Circus Notables
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Circus Notables 〰️
Nicholas Juliar
If you are of a certain age and you grew up in or near Baraboo you may remember a small theater building that was built on the west side of the square. It was called the Juliar Theatre and was built in 1938 by Henry Ringling Jr.to provide another movie screen to supplement the one at the Al Ringling Theatre which his uncle Al had built 23 years before.
The Juliar name is important in Baraboo because it ties together three families that each had an impact on the American circus. But the story begins in the Alsace region of France more than 200 years ago.
Nicholas Juliar was born near Colmar in the Alsace region of France in1798. It is a beautiful area with lots of vineyards and great wine and it is where he met his wife…Marie Magdalena Etling who was born in 1806. Nicholas and Marie had five children in the old country, four girls and then finally a boy which they named after Nicholas. The family left the old country in 1844 for better prospects here in America. After arriving in New York City the family found its way to the northwest and settled near Milwaukee. It was only a few years after the family arrived that the Juliar’s first daughter Marie Magdalena married Gottlieb Gollmar, a good German young man. That same year Marie and Nicholas Juliar had a fifths daughter they named Caroline and a few years later a sixth daughter, Mary, came along.
The next Juliar daughter to be married was Marie Salome who married another German boy, August Ringling in 1852. About that time Marie Magdalena and Gottlieb Gollmar moved here to Baraboo where Gottlieb set up his blacksmith shop. Three years later the Ringlings moved to Baraboo as well.
The Juliar’s fourth daughter Katherine married Henry Moeller…you guessed it another good German boy and moved to Baraboo. Soon all three of the Juliar girls in Baraboo were having grandchildren for Nicholas and Marie so the couple moved to Baraboo as well. The Ringlings had seven boys and a girl, the Gollmars had eight boys and four girls and the Moellers had two girls and two boys. Their parents had a lot to do, not the least of which was teach them all a profession. My son-in-law Gottlieb Gollmar was a blacksmith, August Ringling was a harness maker and Moeller, he was a wagon maker. While the Juliar sons-in-law tried to teach their sons their respective trades the communities where they lived only needed so many blacksmiths, or harness and wagon makers.
In the year 1882 when Nicholas Juliar died Al Ringling and some of his brothers started a traveling hall show which was the beginning of their collective performance careers. Their grandmother Marie Juliar did live long enough to see five of her Ringling grandsons start their circus in 1884 and grow for the first five years before she joined her husband here at Walnut Hill. Just two years after her death, five of her Gollmar grandsons started their own circus here in Baraboo and her two Moeller grandsons eventually produced circus wagons for both circuses. So the Juliar name though largely forgotten today was the foundation for circus life here in Baraboo. What’s the saying, “ All because two people fell in love…”
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
Al. and Lou Ringling
The Al and Lou Ringling mausoleum is constructed of Vermont granite and is the final resting place for the oldest Ringling brother and his wife. The top is a single piece of stone weighing twelve tons. The two doors are made of brass and contain Masonic symbols. The inscription on the left door reads SPES MEA IN DEO EST which means, “ My hope is in God ”
Al Ringling ( and yes there is always a period after his first name ) was born in Chicago in 1852 as Charles August Albrecht Ringling. The family’s original last name was Rüngeling ( Roong-ge-ling ) which father Ringling changed to make it more American. Al Ringling’s father was a harness maker who moved the family around a lot always looking for a better market for his work. Al was trained as a carriage finisher but somewhere along the line got the itch to perform. When the family was living in MacGregor, Iowa the Ringling boys were exposed to the traveling circus shows which came down the Mississippi River on paddle wheelers. It is possible that Al also experienced his first circus while living here in Baraboo in the 1850s. Another family that was living in MacGregor at the time was that of Al’s future wife Lou.
