Hermes returns to Otter Tail County Historical Society

Published Saturday, November 17, 2007

The word is out that Missy Hermes is back at the Otter Tail County Historical Society and I thank all of the people who have greeted that news with kind wishes. I appreciate your support and hope to do a great job for you.

Of course, I thank my previous employer, too. Our Lady of Victory School teachers and staff — I miss you and hope to visit your classes soon in my capacity as museum educator.

Of course, not everyone in Otter Tail County received such a triumphant welcome. Some of the infamous personages of the county’s past maybe wished they had kept a lower profile. Such a character is John Trivets, whose story was retold during a performance of the Haunted Museum.

Back in 1882, this 16-year-old son of a homesteader had grown fascinated with dime store novels and tales of Jesse James and the Younger boys. He took his bandit fantasies too far, though, and killed and robbed two men surveying in the vicinity of Perham, a place called Red Eye, near Big Pine Lake.

“I just thought of pictures I had seen in novels of men being killed in that position and I drew my shotgun to my shoulder just like that and shot him through the back of the head,” Trivets recalled during his criminal examination.

The boy then killed the other surveyor with a hatchet, stole their money and a gun and headed for Perham to catch a train west.

Unfortunately for Trivets, Perham Constable Steven Butler was on duty and he tracked the villain all the way to Bismarck. The judge wanted him brought to Fergus Falls, but the citizens of Perham met Butler and promised that no harm would come to Trivets if he returned to Perham. Arriving there, “The prisoner was greeted with groans, curses and cries of, ‘Rope, rope, hang him, hang him.’” Early the next morning, about 20 men broke into the Perham jail and “their victim was at their mercy.”

A ladder had been provided and was braced up against a telegraph pole.

A rope was thrown over on of the rungs, placed around the neck of the murderer, and in a few minutes all was over,” reported the Weekly Journal for June 15, 1882. Before and after pictures are found in the museum archives.

Mary Jane Blaisdell, who served as a Civil War nurse at Fort Snelling, provides us with another example of an unwelcome return visitor.

While some local citizenry regarded her as a breath of fresh air, Mrs. Blaisdell’s repeated trips to harass the legislature and Congress earned her the nickname, “Minnesota Blizzard.”

Blaisdell’s photograph at the OTC Historical Society states, “she devoted her life to getting increases in her and her husband’s pensions. Her husband was a Civil War veteran.”

These and other “pernicious activities” on the Republican side of politics, as well as her plain and spirited way of making her views known “ ... incurred the enmity of a number of Democrats in her neighborhood.” (Daily Journal Oct. 30, 1893)

All her enemies needed was a warrant sworn by two doctors, Rae and Corliss, to declare her insane.

She was committed to the Fergus Falls State Hospital but took the case all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court and won release.

I don’t think there are any similarities between us, but I can say unequivicably, that I am crazy about Otter Tail County History.

Thank you for welcoming me back!

Melissa Hermes is the Otter Tail County Museum educator.