The morning of the third day, they woke up and saw the storm had blown itself out. They wasted no time; all piled out the door and climbed single-file up the path through drifts five and six feet high and broke into the chapel and found him under the pulpit, wrapped in a drape he had torn off the wall, half-frozen, wide-awake, and he told them about the bear. When they didn’t believe him, he showed them his pants.
On December 10, the question of foreign immigration was debated by members of the Phileopolis club, the affirmative team winning 12-7, nineteen students being all who remained, the others having left. The bear in the chapel had frightened everybody, and then the bear didn’t go away even after they set off rockets and blew a bugle and banged on a drum. Its tracks were found outside Dr. Watt’s house, then on the lawn by Main, then in a circle around Emerson, and then students began to withdraw from the College, one by one, two by two, hauling their trunks to the road to hail a ride to Little Falls and the daily coach to St. Paul. Even Dr. Watt could not stop them. After the first visitation, after paths had been shoveled and the supply of firewood replenished, Dr. Watt spoke at morning chapel a marathon sermon that left his congregation as weak as if they had spent the time struggling through snowdrifts. “His opening prayer consumed twenty-six minutes,” Mr. Reithman noted, “and touched on many points of Old Testament history.”
Though they didn’t know it, it was a desperate Henry who faced them. His wife had announced at the height of the storm her intention to return to Boston. She had announced this several times before and in better weather, and now she announced it finally and asked him for five hundred dollars. She had suffered, she said, from his neglect. He was silent around her; he sat reading Bible commentaries and writing his sermons and staring into the fire. Outside their home, she said, he was voluble and manly and kept a cheerful disposition, but once in the door, he collapsed into a dark and impenetrable mood, and whenever she spoke, he didn’t respond. He did not respond to her affections, he did not appear to recognize her. “How can you be so generous with others, even utter strangers, and here in your house with your own wife be so cold, so removed?” she wondered. “Your better nature you show to the world, and your dark nature you show to me and to me alone! All I see is darkness and brooding and silence. Have you no love left for me?” She stood over him as she spoke, and he couldn’t look at her. He said nothing. She wept, she knelt and touched his knee, then her voice turned quiet and resolute and she demanded the money—all this without a word from Henry.
Dr. Watt’s sermon began with Christ’s suffering on the cross, and it proceeded to other suffering of those faithful to Him, of Stephen and other apostles and martyrs, and it went back to the prophets and their foreknowledge of that suffering, and to the Psalmist and the Children of Israel and to Job, and here Dr. Watt himself was exhausted but he beat on and began to talk about the bear as a messenger of God. God uses animals to work His Will, sometimes happily as with the dove of Noah and the birds who fed Elijah and the lions who proved Daniel’s faith and the swine who received the demons cast out, but also as instruments of judgment as in the case of the bear who came out of the woods to devour the children who mocked God’s servant Elisha for his baldness. As he delved into Elisha’s career, it became terribly evident to all that the President, now freed from his text and moving away from the pulpit and into the aisle and bracing himself with one hand against pew after pew and speaking thunderously, considered himself to be Elisha and was searching the chapel for those children who had mocked him in their hearts, to whom God had sent the bear as punishment. He couldn’t stop himself. He recited his many efforts in their behalf, his dedication, his hard work, and their offenses, their indolence, their unworthiness. “Why?” he shouted. “Why? Why has thou forsaken me?” Nobody made an attempt to stop him. Everyone in the room was making his own plan for escape.
Five boys left immediately after chapel with the father of one of them, who had come in a wagon with clean laundry. Dr. Watt didn’t come out to say good-bye.
That afternoon, fresh tracks were found by two students returning from cutting wood, and a band of five led by Mr. Reithman with a rifle marched off to find the beast’s den and to kill it. The bear was large and black, judging from the footprints and the tufts of hair found in bushes, and their long trek only determined that he had been circling the College, approaching as near as a hundred feet to Carlyle and Emerson, and that he had been joined by a second bear and perhaps a third. That night, a guard was posted in the belfry. “A sleepless night for all,” wrote Mr. Reithman, “due in some part to choruses of ursine snorts and growls which the wakeful addressed to those who slept, some of whom awoke to find tufts of bear fur on their pillows.”
