Murder or Not? The Death of Robert Morris

Although I have tried to focus on the positive when writing this little history of the community of La Farge, there are some bad things that happened in the town as well.  I have not ignored the negative entirely.  Back in 2010, I wrote about the death of Sam Hook, a storeowner in Seelyburg who died under mysterious circumstances as his general store was being robbed and set on fire.  That two-part Local History Notebook about Sam Hook’s unusual and tragic ending in 1917 detailed how his death was investigated thoroughly.  In the end though regarding the death of Sam Hook, nobody was ever prosecuted for a crime, although Seelyburg residents always contended that he was murdered.

            Eleven years after Sam Hook’s death, another mysterious death took place on Main Street of La Farge.  It involved the death of Robert Morris, who died on February 24, 1928.  The circumstances of Morris’ death and the legal maneuverings that followed make for another interesting story from La Farge’s past.  To begin, let’s look at the story of the death of Robert Morris as told in the March 1, 1928 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper.  The headline on page 1 of the Enterprise read, “Robert Morris Found Lying Unconscious On Sidewalk Friday”. A sub-headline under that lead read, “Both Hands Frozen and Face Covered With Blood”.  The article in La Farge’s weekly newspaper at the time continued:

            Excitement ran high in the village on last Friday morning when the intelligence was passed about that Robert Morris had been found on the street just before daybreak, almost frozen to death.  The unconscious man was first discovered by John Mullett, who chanced to pass by the stairway leading to the second floor of the Travers building, heard a strange sound, at first thinking it might have been a dog that had crawled up the stairway seeking shelter from the extremely cold night air.

            Let me interject here that the Travers building is the former post office in La Farge, the brick building that last housed a real estate office and sat between the current post office and the Zzip Stop. It was torn down a few years ago after it started to fall down.  For more information on the building, check out my Local History Notebook columns when I wrote about it in 2013.  In 1928, the building had a covered outside stairway that led up to the second story apartments.  Now; let’s return to the Enterprise article:

Upon drawing closer, however, Mr. Mullett discovered the sound issued from the numb human, who was lying on the snow-covered walk with his head resting on the lowest step of the stairway.  Mr. Mullet immediately hastened to the Central Hotel next door, and divesting the knowledge of his discovery to those within the hotel, who were already about, lost no time in notifying Marshall Showen, and as quickly as the village official arrived on the scene of the tragedy, he, with two other men, loaded the unfortunate onto a handsled and placed him on the cot in the village lock-up.

            The Central Hotel was located where the present post office of La Farge sits.  Beside the hotel there was another large store building that would have been next to the Travers building.  Both of those buildings burned down during the great hotel fire of 1942.  When Robert Morris was sledded to the jail by Village Marshall Showen and others, they probably only had to go a block or so. Taking the severely injured man to jail seems like a strange choice, especially when you had warm rooms at the hotel right next door.  But there are lots of strange occurrences involving this case, so let’s return to the newspaper story:

Not once since the man was first discovered until life became extinct did he regain consciousness.  Immediately after the man was placed on the cot, Dr. Haggerty was called, but his services were of no avail, as the man’s life ebbed before he arrived.  Parties who remained with the man after he was placed on the bed say that he opened his mouth once or twice, but that was the last and the only sign of life.

            At the inquest and hearing held in the afternoon, conducted by the district attorney and county sheriff, the details of the case were brought out. Depending on the strength of our memory, this is the way we got the run of the dope:

            “Run of the dope”?  That sounds like something from a present day song infused with hip-hop slang. Dr. Eber Haggerty, who was called to the jail to pronounce Morris dead on that cold February morning in 1928, lived a block away from the jail.  His house that contained an office for his medical practice sat across the street from the newly constructed Masonic Temple that would be formerly dedicated later that year.  Meanwhile, back to the story:

