What A Forgotten Small-Town Crime Reveals About How History Survives

Transcript

Meet The Book Behind The Robbery

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Ready?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Yep.

unknown 0:02

Okay, Jeffrey.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

This is Lizette again with the Martin County Star. How are you today? Oh, great. Good to hear from you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to discuss that new book that you've got out about a robbery in Sherburne.

unknown 0:17

Right. My new book is called Wheels of Murder, the 1896 bank robbery that shocked a small prairie town.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

That prairie town, of course, is Sherburn.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Right. Well, we were pretty much prairie back then and we still try to c we we consider ourselves prairie here now, yet we try to at least. Are you a prairie woman? Yes, yes. Well I'm kind of a transplant. I was an Air Force brat and then was able to be blessed and settle in Martin County when I was in high school. So left and came back again.

unknown 0:48

Oh excellent. Yeah. I'm living in Northfield, Minnesota, just uh up a little bit, so not too far away. Right. So are you originally a metro person?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

I consider Northfield a suburb, is that correct? Well, people in Northfield wouldn't think we're suburbians.

unknown 1:07

Yeah. I grew up in Burnsville, uh, which is a suburb of Minneapolis. Yeah. I grew up there and then um after college and a few different career moves, I ended up as the uh archivist at St. Elf College for many years.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

So you were you've been deep into history forever.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

That is your thing. Yeah. I uh I often joke with people. My headstones should just say, I'm history. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Oh, but I can just imagine how wonderful that is to experience all those minds and all those thoughts and all those transcripts that that I'm sure the uh the library of of St. Olaf holds.

unknown 1:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

You know, uh an extensive collection. I was also the archivist for the Norwegian American Historical Association, uh-huh, which is actually the largest ethnic manuscript collection in the United States. Um so between the two archives, I was uh always digging in and finding

From Archivist To True Crime Author

SPEAKER_01 2:10

stories, and I um as a writer, I I love telling those forgotten stories, those little tidbits. And that's on my first book. Um I published Murder at Minnesota Point a few years ago. And that all stemmed from just a little clipping I found in the Naha archives that it was from 1894 and just said an unidentified woman was found on the beach in Duluth. Yeah, they thought suspected murder, and that's all it said. And so I thought, well, I'll dig into that. I never thought true crime would become my my genre of writing. But uh Murderman Some Point was very successful, so uh it just sort of lent itself to Wheels of Murder.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Wheels of Murder. Well, reading reading the prologue, I saw that you had started um Wheels of Murder with another book. Uh that there's every s every small town has a story, is that yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Thanks for bringing that up. Well, so after I published uh Murder at Minnesota Point, that was in the summer of 2022, I uh I was sort of, you know, I didn't want to really get typecast in the idea that I was a true crime writer, and I thought it would try something a little different. With all my research, I just thought there's so many little towns that have great stories, uh, oddball stories.

unknown 3:36

And so I started this uh book, Every Every Minnesota Town Has a Story. And I actually wrote about ten chapters.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

You know, some of the chapters were like when Babe Ruth and another fellow Yankee barnstormed through Minnesota in the early 20s, and exactly actually played a game with some farm boys in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

unknown 4:00

He always said the longest home run he ever hit in his career was in Sleepy Eye.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Right up until uh December of 2023, yeah. I'd written ten chapters and I had a stroke. And uh I was fortunate that I was able to attend to uh medical attention right away, and um the the only side effects were that uh for the next nine months I simply was so fatigued and could barely uh use my left hand to type. Um but I I really wanted to get back into writing. I felt like that was such a part of my story that I wanted to continue sharing, but it was chapter eleven that I returned to was about these uh little bank rubbers. And this let me just read you the clipping that led me to write not from a chapter, but write the whole book.

