Daniel F. Wolfe (1833–1882)

Daniel F. Wolfe was born in March 1833 in the townland of Dromin, near Ballybunion, County Kerry, Ireland, the son of Richard Wolfe, a Catholic farmer, and Mary Foley Wolfe. He had ten siblings: Margaret (b. ca. 1826), Mary (b. 1826), Maurice (b. 1828), Mary Ellen (b. 1829), Patrick (b. 1830), Richard (b. 1836), John Maurice (b. 1838), Bridget (b. 1839), Edmund/Edward (b. 1840), and Richard J. (b. 1843). The first Richard died before 1848, and Bridget before 1847.

Wolfe immigrated to the United States in the company of his parents and siblings, traveling in steerage class aboard the Thomas H. Perkins. They arrived in New York from Liverpool on September 29, 1848. Daniel Wolfe is listed as fourteen years old on the manifest, with an occupation of mechanic. The family settled in LaSalle County, Illinois, joining relatives there.

In 1868, Wolfe joined with his cousin, Richard Wolfe, in running R. Wolfe and Company, a wholesale and retail liquor store in Ottawa. The partnership dissolved in January 1871. During this time Wolfe lived with his sister, Margaret Wolfe Fanning, but his movements over the next several years are unclear, By 1880, with his brother Edward, he had moved to Carroll, Iowa, a small farming community northwest of Des Moines.

Wolfe’s first cousin, Ann Wolfe Collison, moved to Carroll from Illinois shortly after her wedding in 1874. Her mother and brother, another Daniel Wolfe, joined her. A different set of first cousins, James Carey Wolfe and Thomas Carey Wolfe, also farmed in Carroll, the latter moving there as early as 1867. Daniel Wolfe was remembered by The Herald newspaper of Carroll for having “engaged in the butter and egg business” in town, and for being “a quiet and good citizen so far as we ever knew.”

On October 6, 1882, Wolfe checked into the newly opened, three-story Anaconda Hotel in Miller, Dakota Territory. The town itself, which lay on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, was barely a year old and founded by Henry Miller, of Blairstown, Iowa. A number of the first settlers came from around the state and Carroll, in particular. On November 1, the local paper welcomed Wolfe to town, announcing that he had opened a saloon, the Northwestern Exchange, on the west side of Broadway, and describing him as “a genial gentleman” who was “deserving of a large patronage.”

Nine days later he was dead.

Murder and Suicide

An initial account of Wolfe’s murder appeared in the November 8 edition of the weekly Hand County Press. By happenstance, the editors ran late with their edition that week, and despite its date the paper actually published on November 11, a day after the crime. In the front-page story, the editor explains that Wolfe’s body had been found burning in the Wessington Hills, a few miles southwest of Wessington, a town to the east of Miller. A ranch hand investigating the fire discovered the Irishman had been shot in the head at close range.

Word soon spread that Wolfe had been seen earlier in the day with another of Miller’s newcomers, Wilfred H. Macomber, also of Carroll. Macomber, a twenty-two-year-old law student who had hoped to open an insurance business, had rented a team of horses and told friends that he and Wolfe were headed to Wessington and then to Huron. It is unclear whether the two men had known one another in Carroll.

Early in the afternoon, a Miller resident saw Macomber alone in Wessington and asked him about Wolfe. Macomber said that his companion had complained of being cold and hopped the train to Huron. Macomber played a game of cards in the town of St. Lawrence, on the outskirts of Miller, before returning his team of horses about five thirty that evening. He retired to the home of Frank Mead, another Carroll native who owned a lumberyard in town and rented out rooms.

By seven thirty, Miller’s twenty-six-year-old sheriff, William B. Price, had rounded up a posse and arrived at the Mead residence. A lynch mob was gathering on the street when Price confronted Macomber in Mead’s front room. Macomber asked the sheriff for a warrant, and Price explained that he wasn’t required to have one. Macomber then asked for identification. When Price satisfied the request, Macomber pulled a revolver from his coat and shot himself in the head.

“The sheriff caught him before he fell,” the Hand County Press reported, “but laid him gently on the floor, for he had a perforated brain just above the right ear, almost identically in the same place where Wolfe had been shot.”

No motive for Wolfe’s murder ever came to light, although Macomber’s friends and family speculated the killing might have been an accident.

Wolfe’s brother Edward retrieved his body and transported it to LaSalle County. He is buried with his parents at Saint Columba Cemetery in Ottawa.

Selected Sources

“Brevities; Monday,” The Free Press (Streator, Illinois), November 25, 1882.

“The Dakota Tragedy,” The Herald (Carroll, Iowa), November 22, 1882.

“A Double Tragedy! Daniel Wolfe Found Murdered Near Wessington,” Hand County Press (Miller, Dakota Territory), November 8, 1882 [transcript].

“Dissolution,” Ottawa Free Trader (Illinois), January 28, 1871.

“D. Wolfe,” Hand County Press (Miller, Dakota Territory), November 1, 1882.

Federal Census, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880.

“Hotel Arrivals,” Hand County Press (Miller, Dakota Territory), October 11, 1882.

“Local Affairs,” The Herald (Carroll, Iowa), November 15, 1882.

“Macomber’s Murder and Suicide,” Sioux City Daily Journal (Iowa), November 17, 1882.

The Messenger (Indiana, Pennsylvania), November 22, 1882. Notable for its inaccurate and highly dramatic account.

“Murder and Suicide,” Wheeling Register (West Virginia), November 16, 1882. Notable for its inaccurate and highly dramatic account.

“Northwestern Items,” The Sioux City Daily Journal (Iowa), November 15, 1882. Notable for identifying the victim as Martin Wolf.

Record of Baptism, March 1833.

“Wolfe and Macomber; Further Particulars of Their Untimely Death,” Hand County Press (Miller, Dakota Territory), November 15, 1882.