            It appears that quite late last Thursday evening Robert Morris mounted the stairway of the Travers building, a portion of the second story of which is occupied by Frank Traister and his family.  Morris, knocking on the door, made inquiry of Frank Traister, who answered the knock, if he could get something to drink.  Upon receiving an answer from Traister in the negative, Morris turned from the door and Traister closed it and went back to his chair.  Perhaps a moment afterward a commotion was heard within the hallway, and upon investigation, it was found that Mr. Morris had fallen down the stairway. With the aid of a second party, Frank Traister carried the man to the doorway of the Central Hotel, where inquiry was made regarding the engaging of a room, but was told that the house had no rooms available.  Morris was then taken back and deposited at the bottom of the stairway, where it was presumed he would soon be able to collect his senses and repair to a place of warmth and shelter for the night.  The accident, as near as we were able to determine, happened about 11:30 in the evening, and if the man remained outside from that time until he was found in the morning around 5 o’clock, small wonder that his fingers and hands were frozen white, when one remembers that a temperature of between 12 and 15 degrees below zero prevailed throughout the night.

            First of all, it is important to know that in 1928, the United States had Prohibition in effect, so there were no bars or taverns in La Farge.  It does seem interesting that Robert Morris goes to the Traister apartment at nearly midnight on a Thursday evening to get something to drink.  Another interesting part of the story was that Frank Traister and somebody else (and don’t you wonder who that person was at that time of the night) carried a badly injured Morris over to the hotel to get him a room. That seems like a decent thing to do. But then Traister and his buddy drop off Morris back at the bottom of the stairs to sleep it off.  There is not much compassion in that determination.

            Perhaps, Traister could have let Morris stay the night in his apartment where the injured man could recover from his fall. At the time Frank Traister and his wife Cora had four children who lived in that second story apartment in the Travers building.  The children were John, aged 14, then there was Floyd, 12; Harold, 9 and little May or Mae (found it spelled both ways) Traister aged 7.  With all of those kids, perhaps there wasn’t any room in the apartment for the injured man?  But wouldn’t you think that Morris could have been laid on the kitchen floor to get him out of that bitter -15 degree cold night?  Frank Traister does not seem to have much compassion for Morris in this situation.  We perhaps will learn more about why that may have been, when other information starts to come out about Frank Traister.  (Don’t forget about little May Traister, the 7-year old daughter – she may be a key in this case.)  The newspaper article continued:

            Arrangements were made Saturday afternoon to conduct the funeral on Sunday, but all such plans were cancelled when those closely related to the deceased were advised by county officials that a post-mortem examination would be held over the body on the following Monday.  It appears that a more thorough and careful search of the premises upon which the tragedy occurred, by village and county officials, brought to light certain complexities connected with the matter which they wished to investigate and to effect a possible solution thereof. 

            Following the post-mortem examination of the body, on Monday afternoon, by local and deputy state medical examiners, the funeral was held Tuesday, at 2 o’clock, at the Free Methodist Church in the village.

            Mr. Morris was a man of close to 40 years of age, and only until quite recently, was in another section of the country, but returned to La Farge last fall and had been making his home with his brother, John.  We have endeavored to report the particulars of this case to the best of our ability.  As is always the case when an accident of this nature occurs, one will hear a great many and different stories, but we have tried to adhere only to those statements brought out at the inquest.

            Thus ended the newspaper article about the death of Robert Morris.  As mentioned in the concluding paragraph, there were many stories swirling around La Farge regarding Morris’ untimely death.  Some of those stories had more merit than others and soon, more stories about that frigid February night on La Farge’s Main Street would surface.  Next time in the history blog, we will continue to look at the unseemly death of Robert Morris.    

A TROLLEY RIDE THROUGH TIME!

            This year as part of La Farge’s celebration for Independence Day, and in conjunction with the All-School Reunion, there were trolley rides offered on the afternoon of the 4^th of July.  I was on board to provide a little commentary on the history of the sites as we traveled through town – talking about the past, present and not too distant future.  For those of you who  couldn't hop on the trolley, here’s a little purview of the tour.

            Please remember as you read this; the story is being delivered in a trolley car full of folks on July 4^th, 2015.

            As we pull out of the school parking lot, notice the kids playing ball over at Calhoon Park.  It’s seventy-six years and counting for La Farge’s historic ballpark, which was recently featured on LaCrosse’s Channel 8 TV.  Built as a WPA project in the late 1930’s, the iconic ballpark has been home to ball games for kids of all ages for three-quarters of a century.  Don’t forget there’s an Alumni Softball game at five this afternoon and then the Icons vs. Legends game tonight at Calhoon Park.