Mrs. Watt left on the 13th to spend Christmas with friends in St. Paul, four boys leaving with her. Dr. Watt explained to Mr. Reithman that she was nervous and preoccupied due to lack of feminine company, and he was sending her away lest she lose her senses. Mrs. Watt handed Mr. Reithman a note as he helped her into the sleigh. The note begged him to pray for her and to put food out for the bear. Instead, a trap baited with jelly and syrup was rigged close to the fresher circumference of tracks. It was found licked clean but unsprung on the morning of the 14th. A nearby tree showed deep claw marks to the height of ten feet.
On the 15th, Dr. Watt announced in chapel that Christmas vacation would be spent at the College in academic pursuits. Six boys left on foot in the afternoon, leaving baggage behind and a student body of four souls: Borden, Smith, Godfrey, and Weiss. The four “are in a desperate state, afraid to disobey, afraid to remain,” wrote Mr. Reithman in his journal. “They enrolled here expecting much and are reluctant to abandon ship, though I have argued with them. I believe they trust me too much and think that matters will improve so long as I remain. God help me. I must go and take them with me. Our President is crazed.”
He told Dr. Watt that the College must be closed. Dr. Watt replied that he would sooner kill himself. “It is no time to be giving in to fear,” he cried. “This institution is the only one! It stands alone, friendless, far from any sympathetic soul! If we retreat now, sir, we permit ignorance to stand unchallenged for years to come!”
On the afternoon of the 18th, shots were heard from the woods and shouts—a Mr. Slocum from town ran out from the trees and yelled to the lookout, “I have killed him!” They followed him back the way he had come and found the bear humped in a pile as if he had tried to gather himself for one last leap. His blood lay steaming on the snow, bright red, a great burst of it.
Mr. Slocum took the skin for himself and four big steaks. He hacked off the head and said he would come back for it. Four boys and Mr. Reithman put the rest of the meat on a sled and hauled it to Main, and that night they ate a good part of it themselves—Dr. Watt said he had no stomach for bear—roasting it over an open fire, a feast that got livelier as it lasted on into the night. They ate with their fingers half-cooked bear meat and sang song after song, and piled more wood on the fire, until the flames nearly reached the treetops. They piled every stick of wood they could find on the fire and went off for more, and evidently that was when the second bear attacked.
Two boys, Emmett Borden and Alton Smith, had found a fallen birch and were carrying it back toward the bonfire when they heard crashing behind them and dropped their load and ran. The bear pursued and caught them just short of the fire, where a third boy, Miles Godfrey, watched in horror. Emmett was bit in the throat and perished on the spot. Alton, a brilliant student who later embarked on a distinguished career in public life, suffered gashes on the chest and shoulders from the animal’s trying to drag him away, and bore scars to the day of his death in 1908. Miles Godfrey was thrown to the ground and his foot nearly chewed to the bone, but recovered, and eventually made his fortune in the grain trade in Minneapolis and Chicago. Mr. Reithman hurled chunks of ice at the beast and drove it away. Mr. Weiss was not present, having gone to bed. Mr. Reithman obtained a new position at Carleton College in Northfiel
d and taught there for fifteen more years until his untimely death in a boating accident. Mr. Weiss remained at Albion College until the spring, his mind unhinged, and had to be removed to the state asylum at St. Peter, where he lived until his decease, the date of which is not known.