unknown 4:57

You know, so this was this was gonna be my chapter 11, and every town had a story.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It was in the Moore's Tribune October 14th, 1896. And it's brief, it just says another daring bank robbery and cold-blooded murder has occurred in the state, which is only equaled by the James and Younger Gang's raid on Northfield's bank on September 7, 1876. Two men entered the bank at Sherburne last Wednesday, shot assistant cashier Thorburn, and O.J. Austin, the collector for the Walter A Wood Harvester Company, looted the bank and made good their escape on bicycles. Now, when I read bicycles, I thought, there's the story you hurt me. Uh the country is being thoroughly searched, and if caught, they will be lynched. Um I was really intrigued by that clip, particularly the bicycle uh angle. Uh, as it turns out with research, it was indeed the very first bank robbery ever committed in United, well, in the world, more or less, where the bandits fled on their bicycles. And now get this list. As soon as they robbed the bank and we're fleeing, and everyone's, you know, ringing the bells, and there's all these alarms going off.

unknown 6:13

A young man, uh a tinsmith named George Walker, jumped on his bicycle with a revolver

A Newspaper Clipping Sparks A Story

unknown 6:20

and pursued these two young bandits. And uh so that's the first time in the history of the world that a posse was made up of a guy on a bicycle as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yes, I caught that. I definitely caught that. I also caught that you really went into depths about who they were and what may have directed a little bit of of their personality to want to be Big Bad Bicaryl Roberts.

unknown 6:48

I don't want to give them away, but wow. No, you don't want to give the story away, but I mean this event it it was true.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Um I I tried to write a uh a creative nonfiction piece, although there are points there where I, you know, manufacture dialogue or scenes to move the plot along. But it is pretty accurate. And when they tell people my little elevator pitch about this book, I mean the reality is you have two brothers, uh Lou, Lou Callahan, he's 20, just already turned 21, and his younger brother who just turned 18, Hans, and they were from Rock Rapids, Iowa, Lyon County, just kind of way up there in the corner. And they had never really been in trouble. Hans had been kind of mischievous, but you know, they were just pretty good kids overall.

unknown 7:40

But they conceived this idea that they robbed banks and then got enough money, they could live the easy life in Europe.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Until, you know, the Sherburn bank robbery actually wasn't the first one they attempted to rob, but I just I couldn't imagine that these two young boys were I mean, they were really boys and just riding their bicycle, and then after they commit this heinous bank robbery, you have to picture this, you know, it's it's early October, uh, they're riding through the prairies, and you've got a posse of over 500 men on horseback and in carriages chasing these boys down, and uh the two boys split up on their bicycles and go their separate ways, and so my book kind of tracks each angle of what each boy was doing.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

But um Yeah, and you know, I I don't want to give too much too much of it away, but that that to me, you know, um knowing knowing the community, knowing what that expanse of territory looks like, bringing in 500 force back riders, I mean they had to have been bringing in people. Well, I did read that you had people coming in from Elmore. And I was and and in Sherman to Elmore is not a short trip. That's what about twenty, twenty-five miles?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Right, and so well you're right.

unknown 9:06

And well, you know, shortly after the bank robbery, um the Mark County Sheriff issued um telegrams to every every locale within 50 miles. You know, look out for these bandits. Uh, you know, they're they're wearing backs that were wearing cycling outfits, uh, you know, black stocking, short pants, uh uh black shirts. Uh and so, you know, they're probably gonna be easily noticed.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Um, interestingly, in Jackson, Minnesota, just down the road there, uh the telegraph operator failed to uh deliver the telegram into town. The telegraph station was about a mile out of Jackson at that point. And so the bandits were able to slip by Jackson, Minnesota simply because the telegraph operator had delivered the news.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Right, right, right. Um again, not to give up give up too much because there are a lot of pages with a lot of detailed information. The one thing that caught me was um talking about going into Okabina or to Heron Lake. They which again is another 45 minutes on the other direction. You know, Sherburn is in the middle, and El El Morris 25 miles to the to the east, and and here in Lake Okabina is 45 minutes to the west, and that's driving. That is not on horseback. That's gonna be a full day's ride, at least on horseback, if and and the same on bicycles, bicycles

Stroke Recovery And Returning To Writing

SPEAKER_02 10:35

can't go any faster than horse.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, you know, it's not exactly they had paved trails or anything, so right.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