            As we turn on to Mill Street and head north, view the childcare center and other buildings along this road.  I used to refer to these buildings as “Glennville”, because Glenn Alderman – a man who served La Farge as village president, constructed them back in the day.

            This large industrial building on the left was built in the 1970’s to house the Kickapoo Stoveworks factory.  Paul Bader’s BBR wood-burning stove, one of the best ever built, was constructed here by the thousands  (Paul told me that he wanted to build four of those stoves and ended up making 14,000”).  Organic Valley (OV) now uses the building as a warehouse.

            This area to our left as we turn off the highway used to be called Morgantown.  When there was a railroad in La Farge, the railroad workers lived in small houses here.  The Morgan family always had men working for the old “Kickapoo Stump Dodger”, as the train was called and many of them lived here.  That house, once the home of Jap Morgan, is the only original railroad worker’s shanty that’s left.

            We are heading down Seelyburg Road now and back into La Farge’s beginnings.  Chapel Hill Cemetery on our left is located where the first church in town was – a log chapel that housed the Methodist congregation.  Eventually, the Methodists built a new church a block off Main Street in La Farge and the old log chapel was sold to some Norwegian Lutherans, who moved it from here.  As we descend the hill, we are heading into old Seelyburg, the lumbering river town that has a history stretching back to before the Civil War.  This old river town that is no more is featured in the book, Ghost Towns of Wisconsin.

            The house on our right is the oldest in La Farge.  Originally constructed in 1865, it was the first wood-frame house built in the community.  Ed and Alice Nixon first lived here.  Alice was the daughter of Dempster and Juliette Seely.  Dempster Seely built a sawmill here and a town grew up around it. 

Back in the 19^th century this road was lined with businesses and houses.  Chauncey Lawton was an original founder of this place, which he called Star.  He had a store and law office here on the right, just before we cross the Kickapoo River.  If you look to your left, you can see some of the foundation of the original Seely house.  During the 1935 Kickapoo River flood, there was a dramatic rescue of a family from the second floor of this house.  That amazing story made headlines around the nation and began the federal government attempts to control the floods of the Kickapoo.

            On our right is the Star Cemetery, another of Seelyburg’s burying places.  It was also the site of an Adventist Church, which operated a grade school here until after World War I.

            As we turn here at the former Gale Huston mink ranch (now owned by his nephew Earl Nelson), notice Norris Ridge ahead of us.  This is where the federal government’s Corps of Engineers built the La Farge Dam to create Lake La Farge back in the early 1970’s.  The building with the red roof was to be the Corps maintenance building for the crew working at the dam.  The building with the green roof is the town hall for the Town of Stark.  It was constructed in 2012-13 to replace the old town buildings located on La Farge’s Main Street, that were damaged by the 2008 Kickapoo River flood.

            Notice the sign that identifies this place as once being the home of the Huston’s.  Those signs (This year, there are brand new signs made especially for the day) are put out every 4^th of July, when the Kickapoo Valley Reserve opens old Highway 131 so vehicles can drive along it from here to Rockton and know who used to live along the old river road.  The old river road now serves as a main trail for the Reserve, which is off limits to cars except on special occasions like today.  The road will be open the rest of the afternoon until 4 o’clock.

            As we again cross the river, we are reminded of a prior 4^th of July Celebration when La Farge’s famous “The Human Cork” performed his floating skills here.  That’s right, Bill Claybrook, La Farge High School Class of 1914 and known as “Non-Sinkable William”, gained national fame for his floating prowess.

            Looking up on the hill to our left, we see a new house built last year by Greg Lawton, a descendant of the founder of this forgotten little river town and the 5^th generation of Lawton’s to live here in Star or Seelyburg.  Beyond look at the green roof of the Organic Valley headquarters in the distance.  OV is the largest marketer of organic products in the world and had total sales of $992 million in 2014.  Organic Valley employs 400 people here in La Farge at the present time to help make all those sales happen.

