MURDER OF NOT? - PT. 2

The first time that I ever heard about the murder of Robert Morris was when I was talking to my aunt, Alice Lawrence, twenty years ago when I was just starting this little local history project.  We were talking about some events from La Farge’s “Dark Side” from the past and she brought up the death of Morris.  She did not remember Morris’ name, but did remember the Traister name and where the family lived at that time.

            She said that Frank Traister ran a speakeasy in the upstairs apartment that he rented at the old Travers Building then located on Main Street.  According to my Aunt Alice’s version of the story, Morris, Traister and some other men were drinking and playing cards late at night in that apartment.  She said that they caught Morris cheating at cards and the other card players threw him down the stairs.  From the fall down the stairs, Morris broke his neck and he was found dead the next morning, lying on the sidewalk in front of the building. My aunt’s version of the story leads us into a continuation of looking at the aftermath of the death of Robert Morris.

            Let us return to the year of 1928 and take a look at the lead story in the March 8^th issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper.  It began under a headline of “New angle In Morris Death”:

            While it is hardly possible for the Enterprise to issue statements with a degree of authenticity relating to the disaster which befell Robert Morris, on Thursday two weeks ago, we have been able to secure certain facts connected with the case which we believe we are free to publish without fear of contradiction.

            Shortly after the funeral of Robert Morris, Frank Traister was taken into custody by county officials, and after a hearing at the county seat, was placed under $1,000 bonds, which, being unable to furnish, caused the officers to place him in the county jail.  His trial was set for Monday, March 12^th, according to plans in force at the time this is being put into type.

            Herman Henthorne, a farmer living a few miles from Viroqua, who with Harley Harris, of the village, were inmates of the Traister apartment at the time of the accident, were taken to Viroqua, where, in the county attorney’s office, certain details of the case which were not brought out at the inquest held on the day following the death of Robert Morris, were made to present a somewhat different angle regarding the death of Robert Morris.

            With these opening paragraphs in the Enterprise article, the story that was told to me by my Aunt Alice starts to come together.  Vernon County Sheriff Martin Larson arrested Frank Traister and took him to the county jail in Viroqua.  While there, Vernon County District Attorney Martin Gulbrandson questioned Traister about the night of Morris’ death.  Let’s return to the Enterprise article:

            Frank Traister has made a signed confession that he was standing at the top of the stairway and witnessed R. Morris roll down the stairs, from which catastrophe he is supposed to have received the blow which soon afterward caused his death.

            At the time this is being put in type, Wednesday afternoon, the county sheriff, in company with a special representative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, of Minneapolis, are in the village, going over the scene of the accident, and putting certain parties who are more or less involved in the case, through the third degree.

            The editor of the Enterprise, perhaps to protect the reputations of Frank Traister and the other men in the apartment that night, is loathe to declare the death of Robert Morris a murder.  The story published in the March 14, 1928 issue of the LaCrosse Tribune does not show the same constraint.  Under a headline of “Hold Evidence In Morris Death Case Points to Foul Play”, the article in the Tribune read:

            That Vernon County authorities have in their possession sufficient evidence on which to arraign Frank Traister, La Farge, on a murder count, seemed a certainty as the probing of the mysterious death of Robert Morris went forward today.

            Most important of this evidence divulged today by Martin Gulbrandson, district attorney for Vernon County, was that blood stains were discovered on the upper landing of the stairway, leading directly into the Traister residence, and below which the frozen form of Morris was discovered by a laborer at 5:30 on the morning of February 24^th.

            Authorities point to this evidence as the most conclusive of any yet uncovered in connection with the case, since it has been maintained by Traister and his associates that Morris sustained the severe skull fracture, contributing to his death, in his tumble down the stair case.  It indicated to authorities that an assault had been made and aided in bearing out their contention that foul play had been committed.  Other evidence authorities are believed to have in their possession has not been divulged.

            C. A. Hedin, St. Paul, special investigator brought in on the case, went over the ground with Sheriff Martin Larson yesterday, making a trip to La Farge and discussing various phases of the case with Vernon County officials. The findings of the special detective were not disclosed, but he was to remain with the authorities until the case was cleared up.

