Headlines: Malicious!

How alarming that the newspaper, on June 29, 1869, alerted the community that 'some malicious person' had shot a valuable mare of E. Rivenburgh in Brooklyn Township. And in response, Mr. Rivenburgh was offering a $100 reward 'for the detection of the person who did it.'  So now we will go on a horse chase for some background information.  

First of all, the Rivenburgh family was known to have been from Crystal Lake Township, and their German name is spelled in various ways; in fact, the newspaper spelled it Rivneinng. Records wrote it as Reiffenburgh, Riefenberg, Rivenberg. Such variations make it difficult to research, but the task was undertaken (at an earlier date) because one of Brooklyn Township's first town supervisors, William Stinchfield, married (his third marriage) a Catherine R. from New York, and after decades of living in Brooklyn Township, William was buried in New York; it was a mystery to me how he ended up in New York and hence the research.

It turned out that Catherine R was a Rivenburgh. A girl/young lady that lived with the William Stinchfield family (Ida Calkins; see note 1), married Charles Rivenberg; the assumption was that when William became a widower, he met his future wife, Catherine, through his foster daughter, Mrs. Charles Rivenburgh.  But we see, via the newspaper headlines: Malicious! that an E. Rivenburgh lived in Brooklyn Township.

Let's review. Here is the marriage certificate of William and Catherine dated November 8, 1881. Notice the witnesses...I thought they were C (Charles) Rivenburgh and Ida Calkins

I had not taken the time to realize that the marriage was one year prior to the marriage of Charles Rivenburgh and Ida M. Calkins on November 30, 1882. So instead of William meeting Catherine through Ida, it was probably the other way around,  that Ida met Charles through William.

But the real love matcher was possibly "E. Rivenburgh"; that is an E. not a C. on the witness signatures.  So, who was E. Rivenburgh? By the time those marriages were performed, he had already lived in Brooklyn township for ten years, based on when his horse was shot.

Using the spelling on the signature, familysearch.org easily found a land record for Elisha Rivenburgh for November 4, 1854: he was a territorial pioneer! ["United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KVK-1R32 : 16 June 2023), Elisha Rivenburgh, 1854.] The MN census records for 1875, 1885, and 1895 recorded him in Crystal Lake Township....so not technically a Brooklynite.

Now back to his horse. The issue was not resolved. On October 26, 1869, this notice was the follow-up:

Stay tuned if more related notices for Brooklyn Township are found.

(1) MN 1875 census age 11; federal 1880 census age 16.