I acknowledge this is probably not the best pre-Thanksgiving topic, but it just happens to be what I’m working on today and the stories behind these events are fascinating.
After posting the Morrison County Murders Index a while ago, one of our long-time friends wrote in to tell me that I had missed the Albert Bulow case. How could I possibly have forgotten the only legal hanging in Morrison County? Well, because the incident is filed in its own box under “Hanging, Albert Bulow,” which is not next to the Murders Box. (Yes, sometimes our memories are only jogged by the placement of boxes in our archive.) Also, while I knew that Bulow was the only person legally hanged in Morrison County, I did not know that his crime was murder.
Notice that I said that “Bulow was the only person legally hanged in Morrison County.” The operative word there is legally. There was an illegal hanging – a lynching – of three men in Morrison County in 1857 after they had killed a German pack peddler by the name of Fritz. These men, Charles Gigabish, Jo Shambo, and a man named James, were being taken by Sheriff Jonathon Pugh to St. Paul for prosecution when a group of local men overtook them, captured them and took them to a tree near what is now the Little Falls Golf Course and hanged them. The fact that the three men were of Ojibwe descent played a major role in the lynching.
It was a shameful moment in Morrison County history and I wasn’t sure how to add it to the Murders Index because the three suspects never had a chance to be prosecuted, so there was no legal outcome to the case. After being reminded of Albert Bulow, I decided to add it and explain the circumstances in the notes. History isn’t always as tidy as we’d like it to be, but it’s critical to acknowledge and discuss the unsavory moments in our history, not just the positive stuff.
One of the interesting things about Albert Bulow’s case is that he had a photo taken while in jail and he wrote a poem/song about his plight on the walls of his jail cell. Below are images of both.
If you can’t read the text (I sure can’t!), click on the image (right click) and open it in a new window. You might be able to double click the image and it’ll automatically open in a new window. From there, you should be able to zoom in to read everything.