            District Attorney Gulbrandson over long distance today said that meanwhile Traister, who was placed under arrest last Friday, and from whose stairway Morris was said by him to have fallen, was being held on a liquor charge.  He (Gulbrandson)said the preliminary hearing was set for Monday, but said the arraignment on this charge would be postponed in the event other clues pointing to Traister’s implication in a murder count were uncovered.

            It appears from this account in the LaCrosse Tribune that Frank Traister was originally arrested on the “liquor charge”, or that Traister was running a speakeasy of sorts out of his Main Street apartment.  Remember that this event occurred during the days of Prohibition in the United States, so there are federal and state laws in effect regarding illegal bars or taverns, “speakeasies” being in operation.  The Tribune article then goes on to capture the mood in La Farge as found by conversations that the reporter had with residents of the village.  The article continued:

            Through its own investigation, carried on in the city with parties who have recently been at La Farge and who know personally the persons involved, The Tribune learned today that considerable feeling is in evidence in that village, the majority of residents contending the action should be brought on a charge of murder.

            Complete disregard on the part of the Traisters of Morris’ well-being after his injury was explained here as a means they adopted in endeavoring to cover up on any possible connection with his injury, it is alleged.

            Morris was known to have sought liquor at the Traister home on the night previous to his death, spending close to an hour before 11:30 that night in Traister’s quarters.  He was believed to have departed around midnight, and lay at the bottom of the stairway until 5:30 in the morning, when he was found in a dying state, with his hands and feet frozen.

            Detective Hedin was scheduled to question Traister at the Vernon County jail today.  Authorities previously have questioned him and on all occasions he has maintained that his original story – that Morris was injured in the fall – was the truth.

            It is interesting that although the editor of the Enterprise did not want to speculate on the alleged murder as the Tribune article had done, the local La Farge newspaper did reprint the entire Tribune article in the March 15^thissue of the Enterprise.  The following week (March 22^nd) the La Farge newspaper reprinted an article about the Morris murder case that had been originally printed in a Viroqua newspaper, the Vernon County Censor. Although the Enterprise account led with the following disclaimer, “Reliable and authentic reports regarding the proceedings in the Traister case, have failed to reach this office, as it appears there has been several unforeseen obstacles presented”, the VC Censor, again like the Tribune article the week before, was reprinted in its entirety.  The lead paragraph in the VC Censor article read”

            The case of the State of Wisconsin vs. Frank Traister, of La Farge, seems to be arousing considerable interest among our citizens.  Proceedings were had before Judge Mahoney on Monday in which the defendant was sentenced to the Penitentiary for from one to two years on a plea of manslaughter in the fourth degree.

            Piecing the information from the several articles together, it appears that Frank Traister, who was originally arrested on alcohol – related charges, eventually admitted to having a part in Morris’ death, probably after questioning by the detective and county sheriff.  Perhaps to avoid being tried for a more severe offense, Traister agreed to plead guilty on the manslaughter charge.  It appears that Traister was headed for a year or two in the state penitentiary at Waupun.  Or was he?

More next time on the murder of Robert Morris.

La Farge Goes "Paperless"

A while back, they stopped selling the Wisconsin State Journal at the Zzip Stop in La Farge.  The long hard winter had resulted in sporadic deliveries to the La Farge gas station that had become an outlier on the route. When the big Kickapoo River flood had closed the Viola gas station back in August so no daily copies of the State Journal were being sold there, La Farge had become a stop too far on the route.  For those of us who are accustomed to having a daily newspaper to read, the stoppage was shocking.  Trips to Readstown, Viroqua and Hillsboro to get a newspaper are being made begrudgingly. What’s a guy to do? 

            The loss of a daily newspaper in La Farge also got me to thinking about when the last time the village was without a daily newspaper. I think it probably goes back a long way.  I’m guessing to the time before the railroad was completed to La Farge and daily trains could start bringing in the newspapers along with the mail, passengers and freight.  That takes us back to 1898!  Yikes! We have had daily newspapers in this little Kickapoo River town for over 120 years?  Probably, yes is the answer to that question.