            When Seelyburg was thriving back in the day before the floods washed it away, Dr. Amos Carpenter had his office and apothecary here. Dr. Carpenter was known for using Indian potions and medicines in his practice and each fall, the Winnebago (now Ho-Chunk) would stop and sell their natural medicines to Dr. Amos.

            This is the site of the last store in Seelyburg, owned by Sam Hook.  The popular storeowner died when his store burned down in 1917.  He was found floating in the spring-fed cistern in the store’s basement and that cement vault still lies over there in the weeds.  Everybody who lived in Seelyburg back then claimed that Sam was murdered most foully.  Alas, poor Sam could not call for help on that fateful night in 1917 because he was a deaf mute.

            That is new State Highway 131 to our left.  This road was put in to go around Lake La Farge and replace the old state highway, which we were just on.  When the dam project was stopped in 1975, the community, as a way to protest, held a mock funeral here in town for Senator William Proxmire.  An effigy dummy of the senator, riding in a manure spreader pulled by two jackasses, took the funeral parade up to the dam site where the dummy was thrown down toward the river.  Reverend Red Alderson intoned, “Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.  Lord, give us a senator that we can trust.”  La Farge once again made national headlines. 

            Looking up at the school building, the old two-story 1901 school building is at the center of a current struggle by the people of the school district as to what to do with the ancient structure.  Do we tear it down, since it has outlived its usefulness as a school building, or do we convert, retrofit or restore it for other uses for the community?  That is the question.

            The story of how La Farge got its name is an interesting one.  Because of the names derivation, many people like to make a connection with the early French fur trappers, who plied the Kickapoo trading for furs with the Winnebago.  That would be a good story, and another is that the name was chosen because there is a place to ford the Kickapoo River here.  The French la farge fits with the proximity with the river.  Another great story, but alas, the name La Farge was simply picked out of a book supplied by the U.S. Post Office.  A young girl, blindfolded for the process, ran her finger down the page and stopped at La Farge.  This took place at Sam Green’s place, a mile south of town.  That was the first La Farge post office; now it’s the Green Apple Inn B&B and the owner serves organic breakfasts.  What a connection between the past, present and future of this town.

            As we approach the new VMH medical clinic on our left, it’s important to remember that this is the site of the last sawmill in La Farge.  Schroer’s Hardwood Lumber ceased sawing operations here in July of 2013 marking the first time in the 150-year history of the town that La Farge did not have an operating sawmill.  The new clinic will have three doctors and a pharmacy as well as two birthing rooms.  Dr. Jim Deline has been delivering Amish babies for decades and his renowned research on Amish health issues will continue in the new clinic.  The new clinic is hosting an Open House for the public until three this afternoon. 

Rack 'Em Up!

Well, either you’re closing your eyes

To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge,

Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated

By the presence of a pool table in your community

Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,

I say, right here in River City,

Trouble with a capital “T”

And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!

When I first heard the actor, Robert Preston, sing those words in the movie adaptation of Meredith Willson’s musical, “The Music Man”, I immediately thought of my hometown of La Farge. Wilson may have been writing about memories from his boyhood hometown of Mason City, Iowa, but that song seemed to fit right in with this Kickapoo River town. Of course, I viewed the movie at the Mars Theater in La Farge back when the movie was first released in 1962, so it was natural I suppose for me to imagine that the mythical River City of Willson’s story was La Farge. I don’t really remember any other songs from that movie, but some of the lyrics of “Ya Got Trouble” have always lingered in my mind. “P” rhymes with “T”, which stands for Trouble, so watch out for those pool tables!

The evil of the pool hall was a moral dilemma played out in many an American town and La Farge was no exception. By the time that I came along as a lad in the 1950s and stood on the sidewalk and stared in at the forbidden tables at Mac’s Pool Hall on La Farge’s Main Street, I think the moral drama had played its course and that type of an establishment was pretty well accepted. It was viewed as a relatively harmless place for boys and men to while away their free hours – playing pool and cards. There were age limits of course, for both playing pool, which I think was 12 or 14 years of age, and the adult card room in the back, which I’m pretty sure required the age of 18 for proper entry to play.

