Dassel’s Unknown Man

By Bill Ward

In the spring of 1925, Levi Danielson of rural Dassel had quite a surprise. When he opened the cover of the cistern he used as a water reservoir for his livestock, there floated a badly decomposed body. The authorities were advised and they removed the body to the Eckman Undertaking Parlor.

An autopsy was performed by Drs. Peterson and Wilmont and Coronor Robertson where it was discovered the man had been crushed over the left temple by a heavy blow such as might be produced by an ax. It was evident the man was dead before being tossed into the cistern.

No family lived on that farmplace, it being some distance from the Danielson home and used only for livestock. The house on the place was empty, and occupied only in the summer for migrant Mexican worker housing. Odds are that the body had been in the cistern all winter. While many inquiries were made as to who this man was and how it happened that he was floating dead in the Danielson cistern, there was to be no answer to the many mysteries. It was speculated that he may have been part of a Mexican work crew that was chopping wood in the area the previous summer but that was not confirmed.

No one ever claimed the body and it was ultimately left up to the county to dispose of. The man was buried in the Dassel Cemetery with no marker stone, under the name Unknown Man. He remains there today, a very, very long way from home. Wherever that home was, there may still be someone there today wondering what ever happened to the fellow who headed north for work and just never came back.

Information from April 8, 1925 Dassel Dispatch