The winter of the bears ushered in the Panic of 1857, when Minnesota Life Insurance & Trust Company gravely and gracefully crashed and banks in St. Paul stopped dealing in legal tender; when the investors of the New Albion Land Company opened the treasurer’s strongbox and found dried grass, some gravel, and a few feathers; and when every piece of paper held by New Albion speculators became a piece of paper. Deflation was followed by a plague of dysentery. The grasshoppers came in August, from the west, a black funnel cloud of them on the 7th, the sky turning black with bugs on the 12th. Those who had scorned speculation in favor of honest labor now found their crops destroyed by the infestation.
That August, the poet Putnam wrote:
Were I a bird, a wingèd bird,
And sped the airy regions through,
I would fly to the east where comes the light,
Land of the Pilgrims’ godly might,
Land of the good and true,
Far from this prairie vast and dry
Where clouds of locusts from on high
Blacken the dreary land and sky.
No song we hear, no sun we see
For clamor of insect gluttony—
Blasting our crops and fields beneath
The whining onslaught of their teeth,
Blasting our hopes and pleasures, too,
This darkest hour of the night.
O had I wings on which to flee,
I’d bid the wretched west Adieu,
Fly Bostonward—O blessed sight!
Were I a wingèd bird.
He and Madame Juliet were among the escapees, many of whom went to California, to a town named Albion City in the mountains east of Sacramento, where there was said to be quite a lot of gold remaining in certain abandoned sites that a brother of Mr. Halliwell knew about. The Putnams went south to St. Louis, where she had friends in the theater.
About half of the residents had left New Albion by 1858, the year that Minnesota achieved statehood, including Dr. Watt. His last act as President was a letter to a Mr. Waters who had applied to him for a teaching job.
New Albion, Minn.
Jan. 18, 1858
Mr. W.H. Waters
St. Paul, Minn.
Dear Sir: Your favor of 2nd ints. was duly received, requesting information concerning your obtaining a position with New Albion College as an instructor of moral theology. It was good of you to recall so pleasantly our lecture on “American Poets” of ten years ago at the Philolectian Club in your city, of which we are pleased to have a fair copy and send to you with warmest recollections of that evening.
We are only sorry to report that the College has suspended classes after some skulduggery hereabouts by wild bears struck terror into our ranks and emasculated our numbers, hence we are unable to offer employment. Of course, we intend to persevere and triumph over the present trouble, to which end we depart Wednesday next for Boston where we hope to secure support, both financial and moral, of a nature and amount more generous than could be found in this sparsely populated county, and when we return, we trust that we will have better news for you. With best wishes for success and prosperity.
Very truly yours,
Henry Francis Watt, Ph.D.
Evidently, Dr. Watt did make the trip to Boston, because it was there that he died in April, of a seizure, in a hotel room, following a dinner with prospective backers. When he failed to return to New Albion, the trustees of the College voted to suspend operations until the fall, and in the fall, when no students appeared (they had heard the College had closed), the College closed for good, and the property was put up for sale; a few years later, after a fire destroyed the Main building, the land was bought by a Mr. Moore who built a barn on the old foundations and used the remaining structures for storage. The great bell had fallen in the fire and Mr. Moore was able to raise it just enough to turn it upside down to where it could be used to water livestock.
“The year 1857 will be remembered as the year when all false hope was lost,” wrote Mr. Getchell sadly to his brother in Maine. “So much is gone that once we could not live without, and yet we do live somehow and even sometimes think hopefully of tomorrow.”
The railroad took its sweet time arriving. The Northern Pacific reached St. Cloud and continued north along the Mississippi to Little Falls, and the Great Northern swung west through St. Joseph, Avon, Albany, and Freeport, while the Soo Line ran northeast from Albany to just south of Little Falls, the three lines making a triangle and each missing the town by miles. Bribes were paid to railroad officials, of course, but other towns paid bigger ones. The handsome depot built to lure the lines sat empty and its platform opened onto a field of alfalfa where a tiny sign on a pole stood, which said “W.” The town board sent monthly petitions to St. Paul, and a delegation attended every grand opening of new track for miles around, of which there were many. Each of the major railroads had a ceremonial train known as a “jacker” with a flatcar for a band, two or three coaches for the guests, and a palatial parlor car to haul the dignitaries, and when the line reached a town or a spot where the railroad intended to promote a town, the special train was run out for the day for speeches, music, and the driving of a special spike, usually brass. The Albion delegation lobbied hard at these occasions, carrying a satin banner emblazoned “New Albion—Gateway To Central Minnesota,” not knowing that the dignitaries on hand were men of great dignity but little influence who had time on their hands and enjoyed sitting on platforms for a small per diem.
