At that time there was a small publication at Netawaka whose outspoken editor believed in calling “a spade a spade.” His printed version of the affair, purporting to be based on revealments in the house on entry of the officers, was, to say the least, racily rotten.
Erickson’s body was brought to town and rested for a while in the wareroom of the DeForest store building. The doctors sawed Erickson’s head open, and decided that he had an “abnormal brain.” But evidently they were not satisfied with their findings. Anyhow, it would seem they craved another whack at him, as will be observed later. In making the post-mortem the doctors used a common carpenter’s hand saw. I saw them do it.
Marquardt and his wife were buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Marquardt was a Union soldier. His grave is marked with a slab bearing only his name.
There was no one here to claim Jim Erickson’s body. Neil Erickson, a cousin, lived in that neighborhood—but the crime was too horrible for him to have any part in the disposal of the murderer. Neil Erickson was a respected citizen. Neil later married Peter Pope’s widow. She was the sister of a Wetmore shoemaker named Reuter. Pope gave Reuter a cow for bringing his sister here—as a prospective bride—besides paying the woman’s way from Germany. She took with her into the Erickson home one child — Charley. I do not know if Charley was her son, or Peter Pope’s by his first wife. Likely the former. Pope had a daughter—Louise. She was old enough at her father’s death to make her own way. She worked in Dr. J. W. Graham’s home for several years. Neil Erickson was the father of Dick Erickson. Jim Erickson’s brother George came later, and lived here many years. He was an honorable man.
The town people decided that they did not want a murderer buried in the cemetery, so what was left of Jim Erickson after the doctors had finished with him, was dumped into a packing box, and he was buried on top of a high hill just south of town. This hill, then regarded as “no man’s land,” is now a part of the Bartley farm. It has been locally known ever since as Mount Erickson.
On the night following the planting of Erickson, two groups of doctors, with numerous assistants, started out to recover the body. But, as it turned out, the corpse was left undistributed—at least, for that night. Rumor had it that it did not remain long on the hill-top.
The Wetmore group, led by Dr. W. F. Troughton, was first in the field. Close on their heels came the Netawaka group. Dusk was upon them. One of the Netawaka men rode a white horse. That rider and his companions moved silently across the slough-grass swamp skirting the big hill, steadily gaining on the Wetmore men who had halted at the base of the hill. One of the local hirsute sentinels — they nearly all wore whiskers then—exclaimed, “It’s a ghost!” That was enough. The Wetmore group stampeded. The Netawaka group followed suit. And the cattle which had bedded down for the night at the base of the hill stampeded. The cattle bellowed, and what with terrified men and frightened beasts running this way and that way, pandemonium reigned supreme for quite a spell. Perhaps the cattle, too, had seen Erickson’s ghost.
TURNING BACK THE PAGES
Published in Wetmore Spectator and
Horton Headlight—1936.