You know that comment about Oka Vina, though, is that somebody had told somebody to go to hell, and they were put in jail for ten days. So your com your comment about Okabina was that they were not very welcoming.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I'm glad you're glad you caught that. Yeah, but just to be clear with listeners that you know my wife you can ask, well, her idea of a bicycle from the 1890s would have been the big high one-wheelers. But but in reality, by 1885 or so, uh the safety bicycles, so that we know, you know, two standard wheels with a a frame. And um that was sort of the bicycle that these boys were riding. But imagine they were pedaling forty, fifty miles a day while the pursuit went on.

unknown 11:35

Um the posse chased them for uh almost a week, if not a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

So made such national news. Um, it was all over the papers, I suppose, because of the peculiarity of the crime. But even papers in Australia, New Zealand, London were were picking up the the story.

unknown 11:57

So it was all over the world about Sherburne and and these two young bandits.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Right? And it's give me give me the visual of the bikes. I mean, they weren't like mountain bikes, they didn't have extra extra spokes from when they got banned. I I can't even imagine being able to do that. That is just wild.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

He was in um Algona. They stayed overnight, and this is true. He had gone into a barber shop. Now imagine, you know, these boys are they're riding, pedaling, and they're they're not bathing, they're not shaving, and so they look pretty rough.

unknown 12:38

But he'd go to a barber shop to get shaved. And the barber did mention that uh thought this young man was rather peculiar, and when he was, you know, putting on the what would you call that, you know, the coverings when they were going to shave you. He noticed the guns sticking out of loose

The Callahan Brothers And The Plan

unknown 12:55

uh side tabs. So um, but back then, you know, newspapers only came out once a week. And so the news of the bank robbery may have been in the big dailies, but in these small towns around northern Iowa, southern Minnesota, people were unaware of what uh had occurred, uh what the bandits looked like.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

So they were able to sort of skirt around the law and the posse by just sort of melding into the community.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Right, right. Oh wow, Algonha, that's now you got me going south. So now we're another 40 miles west and east, excuse me, east of South.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Right. That is amazing. Yeah, the pursuit was over 150 miles. So and of course, you know, there's there's more bloodshed as the pursuit goes on. So uh to me it was such a fascinating tale because here in Northfield, well, we celebrate every September the defeat of the Jesse James Younger game when they tried to rob the bank. And that was, of course, the most notorious bank robbery in American history up to that point. But this robbery, this is this without doubt, the second, a most notorious robbery after the James Younger attempt. Um and I thought no one really remembers it. And then I was corrected. I was up in uh Sox Center, Minnesota, kind of central Minnesota, about a year or two ago, and was in a coffee shop, and an elderly woman stepped over to say hello to one of my friends, and we were introduced, and she told me that she was she was raised in northern Iowa. And I said, Oh, I'm working on a book about uh some young bandits who robbed a bank, and you know, they were in your area, and she right away said, You don't mean the Callahan brothers.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

You know, I think in the some locales they haven't forgotten, they still remember.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Um Yeah, I I'm surprised I had never heard of it. I really hadn't, but um, I was I was discussing with my associate who lives in Shervurne, and she said that um she's sure that there is still a newspaper flipping up at the bank, so I will have to sink down there and and get a cut a picture of that.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Sure. Now the original bank where this occurred was of course the the bank of Sherverne, which was F 103 North Main Street. Um it had been a single-level building at the time, but over the years there was an additional uh second level built. Um I think now the owner uses it for storage, but you know, listeners should go down there. Um here in Northfield, we're spending over two million dollars right now

A Bicycle Chase Across The Prairie

SPEAKER_01 15:45

renovating our historic bank building that the James Younger gang tried to rob. But if you go into Sherburn, you would never think, driven by this building a hundred times probably, but you would never think in that building, in this location, one of the most heinous, cold-blooded bank robberies ever to occur in the Midwest.

unknown 16:06

Wow, that is the Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Okay, well we'll make sure that that the uh economic development of Sherburne is more than aware of that.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

That's exciting. I think it's been kind of a lost history on the town. Hopefully, I can bring it back. I'm gonna be doing uh author's talk on of all things on October 7th on the anniversary date of the robbery down at the Martin Cohn Historical Society in the evening. So listeners should mark their calendars because uh that'll be a fun evening to sort of recollect all of what had happened.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

That that would be. Um I'd like to back up again and and go to your conversation about your previous books about small uh every s every story has a has every small town has a story. Are you going to be adding more or do you think you're gonna get distracted with another side uh a side boundary?

