WAUPACA COUNTY POST

June 7, 1990

Letters to the Editor

 

Mead story a part of our heritage.

 

To the Editor:

            If all goes according to what I read in last week’s paper, by the time this letter reaches you, the most widely known and talked about artifact in the otherwise idyllic history of Waupaca will have been burned and buried and lost forever.

            Judge Philip Kirk’s order is correct.  The skull of H. C. Mead serves no further evidentiary purpose.  It’s of as little use to the court today as it was when it was exhumed for evidence 10 years after Mead was murdered.

            But the value of the skull is not a matter of law or evidence.  The value of the skull is its story, that most infamous riddle.  It’s the last remaining link to Waupaca’s greatest unsolved mystery.

            Henry Mead was an eccentric man.  He slept on a cot in the back of his bank, kept odd hours, and ignored the authorities who said they were concerned about his lack of security.  After all, this was Waupaca, and advice like that was hard to take to heart.

            On an October night in 1882, Mead locked his bank as he always did and prepared himself for bed.  That much we know for sure.  What happened next is partly fact, partly speculation, and quite likely a little bit of storytelling.  But maybe, just maybe, it happened like this.

            The bank was closed and Mead was tired.  But before he could sleep, from his room in the back, he heard a noise.  Returning to investigate, he never had a chance to see what was happening.  He was clubbed over the head and he fell to the floor. 

            While his assailants were robbing the safe of the $600 it contained, Mead opened his eyes and began to rise.  This time the mistake of trying to stop the robbery cost him his life.  There was the sound of a gun, a brief flash, a cough of smoke, and Henry Mead was dead.

            While the night remains a puzzle, the next morning and the events that followed are a matter of record.  You see, the citizens of quite little Waupaca didn’t just find a dead banker, they found a horrible signature – a bloody handprint on the back wall of the Exchange and Savings Bank.

            The town’s night watchman, Tab Pryor, had been acting strangely.  Without apparent reason, he had resigned his post earlier that morning.  He was arrested immediately and taken to the bank where his hand was dipped in a bucket of water, and pressed up next to the bloody clue.  The prints didn’t match, and the murder of H. C. Mead remained unsolved.

            A grand jury was called in, and the mysterious Mead case was the talk of the state.  A trial was held 10 years later, but the accused men were all acquitted.  Attempts to solve the mystery finally dwindled, but the story grew and the skull remained.

            And like a good ghost story told in the dark, generations of children whispered the name of H. C. Mead, and they came to the courthouse to see the skull.  For 97 years, the infamous last piece of the puzzle was as much a part of Waupaca’s history as the courthouse or the Hutchinson House, or the bandstand.

            This week, the skull will be laid to rest with the rest of Mead’s remains, and no doubt he’ll be glad to have it back after all these years.

            Still, it seems a shame to see it lost, and to know that no more children will come to see it, and giggle nervously like you and I did, when we whispered the story of Henry Mead between flashlights and sleeping bags.

            Things that have an effect like that, such magical, mysterious parts of Waupaca’s story – even if they happen to be human skulls – shouldn’t belong to the courts and they shouldn’t belong to the funeral homes.

            Things like that belong to the historical societies, and the children, and the storytellers – to the people who know the history and heritage, no matter how distasteful and macabre, should never be burned and buried.

RYAN MALONE

Janesville, Wisconsin

            Editor’s Note:  The Waupaca County Post, to preserve a link with our community’s history and heritage, photographed Mr. Mead’s skull and the photos have been turned over to Clerk of Courts George Jorgensen for inclusion in the Mead file.