BANKER MEAD

Written by Eugene Engebretson

September 22, 2004

In 1957 I was in Miss K’s history class. We were studying the Mead Bank robbery and murder. The next time I saw my grandfather Jones, I asked him if he knew anything about it. He told me he remembered people talking about it when he was a kid.

Then he told me that his father John D. Jones knew Banker Mead and had roomed in the same boarding house in 1866, and that he (Mead) had hired John and Sam Stout to go to Madison and haul a new safe up here for him. So, John and Sam went with a horse team and wagon to get it.

It took five days round trip. John told my grandpa there were no roads in a lot of places – just a track winding around the trees. On the way back, in the Wild Rose area, they sank in the sand and were stuck. Great-grandpa went for help and came to a farmer who by his speech John knew was Welsh. But the guy did not want to take the time to help out. So John began to speak Welsh to him and the man decided to pull them out after all.

They made the rest of the way with no problems.

I have wondered often if the safe they brought up was the one in Mead’s office when he was robbed and killed. I will never know, I guess.