Lou Ringling’s given name at birth was Eliza Morris, although she liked Louise or just plain Lou even better. Eliza Morris was born the last of several children to John and Christiana Morris. When Eliza was about 18 months old the family packed up and moved to northeastern Iowa where her father John purchased a farm in Allamakee County. This is where Eliza Morris spent the formative years of her life. When she was about 12 years old her father sold the farm and bought a hotel in McGregor , Iowa. Lou helped her father run the hotel especially after her mother died in 1870. When Louisa Morris was sixteen, she eloped with a local boy named Jefferson Redding to Prairie du Chien where they were married in 1867. The newlywed couple lived at and helped run Lou’s father’s hotel especially after Lou’s mother died in 1870. Her father John only lived a few more years himself, passing away in 1873. The next period of Lou’s life is one shrouded in perhaps the most mystery. In 1873 Lou filed for divorce from Jefferson Redding. A public announcement in the Clayton County, Iowa newspaper stated that along with the divorce she requested custody of the minor child Freddie Redding. What happened after this is unknown. It is likely that the divorce was granted and that she was awarded custody. Neither Jefferson, Lou, or Freddie Redding have yet been located on the 1880 federal census. By the early 1880s Lou moved to Baraboo where one of her sisters lived and she began work as a seamstress. The Ringling family was also living there at that time and Lou eventually met Al Ringling at a dance. Of course she most likely already knew him because the Ringlings had lived in McGregor , Iowa at the same time.
No official record for Al and Lou’s marriage has yet to be found. They were allegedly married on Dec. 19th, 1883 and Al Ringling was the only brother who was married when the Ringling Brothers Circus started in 1884. In the early years of the circus Lou managed and/or made the wardrobe, was an equestrienne, a teamster when needed and even a snake charmer. In 1890 Al and Lou made a secret trip to Hoboken , NJ to get married again…or get married for the first time. It is unknown if something came up from the past to invalidate their earlier marriage or if they were never really married in 1883.…
In 1905 Al and Lou Ringling began construction on the largest home ever built in Sauk County. The large brown sandstone mansion took over a year and a half to build and cost $35,000. The average house at the time cost $2,500. The interior featured lavishly decorated rooms and over 65 pieces of stained glass. Upstairs there were his and hers bedrooms each with a fully equipped bathroom. The home provided more than enough room to host lavish parties and dances. There was a ballroom in the basement and amply parlors to seat 150 people to tea at one time. The grounds included a spacious two story carriage house.
As luxurious as the mansion was, Al and Lou often preferred to be at their favorite spot on earth which was Mirror Lake. In 1908 they constructed a cottage there. Both Al and Lou liked to fish on the lake often bringing along Lou’s nephew-in-law, George Burdick Things were going well for Baraboo’s most famous couple. Or so it seemed. In May of 1914 Al filed for divorce. It is not known why but there is the legend that Lou once said that “ When Al got rich he got boring. ” There was even talk of leaving Baraboo. At any rate the divorce did not go through and Al patched things up with a $100,000 gift of cash to Lou in August of 1914. The couple lived out their remaining days together at the brown sandstone mansion where Al could look out the window and watch the construction of his luxury theatre which was finished in November of 1915. Al’s health was so poor in 1915 that the townspeople were worried that he wouldn’t live long enough to see it finished or be properly thanked. In June of 1915 while the theatre was only half finished a crowd of thousands gathered outside of the mansion to give him thanks and praise for the magnificent theatre he was building.
Al did make it to see opening night on November 17, 1915 but died just six weeks later on January 1. He was later laid to rest in this mausoleum which was under construction at the same time as the theatre.
Lou was left alone in the big stone mansion which was hers to occupy as long as she wished. Al’s will also left her $325,000 in cash as well as the cottage and land at Mirror Lake and an old frame house they had built in 1899. Lou didn’t stay in the mansion long and moved out into the smaller house taking all of the furniture with her. Just a few months after Al died, Lou poured her efforts into developing their property at Mirror Lake. She erected cottages and a dance pavilion at the lake which were very well received and inspired Lou to make more developments at the lake. In the summer of 1919, when she was 68 years old, Lou started construction of a summer hotel, cottage and a dance pavilion at the site which was close to Timme’s mill and dam.
The new hotel opened in July of 1920 and featured 37 guest rooms most of which opened onto
the hundreds of feet of screened verandah. Guests could also lounge on the lawn of the hotel or take a dip in the hotel’s swimming pool which consisted of a cement lined section of one of the lake gorges below the hotel.
