The question has often been asked why Genealogy? We have come across many interesting stories in our research but none matches the murder of my great-great-great Grandparents Joseph and Olive Enos.

 The saga of the Enos murders starts on the morning of July 7, 1877. By the newspaper accounts it was a typical hot muggy southeastern Minnesota July. The day dawned with Joseph Enos and his wife working their small farm as they had since they came to this area in 1854 from Ontario, Canada. They had turned this bit of wilderness at the mouth of the Root River south of LaCrescent, Minnesota and just down and across the river from LaCrosse Wisconsin into a very profitable homestead. They had raised 4 children to adulthood and now they were all gone and they had to rely on hired hands to help with the work of running the farm. One of these hands was a particularly unsavory character named Joseph Marco or Marquette a young man who was on the run from the Law in his native Wisconsin for rustling cattle and stealing money from his grandfather. Marco had worked for Joe and he had dismissed him a few days earlier for dishonesty due to Marco selling two loads of hay for cash and pocketing the money telling Joe he had sold them on credit.

For whatever reason Joe had put him back on that morning to work the fields and had gone to Hokah a town about 4 miles west of the farm to do some business. Mrs. Enos was working in the garden and another hand a boy named Charles Glover was working cutting hay in a field. Marco was also supposed to be cutting hay and about 11 AM before Joe returned from town Marco came in from the field and began to look for money in the house. He had borrowed a shotgun from a neighbor under the pretense of going hunting. Mrs. Enos came in unexpectedly from the garden with a load of beans in her apron. He promptly shot her and threw the body down the cellar steps. A short time later he heard Enos come home and holler for his wife to help him unhitch the team. When he entered the house Marco hit him with the butt of the shotgun thinking he had killed him. When he tried to move him to the cellar Enos woke up and a fight ensued with Enos biting the fingers of Marco. Somehow Marco got control of the shotgun and fired a shot killing Enos entering his head. He promptly put his body in the cellar and started to close up the house. About this time the other hand Charles Glover returned to the house looking for lunch. He asked Marco where Joe and his wife had gone. Marco told him they had gone to LaCrosse by river to do business. He told him to get some food and go to the landing as they had to load up some poles. This he did and Marco told him he would follow. After he had gone Marco closed up the house and set a fire in the kitchen to cover his deeds.

He then went to join the boy near the river landing and on arrival told the boy they were to join Enos in LaCrosse. The main line of the railroad between LaCrosse and Iowa ran near the house on its way to LaCrescent to the north and east of the house. A track crew was at work on the bridge over the Root River about 1/4 mile north of the house. They broke for lunch under a tree near the house and about 12:30 they saw the house break into flame. They went to house and saw it was locked up and broke in but the fire was too far along and they could do little to contain it. At this time a son of McDonald who Marco borrowed the gun from came along as they returned to work. He went for some of the neighbors to fight the fire better. Meanwhile Marco and Glover had come out of the marshland about a mile up from the farm and Glover saw smoke from the direction of the farm. He began to run down the track to the farm as Marco went to LaCrescent about 2 miles up track. He had a sack with a shotgun that Enos owned and some other cloths in his possession. When Glover met the track crew at the house he told them that Enos had gone to LaCrosse and told him what Marco had told him. About this time McDonald's son arrived with a neighbor Pat Cain and his hired hands. They began poking in the ruins of the house to see if anything was salvageable. When they took a pole and poked into the cellar it came back with pieces of flesh and blood on it. At this they send a rider to Hokah to send word to the Sheriff of Houston County a young Englishman named Mark Hargreaves. They also began dousing the ashes and examining the ruins. What they discovered in the cellar was a sickening sight. Joe's body was barely recognizable due to the fire but his body had shielded Olive's body and hers was remarkably intact. The Sheriff arrived and instantly sent word out after interviewing Glover and the neighbors for the arrest of Marco.

Marco had spent the rest of the day in LaCrescent trying to get passage on the railroad across the river to LaCrosse and Wisconsin in the mistaken notion they would not be looking for him there. He tried to sell the shotgun at a baseball game that afternoon and couldn't. At about 6 PM he arrived at the North side depot in LaCrosse and the station master who knew him noticed he looked like he had been in a fight. Marco traded the shotgun for a pistol at one of the more seedy saloons that were the norm on the north side of LaCrosse during that era. He then took refuge with his family on French Island an area on an island between the Black and Mississippi rivers west of the north side area of LaCrosse. Chief Hatch of the LaCrosse Police had begun to track down Marco when he received word of the killings. He and Officer Duncan that night went to the Marco homestead to try and find him. Like most July days the weather turned volatile and there developed a tremendous storm one of the worst ones of the season. They approached the Marco homestead in a pouring rain at about 4 AM Sunday morning and heard someone shooting. They then realized they had forgot to bring any weapons along. They went to neighbors and borrowed some weapons and made believe they were hunting as they approached the house. Marco was target shooting and did not notice them until they were upon him and arrested him without a struggle.

Marco by appearance looked like a boy but was in fact 23 years old and had a long criminal record. When Hatch notified the Houston County authorities about the arrest he was advised that the mood of the citizenry was Marco would not live to stand trial if he was brought back to Caledonia. Hatch and Hargreaves made a plan where the train carrying Marco would be stopped just across the river in Minnesota and he would be taken off and taken by wagon over Mound Prairie to Caledonia. This was a good thing as there were mobs waiting at every station along the way to lynch Marco if he was brought the normal way.

The trial was short and sweet, as basically Marco had no choice. If he was tried and found guilty he would be hung and there was a lot of evidence. If he plead guilty he would escape a jury trial and be sentenced to life in Stillwater State Prison. His lawyer explained this to him and with the overwhelming evidence they had on the death of Joe they tried him for his death only. He plead guilty and was sentenced to life. They did not try him for the death of Olive, as the evidence was better on Joe's death. The Sheriff had built his case on the bite marks on Marco's hand. Hargreaves had exhumed the body of Joe and had with the permission of the family compared the bite marks on his hand to the exhumed jaw. This must have been a bizarre site Marco in his cell and Hargreaves with the skull of the murdered man closing the jaw on the murderer's finger. The fit was perfect. This should have been the end of the story with Marco spending the rest of his life in prison but life takes many turns and it was only the beginning.

 Click below to see the Second Trial and the further story of the Enos Murders.

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