{"id":7858,"date":"2022-09-18T21:28:51","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T02:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7858"},"modified":"2023-12-06T20:40:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T02:40:48","slug":"mfdj-9-18-2022-the-search-for-closure-in-hinckley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7858","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 9\/18\/2022: The Search for Closure in Hinckley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Badly Charred Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

On September 1, 1894 a huge firestorm, fed by drought conditions and dry debris left behind by lumber companies, destroyed the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, killing over 418 people. Afterwards, relatives launched extensive searches to find their loved ones.<\/p>\n

As grievous as was the news of verified deaths of loved ones, at least there was a finality about knowing for certain the fate of missing family members.\u00a0 There were some survivors who were not granted even that consolation. In some cases it was months before bodies were found, and some were never located. Survivors could only assume that a missing relative lay among the unidentified dead.<\/p>\n

Just after the fire Lee Webster, mayor of Hinckley, searched in vain for his young wife at relief shelters in Duluth and Superior.\u00a0 On Wednesday after giving up hope of finding her alive, he returned to Hinckley to conduct another futile search for her body among the unidentified dead.<\/p>\n

On October 16 Fred Molander’s body was finally found at the bottom of a well and was buried beside his wife and children at Brook Park.\u00a0 John and Christian Best did not learn the fate of their brother George until December when George’s body was found by a lad searching for a Christmas tree. Mrs. John Nelson of Hinckley had to wait four years to positively identify the body of her husband found one mile west of town.\u00a0 She recognized the watch, chain and rifle as belonging to her husband.<\/p>\n

Among other missing persons were seasonal laborers whose families lived elsewhere, immigrants with families in the “old country,” visitors who happened to be in the area on the day of the fire or those who were passing through.\u00a0 A St. Paul paper expressed the fear that a large number of St. Paul hunters who had gone to hunt prairie chickens near Hinckley, Mora and Sandstone may have perished because they had not been heard from since the fire.\u00a0 In Minneapolis relatives worried about Mrs. Haley who, with six children and two men, was on her way to Canada by wagon.\u00a0 By mid-September she still had not been heard from, and all were thought to be victims of the fire.<\/p>\n

In early November an old man, William Goodsell of Butternut Lake, Wisconsin, arrived in Hinckley to determine the fate of his son, believed to have perished there.\u00a0 With help he disinterred the bodies of the unidentified dead at the Hinckley cemetery but found on evidence of his son.\u00a0 Then he went to the area near Skunk Lake where more unidentified graves were scattered about.\u00a0 There he found one that appeared to be his son’s charred body, the only identifying mark being a fragment of a shirt with his son’s laundry mark.\u00a0 Mr. Goodsell was satisfied and brought his son’s remains back to Wisconsin.\u00a0 [Ah, the good old days, when you could disinter corpses yourself…\u00a0 – DeSpair<\/em>]<\/p>\n

For months after the fire, local newspapers continued to publish notices which began with the familiar phrase, “Another body was found at…”\u00a0 In June 26, 1895, the Hinckley Enterprise noted:<\/p>\n

While travelling through the woods near the Grt. Northern tracks two miles north of town last Sat., Mike Lynch discovered the bones of a human being – another victim of the forest fire of last Sept.\u00a0 Deputy Coroner Stephan was notified and at once attended to the burial of the unknown person.\u00a0 This makes two bodies found within the past week.\u00a0 When will this end?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among the deceased in Hinckley were two young Swedish sisters who had worked for three months in the kitchen at Bartlett’s lunchroom at the St. Paul and Duluth depot.\u00a0 Their parents, recent immigrants, lived in Illinois.\u00a0 When the fire struck the depot, the Bartletts and their employees fled north on the tracks and met Root’s train which backed up to Skunk Lake.\u00a0 All of the Bartlett workers survived except the two girls who could not endure the strain and fell along the tracks and perished.\u00a0 When the sisters first arrived in Hinckley, they wrote home faithfully every week, but when their letters stopped abruptly, relatives in Illinois assumed some tragedy had befallen them.\u00a0 Long after the parents of the two girls had passed away, two relatives visited Hinckley in the early 1970’s and inquired about them.\u00a0 Only then did they learn from an elderly survivor of the fire that the two girls had been victims of the fire.\u00a0 Said one man, “Thank God, now we know.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFinding the remains of a family in Hinckley.<\/em><\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0\u00a0From the Ashes: The Story of the Hinckley Fire of 1894<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Malady\u00a0Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection<\/a>\u00a0is a fascinating cluster of medical photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century that had been collected by Dr. Ikkaku Ochi in Japan and were found in a box many years later. \u00a0There was no detailed information available for most of the photos, but the images are compelling because they show composed portraits of people suffering through intense pain caused by conditions that in most cases would be resolved through treatment today. \u00a0There\u2019s a sense of overwhelming sadness that comes through in these pictures, but also dignity and strength.<\/p>\n

Here’s one of the patients who appears to be suffering from scoliosis or some similar spinal disease:
\n\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Badly Charred Yet Truly Morbid Fact! On September 1, 1894 a huge firestorm, fed by drought conditions and dry debris left behind by lumber companies, destroyed the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, killing over 418 people. Afterwards, relatives launched extensive searches to find their loved ones. As grievous as was the news of verified deaths […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-ghastly"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9788,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7858\/revisions\/9788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}