The village of La Farge has always had pool tables. When the village was established in 1899, one of the first pieces of business that the newly elected board had to conduct was giving out licenses for pool tables. Since that first village board decided to give out liquor and beer licenses for saloons and other drinking establishments, the pool table license usually went with it. But pool tables were in other establishments in La Farge besides taverns. There were actual pool halls from the very beginning. A Mr. Bezuchka, of the Hillsboro brewery family, who had many business interests in the village at its inception (including its gold mine), opened a three-table pool hall in La Farge several months before getting his liquor and beer licenses to turn it into one of the first saloons in town. Two of the three hotels in the village also had pool tables for their patrons to use. The “La Farge House” or “Belcher’s Hotel” did not have a pool table, as the family who owned the hotel strictly forbid their guests from any drinking, smoking or chewing in their establishment. So, it would follow that there would not be any pool table there, either. (Those strict rules soon led the Belcher family to close down the hotel, as they had little use of their rooms from business travelers. Mrs. Belcher ran a millenary store in the front of the building for years and a barbershop was also located there.) Both the “Central Hotel” and the “Ward Hotel”, La Farge’s other two hotels at the end of the nineteenth century, had pool tables. As a matter of fact, we have a record of a view of the pool table at the Ward Hotel provided us by Dale Muller in one of his Johnson Gunfrunk articles.

Writing in one of his John Bear Spreader Notes, Gunfrunk (Muller) was regaling about the village’s past in an article titled, “La Farge – Back Then”. In that piece, Muller recalled the busy Saturday nights in the village of his youth, “When a new kid came to town, and the town kids wanted to impress them they would take them down to the Ward Hotel, and peek down in the game room. They had a pool table and some card tables down there, and you could see the drummers playing cards with money on the table and drinking something out of big brown bottles. In one corner of the room, they had a stuffed two-headed calf and that really impressed the country kids.”

WELL – there you have it folks! Trouble with a capital “T”: card games, a pool table, drinking from big brown bottles and a two-headed calf! – Welcome to Sin (River) City!

Regular pool halls were in the village from its start. Besides the previously mentioned Bezuchka establishment, Art Travers had a pool hall early on in his building next to the Central Hotel. There was a pool hall in the Miller building across from the bank and another at one time in the KP Hall building on south State Street. Suffice it to say, many of the buildings that survive from that early era of the incorporation of the village (and there are quite a few of them), probably had a pool hall under roof at one time or another.

Sam Hook put a pool table in his general store located up in Seelyburg soon after he opened the business. That move did not sit well with the residents of the north end of La Farge. Dempster Seely, Chauncey Lawton and the other leaders of that community had always kept a tight check on drinking, gambling and other sins in Seelyburg over the years, but that group was gone by the time Sam opened his store. More than one correspondent to the La Farge Enterprise reporting on the happenings in Star (Seelyburg) at that time mentioned the sullying affect of Sam’s pool table on the youth of the old river town.

A while back, I received a scan of an old photographic post card from Julie Roberts, who lives down Readstown way, of a pool hall that was located in La Farge over a century ago. The historical society in Readstown had come in possession of the post card, which was dated as being mailed on May 28, 1909. The photograph showed an interior shot of a three-table pool hall owned by a man named Hart. The post card was sent by his daughter, Tacy, who identified the post card’s photo as her Dad’s pool hall in La Farge. Looking at that old photograph postcard, I am reminded of the last pool hall in La Farge – the one where I hung out in my youth. That back window placement and covered sidewall beam on the right side of the photograph remind me of Mac’s Pool Hall as I remember it, but it could be the interior of another building in La Farge as well.

The Ottevale Railroad

I was interested in reading the recent story about the reincarnation of the Ottervale Store taken on by the Alderson’s living up Husker Hollow way. There was a nice little article on the history of the store that was put together by Patsy and Kevin Alderson included in that issue of La Farge’s local newspaper. Reading the articles and looking at the many photos of the moving of the store building stirred memories of the story of the ill-fated railroad line from La Farge to Ottervale. As with many a tale told on the Kickapoo, it started with the best of intentions.

