_________________________ Howder's Site _________________________

The Sylvester Family of Plainview, Minnesota*

Detailed account of suspect mortgages

December 11, 1925


PAGE 171

$1,200, $1,500, $7,000, Charles Zirbel $2,000, Charles Nienow $3,000, Frank L. Kruger $625, Joseph and George Markus $3,500, A. G. Blowers $850, Dave Hill $8,700, Frank Governor $1,100, N. T. Evans $300, Otto Johnson $5,500, Amos Estate $1,654.15, Winona Merchants Bank draft $2,020.33.
Following is Stoltz’s list of the notes of which Sylvester bolstered up his personal account:
July 15, 1916 $1,654.15 Amos Estate
Sylvester Brothers account March 27, 1917 $850
Hammel Estate Nov. 3, 1917 $1,000
C. Umbreit October 15, 1920 $5,000
Otto Johnson Mortgage July 6, 1921 $5,500
Peter Fender Mortgage March 1, 1922 $2,000
W. J. Stephan June 26, 1922 $2,077.17
P. C. Wood June 29, 1922 $4,800
Susie Weise Mortgage September 27, 1922 $3,000
Mrs. L. R. Bateman Dec. 30, 1922 $7,000
C. Zirbel Mortgage Aug. 13, 1923 $1,500
Paid Mrs. Bateman January 10, 1924
L. D. Colby December 13, 1923 $6,129.66
G. W. French Dec. 12, 1923 $3,534.17
Mrs. Look Dec. 31, 1923 $1,336.12
M. Grieve Dec. 31, 1923 $500
In the fall of 1924 Mr. Mikkelson testified, Christ Umbreit came to Sylvester and asked the payment of a $5,000 personal note that he had given him. Sylvester put him off but in January Umbreit insisted that the note be paid and in order to extricate himself from the difficulty Sylvester gave Umbreit a mortgage for $5,000 of the latter’s son and daughter-in-law, which was held by the bank. In order to square the bank’s records and cover the amount taken from the bank’s assets for his personal use, Sylvester went to the safety deposit box of Mrs. Anna Reich, took out a mortgage amounting to $8,200 and listed it in the bank’s assets. This was $3,200 more than was required and he therefore took of the assets a note for $3,400 signed by Henry and Ella Umbreit. Then the assets were short again, this time to the amount of $200 so he evened things up by making a notation on the note that $200 had been paid on it. County Attorney Foley went into other deals in which similar methods were used in keeping the bank going by "robbing Peter to pay Paul." According to the county records the bank was short $1,482.48 of tax money that it had collected. Its surplus fund which should have been $30,000 at the time of closing was $28,183.84.
Transaction after transaction and records upon records were introduced until the proceedings became dull and tedious, showing the discrepancies of Sylvester in an attempt to show that there was so much of this work going on that anyone working in the bank could not help but know that the bank was insolvent. Records and entries were made by Stoltz but in cross examination Murdoch showed that Stoltz acted the part of a bookkeeper and that in obeying the instructions of a superior might not know the significance of his entries.
The state case is fixed on the IOU statement as the only concrete fact implicating Stoltz. The evidence of witnesses who were customers of the bank has all pointed to the fact that no executive power was delegated to Stoltz, that he never made a loan and never went further than receiving an occasional payment. Mrs. Carley who was employed in the bank for five years, testified that the actual work leveled upon herself and Stoltz and that Stoltz was the first to arrive at the bank in the morning and often worked after the rest had gone home after closing time. He even kept a record of the time that other members spent at things not connected with the bank work. She also testified that


Previous: Page 170.
Next: Page 172.
Initial: Table of Contents


* SOURCE: Manzow, Ron (compiler), "The Sylvester Family of Plainview, Minnesota - a collection of information taken from the Plainview News, other newspapers, letters, and diaries beginning in 1884": Plainview Area History Center, 40 4th St. S.W., Plainview, MN 55964. Compiled in 2001.

NOTE: from Ron Manzow, December 2001: "Feel free to reproduce the pages for anyone who wants a copy. It was compiled to be shared... All I ask is that they consider sending a check to the [Plainview Area] History Center to help us out. That should be enough."


Howder; © 1995-2011 All Rights Reserved. Last Updated February 14, 2011.