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah, you're you're way ahead of me on this. So, you know, when I submitted my manuscript for Wheels of Murder, that was last October.

unknown 17:11

And it really takes, at least with my publisher, about nine months or so to go through all the you know proofing editing steps and design.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

And uh I had thought about going back and just pursuing every town as a story, but I just wasn't sold on it.

unknown 17:29

And so I I ended up starting writing a a new uh completely uh it's a fiction book with uh uh sort of crime embedded in it.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Um it sort of gives me an opportunity to uh be uh most expressive as a writer that I can be the flexibility of telling the story.

unknown 17:48

So that one's called Last Breath of the North Shore. So that'll probably be out in a year or so.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

But uh maybe I'll go back to every town. I I always find interesting stories. Um, you know, uh there was uh over by Mankato in 1885. Neighbors were accusing neighbors of being witches and warlocks, and uh it got kind of out of hand.

unknown 18:16

People were being charged, literally charged in court with being witches. That was in Mankato.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Mankado, just the outrado in the little townships, and you know, some of the curses these witches supposedly doing making their cow their neighbors' cows not produce milk.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

And you know, if that happens, it's yes, yes, I apologize for that.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

I counted on you, but you know, we got the judges when you know it's a together. Um back to uh small towns, yeah. Well, see I I I I've been intrigued by that. So we did a uh a podcast on the Joanne Bonchess murders.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Okay, I'm not familiar with that.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

So that was in 1975, uh murder that happened between Sherman and TriMont on Highway 4. Oh, okay. And uh we found a body forty 45, 48 hours later. And so everybody around here, uh I mean, I I know that's why the Gallian thing just disappeared, because everybody in my generation is stuck on this one that's never been solved. Like you said, every time you turn around, somebody was talking about this happening here or that happening there, and it's just right, and and you and you think that you know you're this small because we're all neighbors, ha ha hee hee hello, that everybody's gonna but yeah, I mean Mr. Hands, he decided he wanted to take that bike out and go for a spin.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Well, you know, you hit it on the head about community memory. Um our memory as humans, it's fallible anyways. But when you have a collective and a community that have their own memories and perceptions of how things happen, and and they'll sometimes pass it on. For instance, uh when I was in Soxon there, I was talking to my friend's father, who was uh well, he just turned 100 last week.

unknown 20:18

And um and Ray Ray was telling me about how in the 30s, when he was a young boy, a police

Community Memory And A Lost Landmark

unknown 20:25

officer was found dead in the police station. And uh, and then Ray said, I think he was framed or something, or you know, someone murdered him, and the city said it was suicide.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Here, you know, they're still talking about this case a little bit, and it's been well since the mid-30s. But sooner or later, people like Ray aren't gonna be around and no one's gonna remember the story. Well, I think Wheels and Murder will bring back for a lot of people. Maybe they've heard that, you know, oh, I heard that happened in Sherburn, or I heard that happened here. But uh, you know, this will be an opportunity to I think the book is it's certainly engaging and informative. I'm uh if anything, I'm a good researcher.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Oh, absolutely. Informative and engaging. Uh from you know, uh from the my time enjoying it, it'd be a it was definitely a page turn. I'm gonna go back and read some more after we get off this conversation. Take it with me on my North Shore trip. Yeah, there where are you going? We're gonna go we're gonna go up to uh Schroeder on some of the sweet.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Oh, okay, yeah, so that's I I always like to vacation up there. Uh you know, they've got their own stories. In fact, this book I mentioned, the last birth on the north shore, is set in Grand Moray. But uh yeah, so I'm drawing upon crimes that took place up there, but uh you just stay out of trouble.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

