The Sylvester Family of Plainview, Minnesota*

Hearing in Bankruptcy of Edwin Sylvester postponed due to trustee's illness

December 18, 1925 - January 15, 1926

PAGE 174

man's brow or to have the faith of the whole countryside violated?’
Mr. Murdoch started by asking that the jury not be swept off their feet by popular clamor or prejudice, and to take themselves back to the atmosphere existing before the crashing of the bank. He asked the jurors not to be swayed by the "inflamed, impassioned address of the county attorney, who sounded," he said, "as though he were on the steps of the bank addressing an angry mob of depositors."
"The closing of the bank was a calamity," Mr. Murdoch said, "like a conflagration or an earthquake, stirring the whole country to its depths. On top of that the president of the bank, the most loved, the most trusted man in the community, had fled with criminal charges hanging over his head.
"In the midst of that atmosphere the grand jury indicted all the officers of the bank, but the atmosphere how has cleared and it is time to take sober, second thought and investigate to what degree, if any, this defendant was responsible. Let us get back and consider the actual charge against this man – that of having received a deposit in a bank he had good reason to know was insolvent.
"It is conceded that he received the deposit and that the bank was insolvent, and the only remaining question then being whether he knew the bank was insolvent. We know today how rotten at the heart Ed Sylvester was, and that instead of being a model of honor and integrity he was a thief at the time he left Plainview, but we must get back to the condition of mind in which the people of Plainview and Adolph Stoltz were before any of these things were uncovered.
"Up to that time that Ed. Sylvester left, not a man, woman, or child questioned the solvency of the bank and for a quarter of a century the president stood as the guardian and confidant of the whole countryside. No one questioned his integrity until the day that he fled. Even Senator Carley, the attorney for the bank and Sylvester, who can smell a rat as far as anyone I know, never got a scent of the stench of Sylvester’s crookedness, for if he had he would have sounded an alarm bell on the streets of Plainview. He seemed, like all the rest, to be hypnotized by this man who was so tall that you could hardly see the top of him.

Stoltz No Super Man
"Yet they say that poor Adolph Stoltz should have known more than anyone else in the state of Minnesota – even more than the trained bank examiners. When Ed. Sylvester had deceived everyone for a quarter of a century, Stoltz should have been the only one to find him out.
"The State of Minnesota is not trying to discharge its bank examiners for incompetency for not sounding the alarm, and for passing the bank as solvent year in and year out, but all it is trying to do is to send Adolph Stoltz, a man with a seventh grade education, to prison for not finding out what the bank examiners failed to discover. That’s al the state is trying to do, but my God, it’s enough."

1926

January 15, 1926-

Trustee is Ill, Bankrupt Case is Postponed
Hearing in Bankruptcy of E. L. Sylvester, Advanced to January 30th
Illness of C. L. Mikkelson Delays Hearing for Another Week
The hearing in the bankruptcy case of Edwin L. Sylvester scheduled for Saturday Jan. 23, in the United States court at Winona, has been postponed until Jan. 30, on account of the illness of C. L. Mikkelson, trustee in the estate.
The hearing is to be decided whether or not Mrs. Hattie Sylvester, wife of the missing president, shall be given control of the normally exempt personal property and homestead. The bank’s attorneys contend that money wrongfully taken from the bank, and rightly belonging to the depositors was used to develop and purchase this property and that the property should be included in the assets of the closed bank.

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* 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."