The hotel was a big success right from the start. Lou got involved next with a development
of a country club in Crystal Lake , Illinois. Lou was the principal investor in the purchase of an old estate on the lake with a large 1860s era mansion. Eventually an 18 hole golf course was built complete with 300 trees from a Baraboo nursery and the old mansion was refurbished as a club house. A large addition to the mansion was also built in the mid-1920s. The crash of 1929 ultimately sent the country club in to receivership and Lou Ringling lost most of her fortune. She continued to spend summers at the Mirror Lake Inn and winters in Baraboo. This would all change in 1932 when the hotel caught on fire and burned to the ground. Lou Ringling died in 1941 in Baraboo and joined Al here in the mausoleum over 25 years after his death.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
Alma Waite
If you’re not from Baraboo you probably don’t recognize the name of Alma Waite. Her name here in Baraboo lives on thanks to a generous trust fund that she left to the city upon her death. While never employed in any circus venture Alma Waite’s connections to circus heritage in Baraboo run deep. As a descendant of the Moeller family, Alma was first cousin once removed to all of the Ringling brothers and all of the Gollmar brothers. Her two uncles Henry and Corwin Moeller were the famous wagon makers in town and of course the brothers of her mother Mary Moeller.
Mary married Frank Lux, in 1881 and their only child, Alma, was born in 1883. The family lived in Milwaukee for a while where Frank Lux had a saloon but eventually he worked in a carriage shop. Later the family moved to Baraboo where Alma’s grandfather and my two uncles had a carriage and wagon making shop. Alma was one year old when her Ringling cousins started their circus and seven years old when her Gollmar cousins started theirs. Alma’s father died in 1918 which was the same year that the Ringlings never brought their show back to Baraboo. The Gollmars had sold their circus a few years before that.
By this time Alma’s bachelor uncle Corwin Moeller was living with the Lux family and Alma’s mother started taking in boarders to make ends meet. One of them was Arthur Waite. He was a locomotive engineer which Alma took a shine to and married. Uncle Corwin continued to live with the family until his death in 1946. He left most of his entire fortune to Alma, much of which he had earned building circus wagons for the Ringlings. After Alma’s husband Arthur died she started making charitable gifts around the community. One place near and dear to her heart was the new Circus World Museum which opened in 1959.
Alma was the main benefactor for the hippodrome building at the museum and named it in honor of her Moeller uncles. Alma also gave other gifts to Circus World and to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom. But she didn’t give it all away in her lifetime. Just a few days before she died at the age of 99 she drew up a new will and decided how to give away nearly one million dollars. She left a good amount to family and friends and then some to charities but the majority was left to the City of Baraboo to be set aside in a trust fund.
The money that Alma Waite gave to the City of Baraboo still serves the community today and has grown to over one million dollars. Only a portion of the interest that the money makes is used for various purposes each year. Past distributions have paid for everything from public sidewalks to concerts on the square to a new fire truck. Restoration work at the Al Ringling Theatre has also benefitted from the fund.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
August and Salome Ringling
August and Salome Ringling are buried here at Walnut Hill Cemetery almost by pure luck. The couple had moved into and out of Baraboo three times and had their sons not started the circus here and become successful they most likely would not have moved back from Rice Lake back to Baraboo for the last move of their lives.
August Ringling Senior died in 1898 in a rented house and after his death his sons, who were now some of the richest men in town, built a new house for their mother – probably the only new house she ever lived in. Salome Ringling died in 1907 shortly after a late Christmas get-together with the family.
Otto Ringling was buried here alongside his parents in 1911. Otto was the only Ringling brother born in Baraboo that lived to adulthood. Another brother George died here in Baraboo in 1856 and may have been born in Baraboo as well or was born elsewhere shortly before the family moved here in 1855. Otto Ringling never married and never built a house here in Baraboo, living instead with one of his brothers. Upon his death his ownership share of the circus was inherited by his younger brother Henry Ringling.
Elbridge Hocum
In September of 1890 Elbridge Vinton Hocum placed the following ad in an edition of the New York Clipper - “Gentleman of 20 wishes to learn bareback riding; also wire walking and other acts suitable for a circus. Those who have schools for that purpose please address E V Hocum, Marvin, Grant County, North Dakota ”. Hocum wanted to join the circus, but didn’t want to be just another roustabout or grunt labor. It is not sure where Hocum did receive his training but he did learn to become a bareback rider extraordinaire. In just a few years’ time he was ready for the center ring. Not bad for a farmer’s son.
