Junior Horse Thieves

The scene of the crime: Stommel's store on Third Street in Hobart.
Image courtesy of Bonnie.

It was a Saturday afternoon in September when Frieda Foreman drove a horse and buggy up to Hobart from south of Ainsworth, where she and her husband, William, farmed. Evidently she was going to do a little shopping: she pulled up at Stommel's store and tied the horse to a "hitchrack" out front.

Some time later, having finished her business, she returned to the hitchrack and found — nothing. The horse and buggy had vanished.

Neither Frieda nor anyone inside the store had noticed its departure. Naturally, they sent for Marshal Fred Rose, Sr. He set about trying to trace the rig. A witness reported seeing it, or similar rig, traveling along the Hobart-East Gary road (S.R. 51, I suppose), but evidently had paid no mind to who was driving it. After that sighting, it seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Later that afternoon, it suddenly reappeared, right out front of Stommel's. And the horse hadn't just wandered back, either — someone had tied him to the hitchrack. Yet nobody saw anything.

Frieda was satisfied in having her horse and buggy back, although a blanket had gone missing in the adventure. But the Marshal, deeply puzzled, persisted in the investigation. By the following week, the Gazette was able to report his findings.

The horse thieves turned out to be two little boys, one seven years old and one only three. They had taken the horse from the Stommel hitchrack and set out driving toward East Gary (Lake Station), as the witness had reported. Near the Isakson farm at the intersection of S.R. 51 and Route 6, their ride somehow came to an unexpected end — the newspaper report said only that they "met with an accident." A stranger on the scene asked them where they'd gotten the rig; they told him; so he brought it back and simply tied the horse up to the Stommel hitchrack without a word to anyone, then went on his way.

Where exactly the boys had intended to go, and how they intended to explain their new acquisition when they got there — these are questions that history cannot answer.


Sources:
♦ "Horse Mystery Cleared." Hobart Gazette 4 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Somewhat of a Mystery." Hobart Gazette 27 Sept. 1918.