Vernon Harold Jeffers was born on Wednesday, April 20, 1921, in Wibaux,

Montana.  He was the youngest child of Merriam Dunham, and Jennie Belle Jeffers.[1]

  The Jeffers family did a lot of travelling around the country during the twenties due

to Merriam’s vocation.  He was an Assembly of God Pastor involved in ‘church

planting.’  He called his ministry ‘The Little Chapel by the Road.’[2] The Jeffers

family has a long history of involvement in various churches.  When the family moved

to Wisconsin from New York, they started up a new church with the same beliefs. 

They called themselves the 'Neversweats.’  In Rose, New York they were also referred

to as ‘Stand alones.’  ‘Stand alones’ did not affiliate with any established church. The

Jeffers clan originated in Rose, Wayne, New York with Robert Jeffers Jr. and the

‘Neversweats’ met in the schoolhouse on the Jeffers farm.  The name ‘Neversweats’

popped up because the members of this gathering would meet long into the night and

sometimes till near morning.  The expression they used was something like "we'll hold

on till morning and never sweat a drop.  We'll never tire; we'll work constantly".[3] 

Sometime during the late twenties, the family moved back to Wild Rose, Wisconsin, the hometown of Merriam and Jennie.

                                                          Around noon on Saturday, February 15, 1930, Hugh Logan a 19-year-old man from                                                                  Minneapolis, Minnesota, drove over 230 miles to Wild Rose, in a Model A Roadster he stole in St.                                                    Paul.  He had stolen and filled out a blank bill of sale for the vehicle.  He hung around Wild Rose                                                      all afternoon and into the evening acting natural enough that he failed to draw attention to himself.

                                                          Later that evening, Logan broke into Jack Smith’s blacksmith shop and stole some tools.                                                          Using the stolen tools, he tried to break into Melcher Lumber Company, but he was interrupted.                                                      He then went over to the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Depot where he succeeded in getting                                                      in, but failed to open the safe, managing only to break off the combination knob.

          From there he drove south 8 1/2 miles to Wautoma, where he broke into the Barnhart & Winge Chevrolet Garage taking $6.00 in small change from the register.  He next entered the Schultz Brothers Ford Garage and took $21.00 from their safe.  About this time, 11:30 pm, Edwin Schultz the owner of the garage came in to put his car away.  Logan was startled and ran into something while running out the back door, causing him to drop his car keys.  On foot he dashed across the ice on the mill pond following Highway 22 back to Wild Rose.

          Frank Schultz, Waushara County Sheriff was notified, and he called out the

'vigilantes’.  This was an organization set up by the County Bankers Association.  It was

headed by a Mr. Devoursney a detective for a bankers' insurance company.  Five of these

men gathered at Wild Rose to hunt down the fugitive.  They were Milton Woodward,

Ernest Colligan, Glenn Etheridge, C.C. Corning, and Henry Wagner.

          About 2:30 am, the ‘vigilantes’ spotted Logan walking down the road, they called

out for him to stop.  Logan ran off into the darkness and the ‘vigilantes’ opened fire on

him, getting off 13 shots.  Two of these shots entered the Jeffers home.  One lodged in the

wall, but the second ended up striking Vernon Jeffers.  Vernon was in bed, sleeping

between his mother and another of the Jeffers children, most likely Lloyd his older

brother.  The bullet from a rifle, passed through the wall and an Oak bedstead, grazed his

forehead, entered his leg breaking the bone just above his knee, passed through his calf, 

and lodged in his foot.  When his mother realized Vernon was injured, she sent Lucille across the street to the Melcher’s house, to telephone her father who was away from home.  The Melcher’s found that they had three bullets lodged in various places in their own home. 

          The Melcher’s let Lucille use their phone, and then asked Mrs. Jeffers if she would like for them to call a doctor.  She refused due to certain beliefs she held.  Despite this Dr. B. B. Fisher was notified, and he arrived to examine the boy shortly after 3am.  He told Mrs. Jeffers that Vernon should be taken to the hospital at once, due to the profuse bleeding, and shattered bones that needed surgical repair.  Mrs. Jeffers responded by saying, “No.  We’ve been praying ever since it happened and he’s nearly well now.”

          It was 10am before the family decided they should take Vernon to the hospital.  He was taken to the hospital in OshKosh where Doctors immediately began working on his injuries.

                                                                                                    In the meantime, every house and barn within a one-mile radius of                                                                                              Wild Rose was being searched, but no sign of Logan could be found.  At                                                                                                about 10:30am that same Sunday morning, 15-year-old Ray Wargula                                                                                                    decided to help in the search.  He started in his father Anton’s barn about                                                                                            two miles from Wild Rose.  While checking the loft he poked the hay with                                                                                            a broomstick and was surprised when he poked Logan.  Ray was so                                                                                                        frightened that he jumped off the 14-foot-high loft and called for his                                                                                                      father.  Anton took chase after Logan firing his shotgun.  Logan returned                                                                                              fire with a revolver.  Then Ray, his older brother Frank, and their brother-                                                                                          in-law Bennie Dick took up the chase.  After a few shots from Logan’s                                                                                                    revolver kicked up some snow at their feet, they decided it would be best to halt their pursuit.  Anton had gone back to his house and called the deputies.  They soon captured Logan walking along the railroad tracks.

