Henry began his education in the public school of Northfield; took the preparatory course of study in Carleton College; graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan in 1877, and from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1880. He was still a student, at home on a summer vacation, when the robbers made their appearance in Northfield. At the time when they were approaching the bank for the attack, he was sitting as the reader will remember, in front of the drug-store of Wheeler & Blackman, of which his father was one of the proprietors. Regarding the movements of the strangers as suspicious, he followed and watched them, and had already shouted an alarm when he was driven from the street at the point of a pistol. How promptly he secured a weapon, and with what deadly execution he used it, has been duly related. Had the gun been better and the ammunition more [pg 91] abundant, he would no doubt have given still more emphatic proof that a doctor may upon occasion make himself more useful in giving wounds than in healing them. One, at least, of those he gave that day was so far unprofessional as to leave no chance for the surgeon's services.
Dr. Wheeler settled in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1881, and still remains there in a large and successful practice.
JAMES GLISPIN was of Irish descent, but was born on American soil. He was a man of slight physical proportions, about five feet, six inches in height, but possessing great strength, quickness and endurance, as well as unlimited courage. He had a magnetic influence over men, and was noted both for the skill with which he was able to quell the unruly and the prowess with which when necessary he could overcome larger men than himself in a trial of strength. After a brief business career, he was elected Sheriff of Watonwan County. He proved one of the most popular officers in the state, and was serving his second term at the time of the robber-raid. The promptness with which he started after the bandits on the day of the capture, and the important part taken by him in the capture itself has been related. It was to his care [pg 92] also that they were committed after the capture, and upon him rested the responsibility of holding them until they could be turned over to the authorities of the county in which their crimes had been committed.
Mr. Glispin left Madelia in 1880, and went to California, where he engaged in mercantile business. In 1883 he removed to Spokane, Washington, where his fitness for official life was soon recognized. He was elected Sheriff for a two-years term, and was re-elected for two years more. At the close of his second term he went into the real-estate business, in which he continued until his death in 1890.
WILLIAM W. MURPHY was born in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, July 27th, 1837. On leaving school in 1854, he went to California, seeking his fortune in the gold-mines. Here he remained till 1861, when he returned to his native state, and took up his residence in Pittsburg. When the call came for volunteers for the Union army, he assisted in raising Company G, of the 14th Pennsylvania Regiment, and entered the service as 2nd Lieutenant of that company. He was promoted to a first lieutenancy, on his merit as an officer; was brevetted Captain by the Secretary [pg 93] of War for gallantry on the field of battle at Piedmont, Va., and was appointed as Captain of Company D in the same regiment, the first vacancy occurring after the brevet.
During the first two years of the war he served in West Virginia, one year under Gen. Sheridan. After Lee's surrender, Capt. Murphy's regiment was ordered to Texas, overland; but when they had reached Leavenworth, Kansas, they received news of the surrender of all the rebel forces in Texas, and the regiment was mustered out at Leavenworth. He received a gunshot wound in the elbow at Lexington, and a sabre wound in the head and another in the arm in a cavalry charge at Piedmont.
In 1866 Capt. Murphy married and settled in Madelia, Minnesota, where he engaged in farming and stock-raising. He has ever been a highly respected and influential citizen, and in 1871 was elected to the Legislature, where he served with credit. He is a man of marked intelligence, especially upon agricultural subjects and is possessed of great coolness and daring. When he came upon the field at the Watonwan, where the robbers were to be routed out of their hiding-place, his assumption of command was accepted as quite a matter of course.
THOMAS LENT VOUGHT was descended on his father's side from one of the old colonial Dutch families of New York, and on the side of his mother from the early pioneers of Orange County. He was born in Walcott, Wayne County, April 29th, 1833. His boyhood was chiefly spent on his father's farm on the shore of Lake Ontario, He lost his mother by death when he was seven years old, and his father at seventeen. In the year preceding the father's death the family had emigrated to Rock county, Wisconsin. At nineteen years of age Thomas went to La Crosse, where he was employed first as a lumberman and afterwards in a hotel, and where, in 1827, he was married to Miss Hester Green. Two years later the young people settled on a farm at Bryce Prairie, where they remained until the opening of the War of the Rebellion. Mr. Vought then enlisted in the 14th Wisconsin Regiment, in which he served throughout the War.
In 1866 he removed with his family to Madelia, Minnesota, then so far on the frontier that their house was the first one in Watonwan County to be painted and plastered. For the next five years Mr. Vought operated a line of mail and passenger stages. When the building of the railroad rendered the stage obsolete, he purchased the [pg 95] Flanders Hotel, destined to become famous in connection with the two visits—one voluntary and the other involuntary—of the bank robbers in 1876, as already stated. Since that time, Col. Vought has resided at different times in New York, Dakota and Wisconsin, as health and other interests dictated, and has been now a farmer, now a merchant, now a landlord. His present residence is La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Mrs. Vought died on Nov. 17th, 1894. They have had seven children, of whom four are still living.
BENJAMIN M. RICE was the son of Hon. W. D. Rice, a distinguished citizen of St. James, Minnesota. He was born in Green County, Alabama, February 8th, 1851. In the following year his father removed to Arkansas. Benjamin was educated at the Christian Brothers College in St. Louis. In 1869 the family came to Minnesota, and in 1870 they settled in St. James. The town was not then surveyed. In 1873 he was appointed as engrossing clerk in the state legislature, in which his father repeatedly served as a member.