In 1894 Hocum shipped his six trained horses from South Dakota to Baraboo to join the Gollmar Brothers Circus and was with Gollmar Brothers for the next three seasons. In 1896 Hocum married Maude Gollmar who went on to become an exceptional bareback rider herself.
Elbridge and Maude had three children – Gladys, Lucille and Ray - of course they were born with circus in their blood. The couple added each child to their acts as soon as they were ready. When Gladys was four she would stand on her father’s shoulders as he stood on two galloping horses. When Lucille came along, both of them stood on their father’s shoulders. It was a beautiful act which was nearly finished when Gladys got married and left the act, but he Hocum’s solved that problem by having Gladys’ little brother Ray wear a dress and a wig with long curls. The Hocums worked with many circuses over the next thirty years and the couple was constantly dreaming up new acts. Maude had trick dogs and ponies and Elbridge once trained a steer to waltz and then march with a pony on its back and a Great Dane on top of the pony! Their greatest acts were with the horses though. In one act Elbridge had Gladys stand on the back of a horse which ran in front of another horse pulling a buggy. Elbridge stood on the second horse with Lucille standing on his shoulders. The only connection between the two horses was a white streamer held by Gladys and connected to her father. For other acts family members would jump between the carriage and the backs of the horses as they tore around the ring. And of course there were always the somersaults and hand stands…on the back of a galloping horse.
Each year the family usually got back to good old Baraboo for the winter. Elbridge probably would have retired here but died out on the road in Akron , Ohio at the age of 56 and was brought back here to the cemetery. After Elbridge Hocum died in 1926, his wife and children continued in performance work for a number of years. His wife Maude had a bareback riding act with her daughter Lucille and she also performed with her pets, two Shetland ponies and nine dogs. Maude also had posing white Arabian horses. Daughter Lucille and her brother Ray had an act with bulldogs with Ray acting as a comedian named “ Zeke. ” Lucille and “ Zeke ” also had a routine on the wire with Lucille doing novelty dancing and jumping over a table held over the wire.
The name Elbridge, while unusual, is not unprecedented. The fifth vice-president of the United States was named Elbridge Gerry ( pronounced Gary ). Gerry also was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
Della Ringling
Della Ringling was the wife of the fourth oldest Ringling brother, Alf T Ringling who was born in 1862 and was one of the original founders of the circus. Della was born in 1869 in Kansas but the family moved to Baraboo when she was still an infant. Della grew up in Baraboo and when she was 21 she married Alf T Ringling in 1890. At that time the circus consisted of about 225 employees, 18 railroad cars and a big top that was 225 feet long. Along with the humans there were three elephants, three camels, a water buffalo, a zebra, several monkeys, several deer, two wolves, a boa constrictor, over 100 horses and ponies and for the first time a hippopotamus which was named “ Pete ”.
Each year as the circus returned to Baraboo Alf T and Della would rent quarters for the winter – a house perhaps or even rooms above a downtown meat market. A few years after they were married, Alf T and Della were expecting their first child. Little Ruth Ringling was born in 1893 but unfortunately died the same year. Tragedy struck again the following year when Roland Ringling died at just six months. In 1895 Della Ringling gave birth to their third child, Richard Theodore Ringling, who fortunately survived. In 1899 Alf T and Della Ringling constructed one of the largest houses in town, big enough to entertain more than 100 women at a time for tea.
Della became a premier hostess but as she grew closer and closer to Baraboo her relationship with Alf T grew further apart. Della did not wish to travel with the circus much and Alf incessantly poured himself into his work. By 1911 they were married in name only as Alf was living out east and speaking with Della only on matters regarding their son, Richard. In 1913 things came to a head when Della sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion and cruel treatment. The divorce settlement gave Della the house and several other Baraboo properties and $305,000 in securities to be held in a trust. The income produced was to be given to Della as long as she lived. With the divorce over, Della was now officially alone. Her son Richard was 18 and traveling quite a bit.
To give her life purpose and a new direction, Della adopted a little girl whom she called Marjorie Joan and poured into her all the love, affection and resources that this orphaned girl needed. It was also after the divorce that Della converted to Catholicism and became an ardent supporter of Saint Joseph’s church. By the spring of 1922 Della decided it was time to move on. She gifted her house for use as a hospital to be operated by the Sisters of Saint Mary of Saint Louis. The Ringling - Saint Mary’s Hospital was expanded multiple times and was operated until Saint Clare’s hospital was built in 1963. The home then operated as a nursing home and later as a home for retired nuns before it was demolished in 1977.
