marriage records and declarations of intent/naturalization records.  I will visit locations to research local history and county records, as well as take photos. Quick turnaround on MNHS records. Both short searches and family history reports available.

                                                         


Discover your roots, and watch the branches of your family tree begin to grow.


Website:  TheMemoryQuilt.com > click on Family History

Contact me at:
pjefamilyresearch@gmail.com