It was the winter of 1901-02 and by January the snow was piled so high as to scrape the telegraph wires running along side the Kickapoo Railroad line. In those days, when the snow was piled that high, folks stayed indoors more and gathered to talk at the stores on La Farge’s bustling Main Street. Sitting around the pot-bellied stoves at Chase Brothers Mercantile, Millard’s Store and Post Office or Pott’s Hardware Store, the local wags would pontificate on the latest news and gossip.

A story of interest all that fall and running into the winter was the decision by the Kickapoo Railroad officials to not extend the line north beyond La Farge. Original plans had called for the railroad line to continue north towards Rockton and Ontario, then on up the Valley and over the hill at Briggsville to Tomah. There it would connect with the main east-west rail line running to La Crosse. Good intentions indeed, but the Kickapoo railroad line was always short of funds and did not have the money to pursue expansion beyond La Farge, so the plan for extending the railroad line north to Tomah was scuttled. Although that decision left La Farge in the envious and financially lucrative position of being the northern terminus of the railroad line, some in the community saw a need for more connections to the outside world. Soon the idea of a branch line to bustling Ottervale was being bandied about.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the La Farge Enterprise newspaper came out strongly for the Ottervale branch line in its January 31, 1902 edition. An article on the front page of that issue, Railroad To Ottervale, outlined the positive benefits of the plan:

What is the matter with having a railroad from La Farge to Ottervale? For our part we can’t see anything of importance to hinder, and what little obstacles there may be in the way are not of enough account to prevent the carrying out of such an important project as this. The benefits to be received from such a road are too many and great to be enumerated here, but we will mention a few which we think will set at rest any doubts in the mind of the reader as to the advisability of the plan.

· 1^st It would make La Farge the junction of two of the most important railroads in Vernon County.

· 2^nd If Ottervale should ever happen to grow to be a large city like Milwaukee or Chicago it would be a great advantage to this town to have direct railroad connections.

· 3^rd If a gold mine should ever happen to be discovered over at Ottervale our citizens could go over there to dig and come back on the evening special and in this manner we could get rich without depopulating the village any.

· 4^th It would be of great advantage to La Farge to be the junction of two important railroads and might induce some large manufacturing establishments to locate here and help build up the town.

· 5^th If the railroad was successful we could build other roads out to West Lima, Muncie, Rockton and other points and make La Farge a great railroad center.

· 6^th The Enterprise could be carried to Ottervale by mail without taking it a whole week for it to get there as it does now.

We trust that there are none of our readers who do not yet see clearly the advantages of this road and we will go on to explain why we think the road can be built just as well as not. There is nothing as we can see lacking to build the road with except the money, but there is no use in getting discouraged for the lack of that when everything else necessary for railroad building can be found right in the village. A good set of officials can be picked out here and we would suggest the following persons as being, according to our best judgment, in every way capable and competent to serve as a good set of railroad officials:

Jonathan Gift President

M.O. Morris V. President

Dr. Butt Sect.

Dr. Gaines Treas.

G.E. Tate Train Master

J.H. Potts Engineer

H.C. Plimpton Fireman

R.P. Dalton Brakesman

D. H. Bean, Mike Ward, and Sam Hook could furnish the money. To show that we are in earnest and are willing to do our part we will agree to furnish the hot air for the airbrakes. If there is anything else necessary for building a railroad just let us know and we will find some way to get it. We hope that all those who wish to take stock in the road will get together soon and get the work started as soon as possible so that we can have it completed before all the snow melts away.

That mention of snow in the last line of the article was probably a key to the idea of the fictitious branch railroad running up Otter Creek. In an earlier issue of the Enterprise that winter, the correspondent from Ottervale had mentioned that the snowdrifts were packed so hard on the road leading to La Farge that you could drive a train over them. At around the same time, there was some grumbling about the deep piles of snow on La Farge’s Main Street, which made it hard to maneuver around with horse & sleigh or on foot. Somebody mentioned that they should haul the huge piles of snow out of town, so why not use them for a firm bed for the proposed new line running to Ottervale? The idea was hatched to lay the track of the proposed line across the firmly packed snow and within a week of the original article, a notation was made in the local newspaper that “stock for the Ottervale railroad was going as fast as pancakes & honey” and that William Riley would run the new railroad eating house.