            Remember that in those early years, the village of La Farge was the last stop on the Kickapoo rail line.  There were three hotels (Belcher House, Hotel Ward, and Central Hotel) operating in town to accommodate all of the people disembarking from the trains.  Dray lines in La Farge would have wagons at the railroad station to bring the visitors and salesmen up to the hotels in town.  From the very beginning the trains also delivered the daily newspapers. There is a classic photograph from that era showing some men dressed in suits sitting in the front lobby of the Hotel Ward.  Each man holds a copy of a daily newspaper in his hands.

            For over thirty years, there were always two trains arriving in the village every day.  Thus, the morning and evening editions of newspapers from Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago could be in La Farge “hot off the presses”.  Maxine Shird told me that when her folks were running Mac’s Hotel in La Farge (this would be from the 1920s until the early 1940s) that the daily newspaper was always available there.  Many of the train workers stayed at the hotel and bringing the newspapers was a daily delivery for them.

            When the railroad line ended in 1939, there was much uproar about how Kickapoo River towns would receive needed goods that had been delivered by the railroad.  Daily truck delivery routes were established to get goods to the Valley and newspapers were part of that.  The railroad continued to run a daily truck delivery route to the village until the late 1960s and daily newspaper deliveries were included.

            Eventually, the newspaper publishers began to run daily rural routes to places like La Farge.  The morning newspapers like the State Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel were delivered by delivery boys to people’s doorsteps in the village while later in the day, the Milwaukee Journal, Capital Times, and LaCrosse Tribune would arrive at people’s homes “fresh off the presses”.  

            I’m not sure if there were any age requirements for boys (Did girls also deliver the newspapers?  I can’t remember any from my youth, but perhaps later the fairer sex did become involved in the venture.) delivering newspapers in La Farge, but the job did entail collecting money for the papers besides delivering them.  I remember substituting for Freddie Shird one summer for a couple of weeks while he was on vacation.  He delivered the State Journal, I believe and I even was able to use his bicycle with the saddlebag newspaper baskets draped over the rear tire on the route.  During that time there were two boys delivering the State Journal since there were so many people in La Farge who had home delivery.  The afternoon deliveries of the LaCrosse Tribune may have needed a split route during that time as well.

            Delivering the Sunday newspapers was a whole different animal because of the increased size.  The newspaper bundles would be left on the back porch of the post office in town early each Sunday morning.  They would usually come in several bundles with additional inserts and such, and then the delivery boy had to put the newspapers together.  The papers would be so big and heavy that you couldn’t carry them all, so you had to do part of the route and then go back for the rest of the newspapers.

            Besides the home deliveries of the newspapers, several businesses in La Farge usually had the daily papers for sale.  Harry Lounsbury always had the newspaper for sale at his drug store and at least one of the grocery stores would also have them. The gas stations usually had the Sunday newspapers, as some of those other businesses in town would be closed. When we moved back to La Farge in 1972, we lived a block off Main Street in the Burt Apartments.  I would usually walk up to the drug store to get a newspaper and could catch up on the latest with Lillian Waddell, who worked there. At school, several daily newspapers would be in the library or teachers lounge, so we could read them there.

            For a short time, Carolyn and I were part of the newspaper delivery system as we took over Ernie Meseberg’s rural Sunday route of the State Journal from November of 1979 until September of the following year.  The route included a drive down to Tunnelville and then up on Fairview and Salem Ridges.  We caught more places driving down Wemmer Hollow, Otter Creek and Green Hollow. Heading north, we caught the places on Plum Run, Buckeye Ridge and on to Weister Creek.  We would often stop and talk to Rex Bufton at his place before moving on to circle the Dell area.  Then it was on to Ontario where we dropped off a stack of papers at the restaurant there. We would sometimes have breakfast there before heading down to Rockton and Warner Creek.  Next, the route took us to Jug Creek and on up to Morningstar and Maple Ridges. Before finishing back in Bear Creek and heading home.  It usually took a couple of hours if the roads were good.

            We had a heavy social schedule back then and a couple times we went right from a late night party to our early morning paper route. We particularly remember a night of celebration for my class reunion (that was #15 for the great LHS Class of 1965) resulted in no sleep before going on the paper route.  Eventually, Ernie took the route back over and we could sleep in on those Sunday mornings.