But well, right, right, right. Yeah, I'm just gonna be putting my toes in that water looking for agates. Nothing's gonna get me in any trouble. But yeah, but then back to Grand Mray, uh, is it I are I read that that there's a uh they're trying to say give sainthood to a priest from uh from up by that direction right now. Yeah, I'm sure Father Baraga. It wasn't Baraga, it was another one. I was so surprised because I I have seen Baraga's uh uh Baraga's cross, and it wasn't Baraga, it was somebody else, so that really surprised me. I'm gonna have to re-look at that.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, it is Baraga's cross, and and uh if you're ever interested, there was a Norwegian writer that came to uh Lutsen Schroeder area and he spent the summer and he wrote a trilogy of crime murder stories set in that area and the bodies found in Father Baraga's Cross.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

I can't remember the Norwegian writer, but they were very popular books history murdered crimes, yeah. That girl's up there right now. Take the first her birthday present. Yeah, ask around. Uh I'll email that to you. But was there anything else that's uh uh I wanted to ask with your history at St.

unknown 23:12

Olaf?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

And again, maybe I can call you back in in a few weeks and ask you some more. Uh but um with your experience at St. Olaf, did was there anything that just jumped out of you? And what was the oldest book that you ever the oldest manuscript that you've ever touched that you ever built?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Good question. Well, so I worked at St. Olaf for 20 years and uh had a lot of opportunities to delve into things.

unknown 23:38

Um The oldest document was a Norwegian uh like land deed, and

Odd Finds In The Archives

unknown 23:45

that was dated uh I think right around 1600. Uh so that was kind of fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Uh there was a professor that collected Roman coins from uh the birth of Jesus era, so a few thousand years old. So we had a collection of Roman coins, but I think the most fascinating thing that jumped out at me, and this may sound morbid, but you know, back in the turn of the century when someone would die, uh family members would clip locks of their hair and sometimes mail them to other family members or like dear Uncle John. So-and-so passed away. Here's a lock of her hair. And uh, I was going through a collection and this one alum of the college around early 1900s. I've collected all these locks.

unknown 24:39

You know, it was kind of strange, but it was an interesting collection because you normally don't see that.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Sometimes you go to antique shops, you'll see what they call like hair wreaths, where they make a wreath out of human hair out of people who passed away, or but um yeah, that was kind of a unique piece.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

It sounds like it. Wow. Wow, interesting, and what what what an opportunity to touch so much of the world and and uh bring this new story to life. So thank you.

unknown 25:11

Yeah, I'm excited to share it. Uh I think uh if anyone has an opportunity to come to one of my talks in the area, you'll be uh disappointed.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

I uh I think this story is it it will peddle along through history on its own, of course.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

And again, what day is it released? The book is released?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Uh it's released on August 18th.

unknown 25:35

It's on all major uh book platforms and uh sellers. Uh

Release Date And Local Author Talk

unknown 25:40

I believe. Once it's released, maybe you can go to, of course, your local bookstores or vendors and probably did it uh locally if you'd like. Um I'll probably drop off copies at the Martin County Historical Society in the coming weeks. So uh this should be available. And then your your uh reading your time to read at the Martin County Historical Society, your presentation of your book you said is October what? October 7th, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

So in the evening. In the evening. Well, I am super excited by this conversation. I w uh again I'm gonna look forward to finishing the book. I didn't quite because it is it.

unknown 26:20

I want to re-re-read quite a bit of it. It is an interesting story to tell. When I see you, we'll have to get you a copy and I'll often scribe it because you've been delightful and just helping me tell the story, and I appreciate that. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Jeffrey.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Again, Jeffrey Silvey, and the book is Wheels of Murder, and it's about Shervon, Minnesota. We look forward to it, and the Callahan brothers. Thank you. You have a great week, and uh I'll uh said we'll probably go to post sometime yet this week. I'll let you know exactly what day, and uh Martin County Star it will go on our Facebook page with the exact time and stuff okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

But be safe up north and don't get caught in any rip tides.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Oh, we're not gonna go on the water, but my girl said she saw bears the other day, so uh believe you safe. Yes, sir, you as well.