Two weeks later in the February 21 issue of the Enterprise another article appeared titled Our Railroad. The article read:

“We found the following article with no signature attached in front of our office door one day the first of the week. As we first read it over a suspicion crossed our mind that the writer was trying to make fun of “our” railroad, but upon sober reflection we deemed it incredible that anyone could be so trifling and frivolous with the serious things of this life and so we concluded that the writer must have ment (sic) it all for the best but was probably not as well posted on railroad building as we are. Following is the epistle:

Mr. Editor: The Enterprise seems very enthusiastic over the R.R. to Ottervale, as the stock is nearly all sold and the balance will be well watered and the new road will be christened the U.C.& L.C.R.R. The grade stakes will be set as soon as the first train passes over the line. The tickets will be good on all divisions of the drop in and catch on line. The conductor will take up all passes by anyone not holding the same and the lucky person who holds a pass will be entitled to ride on foot or horseback from any place in the whole wide world clear up to Ottervale.”

The railroad to Ottervale wasn’t the only fanciful proposal circulating as winter turned to spring in the Kickapoo Valley in 1902. In the March 14 issue of the Enterprise, the following piece of local news appeared, “This is the time of the year when railroad building takes its usual boom. On of the latest railroad projects is to run an electric line from Union Center to La Farge, taking in the towns of Rockton, Valley, Hillsboro and Dilly. Hillsboro has long been wanting a railroad but the present scheme of running an electric line clear through to here originated with some of the men over at Valley who would also like a road for their town. It is said that all the businessmen in the towns along the line are in favor of it and they claim to be able to raise $100,000 among themselves toward carrying out the project.”

Alas, the electric line through Dilly was never to be (But at least we know where the idea for those postcards that showed a train line running down that little ghost town’s main street came from.), and alack, the line to Ottervale met the same fate. In the April 11, 1902 issue of the Enterprise a brief mention was made of the demise of the phantom line when it was noted that the Ottervale RR was abandoned due to not enough snow. Hot air will do that some times to even the best of ideas.

Although the idea of the mythical Ottervale Railroad had drifted away like the cigar smoke from whence it was hatched, the Kickapoo Railroad made plans to expand in La Farge. By later in April, the real railroad company was building side tracks to facilitate easier loading and shipping from the La Farge mills and stockyard, further positioning the village as a main transportation center in the Valley.

Later in the spring, Ottervale was dealt another blow when the U.S. Postal Department announced that the Ottervale Post Office. (probably housed in the store there) was being discontinued as of June 30. Mail would be hauled out to Otter Creek on a new rural mail route from La Farge after that date. It must have seemed as if the whole world was shrinking away from Ottervale, what with the loss of their post office and mythical train line. But good news arrived that November when Alex Hill, the owner of the La Farge Telephone Company revealed plans to string telephone lines out Otter Creek and up to Salem Ridge. By the following spring, Ottervale was connected to the outside world with the latest telephone communication devices. You win some and you lose some.

The Sad Demise of Sam Hook

SAMUEL S. HOOK

NOVEMBER 7, 1857

MAY 5, 1917

WE KNOW NOT THE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH

(Epitaph from gravestone in Chapel Hill Cemetery)

Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg drew his last breath in the early morning hours of May 5, 1917. His death and the suspected foul play that accompanied it haunt the old river hamlet to this day. Was Sam Hook murdered as robbers looted his store? Who was responsible for such a heinous crime?

The flames shooting out of Sam Hook’s store building in Seelyburg were first discovered around four o’clock on that Saturday morning. An alarm was immediately raised and many neighbors and friends rushed to the conflagration. However, the old store building was a mass of flames and beyond any hope to save from destruction. With Sam nowhere to be found in the little hamlet on La Farge’s north side, everyone feared he had perished in the fire. When the flames had subsided an investigation found the store owner’s body in the southwest corner of the building. He had either crawled or been placed under the floorboards and was near the cistern that he used for cooling items for sale in his store.