Della Ringling died in 1931 and was buried here alongside her first two children.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
Henry Ringling
The Henry Ringling mausoleum is the final resting place for not one Henry Ringling but actually three Henry Ringlings along with two Ringling wives and one daughter.
The “ original ” Henry Ringling was born in 1868 and was the youngest of the seven Ringling brothers. He was about sixteen years old when five of his older brothers started the circus. Henry became one of the owners of the circus when Otto Ringling died and willed him his share.
Henry Ringling married Ida Palmer on December 31, 1902 and the couple had one son named Henry Ellsworth Ringling in 1906. Henry Sr. died in 1918 just shy of 50 years old after purchasing the “ yellow ” Ringling mansion from his brother Charles. Ida Ringling lived in the house for another 48 years until her death in 1966.
Henry Ringling Sr. was nine years old when his uncle Al built a new theatre downtown and later in life Henry and his wife were the last Ringling family members to own the theatre when it was sold in 1953. Henry Ellsworth Ringling married Jean Fowler in 1936 and the couple went on to have two children, Henry E. Ringing Jr. and Salome Juliar Ringling. Henry E. Ringling Sr. was a major player in the Republican Party in Wisconsin ultimately becoming the national committeeman from Wisconsin before his death in 1955, also aged 49 like his father. His widow Jean Ringling lived in the “ yellow ” Ringling mansion until her death in 1994.
Their son Henry E. Ringling Jr. was killed in a car accident in 1962 leaving only his sister Salome or “ Sally ” to carry on the family line. Sally Ringling was born in Baraboo in 1937 and moved to Rome, Italy with her mother after the death of her father and brother - only seven years apart. She soon developed a career in motor racing which earned her the nickname “ Gearbox ” from fellow Formula One racecar drivers. Drivers would often ask her to hold tools while they worked on cars together prompting her epitaph which is “ She never said, “ no ” to “ here hold this. ” ” This is carved in stone on her crypt inside.
Sally married Richard Clayton-Jones in 1962 and the couple had two children, Kate and Charles.
Sally was the last member of the family placed in her grandfather’s mausoleum when she died in 1905.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
George Isenberg
George Isenberg was never in the circus but had an important role in the lives of many of the Ringling brothers. Isenberg was born in Berndorf in central Germany as the youngest of seven boys. Though he was apprenticed as a carpenter like his father, there was not much opportunity for advancement in Germany, so in 1885 when he was 17 he came to America to join two of his brothers, Karl and Christian, who were already here. George Isenberg’s brothers were both carpenters so he joined them in the trade.
Not too long after this the siblings started the Isenberg Brothers construction company. Baraboo was a good town to start a carpentry business with plenty of building going on. Before long the Isenberg brothers were constructing buildings for the Ringling brothers to use as their circus winter quarters. This was down along the river on Water Street where there was ample access to water for the circus animals. At first the buildings were made of wood, just barns for housing and training animals. Then as the circus grew the firm started building more substantial brick buildings for the elephants, camels, zebras, tigers even a hippopotamus.
In 1899 the Isenbergs started building houses for some of the Ringling brothers. At first they were just the size of ordinary houses but then the brothers started to out do eachother. One of the first to build was Al Ringling who had the Isenbergs build an average-sized Queen Anne style that was actually a copy of another house in town. That same year Al Ringling’s younger brother Alf T had the firm build a much larger wood house designed by an architect from Minneapolis. George Isenberg and his brothers also built a house for Charles and Edith Ringling in 1900 designed by prominent Milwaukee architect, Alfred Clas.
Charles Ringling kept the Isenbergs busy for the next several years adding on to the house and building a carriage house behind it with a little greenhouse. Charles Ringling even had a cottage built for his mother-in-law. A few years after the first round of building, Al and his wife, Lou, wanted a big house. So they hired the same architect that Alf T Ringling had used and him design the largest house ever constructed in the county - a big red sandstone mansion with a ballroom in the basement. It took the Isenbergs a year and a half to finish the mansion which cost $35,000 at the time the average house cost around $2,500. The mansion was built of masonry with reinforced concrete and steel beams faced with brown sandstone from the Lake Superior region.