Years later, Jonson Ingqvist visited the abandoned Great Northern building on Market Street in St. Paul, looking for a good used desk, and found in a pile of rubbish on the fourth floor a file marked “Albion” containing letters from the town promoting itself as a rail center. The file was marked: “Error—no such appears on map—must mean Albany.” Albany, to the south of New Albion, was on the main G.N. line.
The ultimate connection of the town, in 1885, with the so-called “Lake Wobegon spur,” was a mistake on the railroad’s part, a siding that took a sharp angle due to misplaced surveyors’ stakes and that kept going for sixteen miles in an attempt to find its way back to the main line. When the track crew reached New Albion, which was not on their map and which at any rate was now called Lake Wobegon, they simply stopped and returned to St. Cloud by horse-drawn wagon, leaving the track where it is today, a quarter-mile south of town, ending in thick brush by the depot. (The depot was moved south on skids to reach the end of the line.) A district superintendent was fired for his negligence; the spur appears on G.N. maps as a dotted line marked “See Code,” but there is no code. The company nonetheless began regular shipping over the spur that year, which continued until 1965. Passenger service was always by petition, fifty names being required due to the inconvenience of the stop (trains have to back in the full distance), and so was mostly limited to great occasions such as the Norwegian Tricentennial, the inauguration of Governor Burnquist, and Dan Patch’s running at the State Fair.
In 1922, the westbound Empire Builder entered the spur by mistake on June 4, shortly before midnight, and raced toward Lake Wobegon carrying 432 passengers, including Rita Melitta, The Cream of Wheat Quartet, The Laughing Waters Orchestra, and Douglas Byron Rochester, author of The Boy Brigade series. The great train swept on toward its doom, its bar car blazing with light as the merrymakers danced in the aisle, until, a quarter-mile short of sure death, their lives were saved by a Holstein belonging to a farmer named Brown, which strolled onto the tracks. The engineer applied his brakes too late to save the cow but just in time to stop the train at the station, where he noticed, a few yards ahead, the two rails end. The passengers disembarked for a few minutes while a trainman ran to find out where they were. No lights appeared in town,
everyone had turned in. “Who would want to live in a burg as dead as this?” remarked Rita Melitta, not knowing that Mr. Lundberg the undertaker had nearly received her business that night.
A few months later, the train carrying the Sorbasol All-Star barnstorming team backed into town, carrying Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Long George Kelly, and Wild Man Ringsak, and departed in the evening on the long end of a 17-5 score.
The first primary school in Mist County (aside from the singing school run by Madame Putnam) was taught by Miss Emily Chase (later Mrs. Getchell) the winter of 1853-54, a private school kept in a boarding house run by a Mr. Charles Church which later was discovered to be a tavern. The next winter there was no school, and in the summer of 1855 Mr. Bayfield’s empty house was pressed into service, twenty-six pupils attending, run by Miss Ida J. Packard who was all of sixteen and was hard put to keep order. Early in November 1856, a regular schoolhouse was built on Van Buren (now McKinley) next to the Albion Shoe Company, and some forty-five pupils enrolled under Mr. Sewell W. Smiley, whose brother Newell was in the shoe business. Miscreants were sent to him and put to work scraping cowhide in the cellar, where, it was said, the vapors from the curing vats were strong enough to destroy human hair and where, some older children said, Mr. Newell Smiley had once made four pairs of ladies’ boots from a 14-year-old boy. The school year passed without incident.
Lake Wobegon Days Page 7