Foul play was immediately suspected in Sam Hook’s death as the first people to arrive at the scene of the fire had found the front door wide open. Scattered in the front of the store were pieces of money and bunches of shoestrings. It was well known in the area that Sam kept large amounts of money in the store, often tied into bundles with shoestrings. It was unusually cool on that morning and frost covered the ground. Several rods south of the store building, a person’s shoe tracks were visible in the frosty dew leading off Seelyburg’s Main Street towards the west. A bloodhound was brought up from Viola to track the trail, which led north towards the mill, across the dam to the north side of the Kickapoo River and then east back to the Advent (Star) Cemetery. The trail was lost at the cemetery by the first hound, but later in the day another dog was brought in from Richland Center. That dog followed the trail of the first, but then continued on from the cemetery south across the bridge and to a house nearly across from Sam Hook’s store. A man named Clint Rockwell and others occupied this house; when the bloodhound’s baying ended at that location, many citizens of Seelyburg feared the worst. According to the account of the incident in the La Farge Enterprise (5/10/1917), “This place has for some time been known as a rendezvous for people of none too good of a reputation and suspicion at once fell on Rockwell and frequenters of his home.”

Apparently, Hook had previous trouble with Rockwell and others who hung out at his abode. On the night of the fire, the well-liked storeowner had a dispute with Rockwell, which nearly led to fisticuffs and further indicated foul play was involved with the fire and Sam Hook’s death.

The Vernon County District Attorney and Sheriff came to Seelyburg later in the day on that Saturday of the fire. However, after interviewing many of the neighbors and friends of Sam Hook as well as the occupants of the Rockwell house, the county law enforcement officials could not find enough evidence to warrant any arrests being made. At the local level, the investigation did not cease and new evidence and information was gathered. Using that, the La Farge authorities arrested several occupants of the Rockwell house and took them to Viroqua on the following Monday for a hearing. After that session in the county courthouse, two men and a juvenile girl (all names were listed in the Enterprise article) were retained in the county jail in Viroqua. Sadly for the folks left in Seelyburg, after a few days, all of the suspects were released from the county jail and no charges were ever filed in the case.

After the initial outrage over the lack of any prosecution of those suspected in Sam Hook’s death, fear crept into the village. Doors that had never been locked before were now locked at all times. Nightlong vigils with shotgun in hand were kept at some residences in Seelyburg to protect against a fate such had befallen Sam Hook. Shortly after the release from the county jail, many of those implicated in Sam Hook’s death left the Seelyburg area, but others remained.

But the friends and neighbors of Sam Hook knew that a wrong had not been righted. For years after the death of the last storeowner in Seelyburg, they would attest to the fact that Sam had been murdered. One neighbor said, “He was murdered, plain and simple.” Another resident when questioned about the event decades later, said, “ Of course he was murdered, everyone around here knew that.” But if there was such a foul crime committed, no legal justice was ever carried out as a remedy. Yet, perhaps even today that justice for a terrible wrong is still being sought.

The funeral for Sam Hook was held the day after his death, Sunday, May 6 at the Methodist Episcopal Church in La Farge. Sam’s mother, two brothers, two sisters, friends and family laid him to rest on that day in the Chapel Hill Cemetery, south of where Sam had grown up and lived all of his life. The epitaph, which was quoted at the beginning of the Notebook, can still be seen on his headstone in the last row in the back of the cemetery. We Know Not The Cause Of His Death, indicates the remorse over his sudden loss and the agony of never knowing quite what happened, which was felt by the family over Sam’s death.

Even in the silence of the grave, justice perhaps is still being sought. Each spring when Village of La Farge employees return to the Chapel Hill Cemetery for maintenance, invariably they find Sam’s headstone askew from the winter’s frost. Most of the other grave markers at Chapel Hill survive the winter fairly well, but Sam’s always seems to have been moved, as if drawing attention back to that eerie epitaph, We Know Not The Cause Of His Death. It still seems to cry out for some kind of justice.

However, even today that cry for justice from Sam’s grave would be somewhat muffled. Sam certainly didn’t hear the intruder enter his store that night and he probably couldn’t yell out for help when he was accosted and robbed. Over his lifetime, the circumstances of Sam’s life had rarely hindered his progress, but they might have played against him on that fateful night in May so many years ago. For you see, Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg, was a deaf mute.