            I’m not sure when home deliveries of newspapers stopped in La Farge.  I do remember that adults were doing the routes at the end, which may have been ten years ago perhaps.  Today some people have the daily newspaper come through the mail, but that means it’s always a day or two late.  The LaCrosse Tribune stopped deliveries to La Farge in 2018, but the State Journal continued until February of this year.  I always made a daily stop at the Zzip Stop to get my copy each day – my reading usually focused on the sports page and the puzzles.  But alas, that option is now gone.  We have moved on to another time – paperless.

BRIDGES & BUSES - 1975

Lately I have been working on volume II of my La Farge history.  I have been reviewing my research of the events that happened during the mid-1970s in this little Kickapoo River town.  It was a crazy time, as the controversy over the La Farge dam project seemed to control everything happening in the village.  One of those strange occurrences in the fall of 1975 put La Farge back in the media bulls-eye once again.  The local protest played out over a couple of weeks and was initiated by the appearance of Senator William Proxmire in the village.

Senator Proxmire spoke to a standing room only crowd at the new La Farge firehouse that Saturday morning, September 5, 1975.  Proxmire announced that he was withdrawing his support of the dam project after being a staunch proponent of the project for years.  The announcement stunned nearly everyone in attendance (including my wife, Carolyn and me) and the discussion after the senator left, was what do we do now?  The pro-dam contingent, a vast majority in the village, wondered what was the next step to take?

That next step occurred on the following Monday evening at a special school board meeting held in the La Farge gym.  One hundred and thirty people were in attendance at the meeting and a petition was read bearing 140 names asking that the school board take appropriate action if the board members felt that area bridges were unsafe for travel by school buses.  A discussion at the meeting brought up that most area bridges recently had weight limits posted on them, some with limits as low as ten tons.  All of the bridges on Highway 131 north of La Farge located in the dam project land had 10-ton limits except for one.  School board president Roger Gabrielson estimated that a full school bus would weigh close to or exceed the 10-ton weight limit.  Gabrielson contended that nine state highway bridges located in the La Farge School District were unsafe for the district’s seven buses.

In a 3-2 vote, the school board decided to close La Farge Schools beginning on the following Thursday due to the weight restricted bridges.  Board members Mac Marshall Jr., David Clift and Marvin Munson voted for the measure, while Gabrielson and Richard Allen voted against it.  Both Gabrielson and Allen voted against the measure because they wanted the school to close the very next day, on Tuesday.

Discussion at the special school board meeting also focused on the fact that there was no money budgeted for repairs or replacements for any of the bridges on Highway 131 north of La Farge.  Those bridges were supposed to be removed when the lake from the dam project was created, but with Senator Proxmire’s withdrawal of support for completion of the dam project, it seemed the bridges would have to remain in use.  Since Governor Patrick Lucey earlier had said that no state funds would be used on the bridge and highway relocations for the La Farge dam project, it could be years before the bridges would be upgraded or replaced.

School board president Gabrielson told the board and attendees that the school would be in contact with the state DOT the next morning about the bridge concerns and the school closing.

Further local protest was in place the next morning as the La Farge school buses crossed the crumbling Highway 82 bridge over the Kickapoo River in La Farge.  On that Tuesday, a dozen protestors, many carrying signs denouncing the conditions of the bridge as well as state and federal politicians, paced warily along the sides of the bridge.  The number of protestors grew during the week and nearly three dozen people picketed on the bridge west of Nuzum’s by week’s end.  A reporter for the LaCrosse Tribune covering the demonstrations took a photograph of Orval Howard standing in one of the holes in the side of the road on the state highway bridge.  In the photo that appeared in the next days’ newspaper, Howard sank over three feet into the hole before his feet found some hanging angle iron beneath the road.  Soon after, the county highway crews placed orange construction barrels over the holes and stretched snow fence along each side of the bridge to keep demonstrators and others away from the holes.

By the end of the week, others who were walking across the bridge over the Kickapoo River in La Farge included school children riding on the buses to and from school.

