Grand Forks Herald (North Dakota)
June 21, 2009
Page A1, A4
A forgotten crime in Mayville
Woman unearths story of young police officer who lost his life in 1893
Author: Chuck Haga; Herald Staff Writer
A woman interested in family history strolled through a
cemetery in Mayville, N.D., not long ago, looking for
information on ancestors.
They had come to Mayville from Pennsylvania in the
early 1890s, a couple and five children. Consulting the
1900 U.S. Census, Ellen Notbohm learned that two
other children were born but hadn't survived. She sought
their graves and maybe a clue as to what took them.
Instead, she came across the pocked and fading but still
legible gravestone for Even Paulson, a young
Norwegian immigrant who had become a police officer
in Mayville and - according to the grave marker-was
killed in the line of duty in 1893.
In time, Notbohm learned a good deal more about
Officer Paulson, a story she tells in the current issue of
Ancestry magazine (www.ancestry-magazine.com).
"Even Paulson didn't write his own epitaph," she writes,
"but the instant I laid eyes on it, I felt the piercing depth
of loss dealt to those who did - not just a family, but a
whole community.
"It's rare to find the cause of death listed on a
tombstone, particularly a violent death. When you do, it
means something. In this case, (the words reflect) a
community's anger, the spectacle of a sensational trial
played out in the media across five states, and
repercussions that would reverberate for two decades."
Two decades, maybe, but the reverberations apparently
subsided long ago. Though the tombstone endures with
its terse crime report - "Killed while on duty as night
watchman Sept. 3, 1893, 1 o'clock a.m." - Officer Paulson's story appears to have faded
into the mists of history.
"I've never heard that story," said Rick Forsgren, a longtime Mayville resident and a
member of the City Council since 1971.
Forsgren also is a police commissioner and recently oversaw transfer of the department to
a new location. No old photograph or memorial plaque was found during the move.
"I would have asked about it if there had been something," he said.
Intrigued, he said he plans to look into the story. If young Paulson lost his life while
protecting the peace and tranquility of early Mayville, his name deserves to be
remembered.
In her story in Ancestry magazine, Notbohm included credits to three "historians of the
Mayville Congregational Church," but those potential pockets of historical memory were
not available Friday.
Popular, engaging
Even Paulson was 21 years old in 1884 when he said goodbye to his parents in Seljord,
Norway, bound for Quebec. He made his way to Granite Falls, Minn., where he took the
first step toward becoming a U.S. citizen, filing a "card of intention."
Eight years later, in Traill County, N.D., Judge William McConnell signed the citizenship
papers.
The newcomer was popular, according to Notbohm's research. She quoted a writer who
had mentioned Paulson in a book about a frontier sheriff, also from Norway. "His
personality was so engaging," the writer said of Paulson, "he could talk unruly toughs and
drunks into voluntarily accompanying him to the city jail."
Notbohm said she pieced together accounts of Paul-son's last shift from newspapers,
including the Hillsboro Banner, which called his murder "the most atrocious crime in
Traill County's history."
After midnight Sept. 3, 1893, Paulson surprised burglars stealing alcohol from a
pharmacy. North Dakota was a "dry" state, but the store used alcohol in medications.
He was shot two or three times, including a fatal wound to the head.
Two suspects were taken into custody almost immediately. One still had the stolen 10gallon keg of port wine.
The Mayville community rose up as one, the Banner reported, with 700 citizens choking
the streets. "It was with greatest difficulty that lynching was prevented."
The accused killers were from Maryland and Massachusetts, young men themselves,
transient laborers only recently arrived in Mayville. Neither denied the burglary, but both
denied shooting Paulson.
"As the trial date approached, the Grand Forks Herald questioned little Hillsboro's ability
to handle the expected crush of trial-watchers," Notbohm wrote, "and urged the Great
Northern Railroad to offer fare inducements that would encourage people to stay in Fargo
or Grand Forks."
Both convicted
Both defendants were convicted, but prosecutors' inability to prove who pulled the trigger
saved them from the death penalty. Both received life sentences and harsh words from
presiding Judge McConnell - the man who a year earlier had signed Paulson's citizenship
papers.
"Did you consider that he was an honorable citizen, a faithful officer and in the
performance of his duties?" the judge demanded to know, according to Notbohm's
research. "Did you consider his father and mother in Norway and his sisters here and how
your act must so cruelly wound the love and affection they had for this son and brother?"
But McConnell later roused the ire of Mayville's people when he endorsed early release
for one of the killers. John William Law left prison in 1907, settled in Minneapolis and
died in 1945 "leaving nothing that I could find suggesting anything other than an
unremarkable life," Notbohm wrote.
Four years later, his accomplice, James Kelly, walked free - and, as far as Notbohm could
tell, into obscurity.
"Three young men from origins thousands of miles apart converged in the wrong place at
exactly the wrong time, a coincidence of tragic proportions for each of them," she wrote.
"It speaks to the fragility of any random moment in which history is written and lives are
irreparably altered."
To her fellow genealogists, she added:
"I didn't find those two babies who brought me to the cemetery in Mayville. What I did
find, in the beauty of a random moment, was Even Paulson" and an awareness "that
someone is waiting for us in every cemetery we visit, even if we have yet to meet him."
Reach Haga at (701) 780-1102; (800) 477-6572, ext. 102; or send e-mail to
chaga@gfherald.com.
Copyright (c) 2009 Grand Forks Herald
Record Number: 934197678