          On Monday afternoon Logan was taken before Judge B. B. Park at Wautoma, where he pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to serve 6 to 8 years in the state prison at Green Bay.  That evening the sheriff fed Logan his supper in a downstairs room at the jail.  This was their normal procedure when prisoners were in residence.  As the two went back upstairs, Logan who was ahead of the Sheriff stepped quickly around a corner.  The Sheriff thought he had gone into the bathroom and went to check.  After the Sheriff passed by without seeing him, Logan hopped over the stair rail, ran down the stairs and out the door.  He had listened to what the officers in the jail had been talking about, and from those conversations realized that the door to the outside was unlocked.  He had also noticed that a blanket and a bucket were near the head of the stairs.  If the door had been locked, the plan was to throw the blanket over the Sheriff’s head and then hit him with the bucket and steal his keys and gun. 

          The Sheriff put out an alarm which turned out a large posse, which searched fruitlessly

for several hours.  Later Logan admitted that he had spent the time from 7:00pm until

2:00am hiding in a large pine tree near the Reeder home in Wautoma.  He then walked 22

miles to Richford and there hid in the hay in Ed Burch’s barn.  He was seen going through

Richford by R. G. Wichner, the Buttermaker who was on his way to work at the creamery. 

Wichner called the Sheriff, and he got his men to Richmond as quickly as possible.  After a

bit of searching, they determined that he must be in the Burch’s barn.  They armed

themselves with pitchforks and began turning over the hay.  Eventually they forced him out

from the hay and took him back to the jail in Wautoma.  From there the Sheriff eventually

bundled him off to Green Bay.

          Meanwhile back at the hospital in OshKosh, Vernon's condition had worsened.  He was

severely weakened by the blood loss and was developing an infection.  He also was coming

down with pneumonia.  The doctors did all they could, but the delay in treatment and the

aforementioned results of that delay, eventually took its toll.  Vernon Harold Jeffers died

early Tuesday morning, February 18, 1930.[4]  A few days later Vernon was buried in the

family plot in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, in Wild Rose, Wisconsin.

          On March 29, 1930, Merriam Jeffers filed a suit for $5,000 in damages for Vernon's

death.  The suit was brought against Sheriff Frank Schultz, his Deputy Milton Woodward, and the 'Vigilantes'.  The coroner's jury had found that Vernon had died of pneumonia, with the gunshot wound being a contributing factor.  The case went on for several months, and in October 1930 the case was settled out of court for $1,000.          

 

          AFTERWORD:  Grandma Cele (Lucille Jeffers) told me shortly after Vernon’s death she stopped going to school.  She had been greatly affected by all that had happened and had a hard time dealing with Vernon's death.  She said she felt she had a nervous breakdown.  By the time she felt well enough, she decided to quit and not go back school.  After the shooting she found a bullet which was embedded in the wall of their house.  She kept it for the rest of her life.   

          Around the summer of 1998 I took Jessica and Eric, and we visited Wild Rose, Wisconsin.  I am sure they were bored a lot of the time, because I was researching family history.  But they did seem to have fun looking for gravestones in the local cemeteries.  They did really enjoy another activity that we just stumbled upon.  Just outside of Wild Rose was a business that built and serviced snowmobiles.  And they were putting on an event where they raced snowmobiles across a mill pond.  As long as they kept moving everything was fine.  But if they lost momentum, or the engine died, the snowmobile would sink.  Jessica and Eric liked it when they sank. 

          While we were there, we visited the Elisha Stewart house, it is a small museum that the Historical Society for Wild Rose maintains.  During our visit there an older lady asked if we were related to any families in or from the area.  I told her we were related to the Jeffers and Stevenson families.  She remembered Merriam because when his younger brother Floyd died, Floyd had donated a lot of family heirlooms to the Historical Society.  When Merriam heard about it, he came and made them give it all back.  I didn't get the idea he was too popular with the ladies at the historical society after that.  She also knew about the incident of Vernon’s death.  In fact, she said that her father was one of the ‘vigilantes’, and he had been devastated after the shooting.  He was convinced that it was a bullet from his gun that hit Vernon.  She said he went to his grave believing he was directly responsible for Vernon’s death.[5]   

 

[1] Family Bible

[2] Oral History from Lucille Carroll

[3] Rose Neighborhood Sketches, By:  Alfred S. Roe

[4] Newspaper

[5] Firsthand accounts

[6] Newspaper