The Star News 10/10/05

Diary sent Fargo man on 34-year hunt

by Britt Aamodt
Special to the Star News

In 1970, retired Marine sergeant D.J. Guerrero, Fargo, groped among the rafters of an abandoned saloon in Montana. When he pulled his hand back, he clasped a pocket-size diary whose mysterious author would lead him on a 34-year odyssey ending in Elk River.

The diarist was Abraham Maricle, born 1826 in Binghampton, N.Y. He was one of nine children, though he himself never had a family.

During his 53 years of life Maricle participated in the removal of the Winnebago Indians, served in the Army, lumbered the Mississippi River and joined the westerly exodus to Montana.

Of course, Guerrero knew nothing of this when he found the diary. Cracking the spine of a book unopened for a century “was like stepping into the unknown,” said Guerrero, particularly when the writer summed up funerals with the same brevity he afforded grocery lists.

On Sept. 29, 1867, Maricle wrote: “Went to the fort to daniel Smarts funrel and came home sick my self.” The following day he remarked, “Weather cold cut wood all day.” Though the book recorded four years of a man’s life (1866–69), it said next to nothing about the man.

The diary generated more questions than answers. And Guerrero, a history buff, was intrigued.

“The more I got into it,” he said, “the more I said, ‘Abraham, I’m going to find you.’”

If he had known in 1970 the time and money he would invest in the search, Guerrero may never have begun. He would put 315,000 miles on his Volkswagen Beetle, chasing down names and places listed in the diary.

He would travel to New York, where the Maricle children grew up, and then to Iowa where, joining the tide of New Englanders heading west for land and opportunity, the sisters and brothers settled. But not Maricle. He alone is missing from the mid-1800s family portrait.

Everywhere Guerrero went, from East to West Coast, he scanned phone directories for Maricles. He interviewed descendants. He acquired 100 boxes and 35 5-foot shelves to store documents.

But Guerrero would turn up some of the most revealing information in military archives.

On Sept. 26, 1861, Maricle enlisted as a member of the First Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters. He would see action in some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles, including Gettysburg and Antietam.

Military records also afforded a glimpse of the man: Maricle had gray eyes, a dark complexion and was 5 feet, 4.5 inches tall.

Curiously, some of the names appearing on the sharpshooter’s roster would later figure in Maricle’s life in Elk River, where he was woodcutting when the diary began in 1866. Of two letters found with the diary, one was from ex-sharpshooter Julian Rand.

Rand, as “Sandy Sam,” wrote to Maricle on Oct. 21, 1868: “You wouldent know the place around Elk River depot. V A Nickerson sold his tavern. Thomas Nickerson and H Houlton have build a good steam saw mill. Crump has sold out and thare is a large hotel whare his saloon stood.”

But by 1868, Maricle had already taken a wagon train west.

“He worked as a woodcutter because that’s all he ever knew,” said Guerrero of Maricle’s time in Montana.

With the influx of homesteaders and gold prospectors to Montana, Maricle found work putting up log cabins. The diary ended during this period and was placed in the rafters of a saloon.

“I wondered if he had to get out of town fast to leave the diary behind,” said Guerrero. Yet, he added, “Maricle never stayed anywhere long.”

But where had Maricle died? Guerrero had searched Elk River many times with no luck. Then in 2004 he took his search online and found the answer.

At some point, Maricle had returned to Elk River, where he died Oct. 15, 1879. He was buried in Vernon Cemetery, feet from Julian Rand.

“I was patting the ground,” Guerrero said of his visit to the cemetery. “I was sitting there talking to myself, to (Maricle). I said, ‘Doggone it, you thought you were going to hide from me. But I got you.’”

Journalist

http:// www.erstarnews.com/2005/october/10diary.html  

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