13, Thursday March 2025 Indoor Reading Weather is Soon at an End.

 

Back in February, I wrote this blog about Charley Goodnight's chance meeting along the Texas panhandle with Dutch Henry, a Montana outlaw who, with a price on his head, was murdered here in Palmville Township, Minnesota, by a close associate, in 1905, creating an international incident.

Thirty-some years ago, I researched Dutch Henry's murder, and the resulting trial of his assassin Alex McKenzie, in the Roseau County Historical Museum records, and the Minnesota Historical Society collection, for an accurate time-line of this event so I could publish it in THE RAVEN. A few years later, I found a newspaper clipping that indicated Palmville's Dutch Henry wasn't 'the' outlaw Dutch Henry Palmville had claimed he was, so I wrote Gary A. Wilson, author of "Outlaw Tales of Montana," among many other cowboy/western niche books (who had visited Roseau's museum),  to see if it was true, but Wilson assured me that this Dutch Henry was the real deal. Whew!

However, it turns out, that the Dutch Henry that Goodnight met back in 1870-or so, was not Palmville's Dutch Henry as the two 'Dutch' named men did not look at all alike, except to say they were both male outlaws,  and primarily horse thieves and cattle rustlers of some renown in their own regions of the U.S. 

Texas Dutch Henry was described as tall, handsome, and a serious kind of guy. Palmville's Dutch Henry was short, usually unkempt, and often a jokester who possessed a legendary sense of humor throughout his career. (For example, having once gifted a friend a team of stolen horses that he didn't know were stolen; sometime time later 'our' Dutch Henry stole them back.) Other examples are in the book. 

Furthermore, Palmville's Dutch Henry had the somewhat important distinction of having the first name of Henry and the last name of Ieuch or Yeuch, used throughout the book, "Outlaw Tales of Montana." (Fun facts: they were also mentioned in THE RAVEN, Volume 1 Issues 3 & 4.) In addition, while residing in Palmville, and frequenting the town of Wannaska, Henry used the alias 'John Stewart.'  

William Stephenson/Stevenson, (both spellings used in newspaper accounts) with whom DH and his murderer Alex McKenzie, lived in Section 7 that winter, informed authorities, post-mortem, of Dutch Henry's real name and criminal history. (It is believed Stephenson knew DH from earlier days in Montana or North Dakota. He possessed a homestead in Palmville, and offered it to them to reside for awhile free from the gaze of the law.)

I had linked Wilson's book to my almanac post, but hadn't read it myself thinking I knew the story verbatim, yet I contacted the Roseau Library for the book for I had the impression, as Wilson described to me, that he had devoted one whole chapter to Palmville. Sixty-five pages into the chapter "Dutch Henry and the Wild Bunch Gang," I still hadn't read anything about Palmville; until I finally did. Wilson covered every member of the gang before he finally got down to brass tacks about Dutch Henry, right down to the last place he visited being Ardoch, ND, 106.4 miles west of Palmville, then a 3-day trip.

Interestingly, (or not so much, you decide) Ardoch, ND (pop 31) is just 17 miles east of Ops, North Dakota (Pop 42); 7.3 miles west of Poland, ND (Pop 1108); 12.3 miles SW of Warsaw, ND; 18.1 miles WSW from Inkster (Pop 37) and to pinpoint it further: 10.8 miles E of Oslo (Pop 239). As a point of non-essential trivia, my dad postmarked a love letter to my mom in Osnabruck, from Inkster, in 1928, 

Okay, okay since we're on the subject of spectacular outlaws who met their doom in the backwoods, I stumbled over the toes of my snowshoes onto this story. This guy sounds like he could've been from Palmville, eh.