The home features extensive woodwork done in a variety of species and over 65 pieces of stained glass. A two story carriage house was also built and faced with stone to match the house. With his reputation for quality workmanship Charles Ringling engaged George Isenberg in 1912 to travel all the way to Sarasota , Florida to build a winter house for him there. Ringling liked the area so much that about a dozen or so years later Isenberg was called down again to build a palatial residence for Charles and Edith. The construction lasted for over a year and this time the price tag had risen to an astronomical $750,000, or 83 times the cost of Charles Ringling’s first home in Baraboo.
George Isenberg retired and died in Baraboo and was one of the few builders in the country that could boast that he had built a house for an elephant.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.
Charles Gollmar
Charles Gollmar was born here in Baraboo during the Civil War as number 9 of 14 children to his parents Gottlieb and Mary Magdalena Gollmar. His father was a blacksmith and he taught Charles’ older brothers a thing or too but when you are number nine you learn to do something else. Fortunately, the railroad came to Baraboo when Charles was ten and Baraboo and became a division headquarters for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. Charles found work in the roundhouse when he was 18, but when he was 23, something amazing happened. His cousins, the Ringing brothers – started a circus in Baraboo!
The first performance was just a few blocks from the Gollmar house. While it wasn’t much at first it grew quickly and about seven years later in 1891, Charles and three of his brothers, Ben, Walter and Fred started their own circus. Following the example of their cousins, each Gollmar brother took on a different role. Charles was the manager of the circus, Ben was the treasurer, Fred was the advance man and Walter was the equestrian director. Also like their cousins the Gollmar Brothers Circus was a wagon show at first - which didn’t switch to rail until 1903. After this however, the Gollmar Circus grew to include 22 railroad cars.
While the Gollmar Brothers Circus was never as big as the Ringlings but it was known all throughout the Midwest. There were a lot of good times and every once in a while there was a bad time. One of the worst times came on June 12 of 1899 when the Gollmar circus had set up just outside of New Richmond , Wisconsin, a little town of about twenty-five hundred people up in Saint Croix County. The circus had finished the afternoon performance when rain started to fall. While all the townsfolk and visitors hurried back to town, circus workers battened things down as best they could. The storm intensified and at about six o’clock a horrendous tornado hit the town. Most people only had a couple minutes warning or none at all as the whole town was just about wiped off the map.
500 buildings were destroyed including a three story brick hotel. Amazingly the Gollmar Brothers Circus survived and left the next day after doing what it could to help. Gollmar brother, Ben, was hurt a little along with a few others circus folk but the real loss was in town where about 100 people were killed. A happier day came later that year when Charles married Alberta Will in Toledo , Ohio who traveled with Charles while many other circus wives stayed home for the season.
The Gollmar Circus was sold in 1916 and left Baraboo to be run by new owners. Charles and his brother Fred went to work for the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus which was run out of Peru , Illinois. Another one of those not so good days came again in June of 1918 this time near Hammond , Indiana. Alberta and Charles were on the circus train in their private stateroom sound asleep when all of the sudden they were violently thrown about and their car was lifted up and the roof torn off. They quickly learned that another train had plowed into the back of the circus train at 35 miles per hour and demolished the caboose and four sleeping cars, including their own, before it stopped.
At least 100 circus employees were killed. Charles and Alberta retired from circus life after this and spent the rest of their days together in a cozy Sears mail-order bungalow they had built in Baraboo a few years before. After Charles died in 1929 Alberta Gollmar continued to live alone in their bungalow and the Depression years brought many down and out to her door, especially former circus employees. Alberta would leave a pair of her husband’s goulashes by the front door to suggest to strangers that he was still home. Friends and family members warned her not to be so generous with the transient population, but Alberta had a big heart.
In September of 1938 Alberta was found murdered when one of her neighbors came to check on her. She had been stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife. At first the police suspected a vagrant but in the end it turned out to be the grandson of one of her neighbors. He had robbed Alberta and then killed her before fleeing to Milwaukee. He was shot and killed by police while trying to escape. Among his things were Alberta’s purse and jewelry.
This factual story was provided by the Sauk County Historical Society.