After the leaders of the La Farge Schools contacted the state DOT about the bridges and scheduled school closing, intense negotiations resulted in a compromise to avoid closing La Farge’s schools.  Representatives from the DOT met with school officials on the afternoon following the special school board meeting.  An inspection was done of the bridge at Nuzum’s (where picketing had begun that morning) and options were discussed.  The next day, the DOT sent a letter to the school with assurances that all the state bridges were safe for school buses to cross.  School bus routes were then altered to avoid crossing the bridges north of La Farge as much as possible, although the new routes took more buses across the Highway 82 Bridge in La Farge.  It was decided by the school leaders that the buses would stop at the bridge approaches and the children would be unloaded.  Then the empty bus with red warning lights flashing would lead the walking students across the bridge.  Once across, the students would return to the bus and the route would continue.  This drastic move of having students walk across the bridges in and around La Farge was continued for several school days reaching into the next week.

During that time, more state bridge inspectors came to La Farge and inspected all nine bridges cited by the school in their report to the Wisconsin DOT.  With new weight restrictions and speed limits placed on the bridges, the La Farge school buses once again began hauling students across the spans instead of having them walk.  The press coverage of the La Farge bridge protest and the students walking across the bridges was massive.  Besides the La Farge area newspapers and radio as well as the LaCrosse newspaper, radio and TV stations, the bridges story merited coverage in the Madison and Milwaukee newspapers, radio and TV stations.  Several Chicago newspapers and one of the Windy City’s TV stations also covered the story of the La Farge bridges and walking students.

La Farge Epitaph editor Lonnie Muller concluded his “WHAT NOW ???” editorial in the September 10^th issue by writing, “I support the board 100% even though I figured a Tuesday closing was even better.  The day has come when La Farge can quit taking a back seat to everything in the state.  It’s damn time our side of the story got out to Lucey and his conniving bunch of pigheads in Madison.  We are sick and tired of being the pawns in the chess game of life.  We just checkmated you Lucey and from now on you are playing a losing game with the people of the Kickapoo Valley, if not the entire state.  You figured that you could put us down forever, but it just didn’t work out that way did it?  I think that now, more than ever, the La Farge people are starting to really work together.  I was damn disgusted Saturday when Proxmire made his speech pulling his support from the project, but by Tuesday evening when I write this, I can say that I’m damn proud of these people in this community who are going to fight this together to the finish.  I think a new chapter just started for La Farge, and probably a pretty good one at that.”

In the following week’s Epitaph (9-17-1975), reporter Pete Beckstrand wrote an interesting article on the DOT bridge inspections.  The recent state inspections had found that all of the bridges in the Kickapoo Valley were structurally safe.  However, much of the article provided contrary evidence of the sorry state of most of the bridges around La Farge.  Beckstrand noted that many of the state highway bridges in the La Farge area were “used” bridges – having been originally built at other sites.  He wrote that Bridge 18 (the Bacon Bridge just north of Seelyburg and the dam project site) was originally a span over the Wisconsin River at Spring Green.  After the bad Kickapoo River flood of 1951 damaged the Bacon Bridge, the state highway department hauled an old Spring Green span out of storage and put it across the Kickapoo River as a replacement.  Beckstrand also detailed that there were a total of 92 bridges in Wisconsin that had weight restrictions and 15 of them were located in the northern Kickapoo Valley.  In the article, he quoted Lee Schneider, chief engineer of the DOT’s LaCrosse office, as saying in a phone interview that the La Farge area bridges were in need of “massive maintenance and repair”, and there was no state money budgeted to pay for it.

Within a week after the state bridge inspections, Bridges 16, 17, and 18 on Highway 131 north of La Farge were posted with speed limits and 10-ton weight limits.  The Highway 82 Bridge across Otter Creek west of La Farge was made one-way for traffic.  The Highway 82 Bridge over the Kickapoo River at Nuzum’s was already one-way due to the placement of barrels and snow fence along both sides.

Beckstrand also reported in the article that a La Farge school bus loaded with mostly small children was weighed on the scale at Nuzum’s.  The bus weighed 16,900 pounds and the Episcope reporter wondered if a bus loaded with high school age students might exceed the 10-ton limit placed on most area bridges.