Sherburne History Center Blog

How we treat paupers and the less fortunate at the final, most important event of life: death, can tell us a great deal about society.  A recent article in the New York Times gave great detail about Hart Island and the disposal of paupers in New York City.  Unfortunately, many buried in Hart Island are receive little respect for their remains.  Hart Island burials include individuals donating their bodies to science.  When the local university or medical examiner finishes with the remains, they become part of the anonymous population shipped off and interred.  Additional internments at Hart Island include prisoners whose families refused to claim remains.  Burial at Hart Island translates into a large trench, pine boxes stacked four or five on top of each other and the trenches filled in.  The city keeps a record of the interments.  Individuals can be identified by their trench number, along with several hundred others.  But identificati...

In the year 1903, the Sherburne County Star News published an interesting set of statistics that tell a great deal about the county.  Simply going by the numbers:  in the year 1902 there were over 3500 horses in the county; there were 14,051 cows; and there were 700 dogs.  Sherburne County was growing as an agricultural community.  In contrast, in 1901 there were 100 fewer horses, 700 fewer cows, and 83 fewer dogs.  In a multitude of measurable statistics, Sherburne County was growing at the beginning of the new, twentieth, century.  The numbers can be interpreted different ways, yet they are all fascinating.  

The drama of crime reveals itself in the pages of the Sherburne County Star News .  Reporters tell the stories of victims and perpetrators.  They also reveal the patterns of crime and use language to generate greater interest in the events.  As an example, in 1903 the newspaper noted crime is seasonal in Sherburne County, “parallel with the influx of the tramp a hobo fraternity.”    The crime reporting also generates creative writing from newspaper correspondents.  In a burglary in Haven Township in August of 1903, “two men, on a tall and ugly looking genius, and a shorter companion with a dark mustache” burglarized a home.  They ransacked a home, “to show how thorough and accomplished there in the work they cut open and ripped every mattress in every bed in the house.”   Less than two weeks later, “bold burglars” used explosives to rob the Clear Lake bank.  “Sheriff Ward has gone up to do some sleuth work.”  The string ...

The cliché tells us that “truth is often stranger than fiction.”  In the case of the Becker Post Office robbery of 1931, the truth reads like fiction.  Here is a story of a woman betrayed and a group of cold hearted men plotting for the promise of easy money.   The story begins with Mr. Berga Glisson.  A resident of St. Cloud, in 1931 he had been spending time with the post mistress of Becker, Miss Gertrude Dyson.  For two years the couple had been together.  In December 1931, according to the Sherburne County Star News Glisson and three cohorts schemed to rob the safe of the Becker Post Office.  Glisson’s part in the crime was to duplicate a house key to the residential portion of the Post Office and deliver it to another of his co-conspirators.   The evening of December 6, 1931, using the key provided by Glisson, three men burst into the home of Miss Dyson.  They took Dyson and Glisson hostage and forced the postmistress to o...