Peering at the Past – Grandma Vogel Disappeared Without a Trace

A 7-year-old boy stood in Hokah Hardware where the owner handed him flowers to take to his grandma. On December 11, 1928, Anna Vogel was 68 when she headed off on foot with those flowers to a nearby cemetery. “I’m going to talk to Pa,” she reportedly said. John Vogel had died 11 months before (January 15, 1928). Before placing flowers on her husband’s grave, the mother of 10 disappeared without a trace. 

That account came down through family lore when Ardelle Schaffer, 82, the twin sister of that young boy in the hardware store, talked with a reporter in 2003. Seventy-five years previous, two days following the mysterious disappearance, the Hokan Chief newspaper said the family at first did not know where Anna had decided to go when she left home where she resided with her son (Arthur) and daughter-in-law. It was not unusual for Anna to visit friends in town or another of her adult children – even to not return by noon. 

But when she had not returned by eight o’clock in the evening, the newspaper said, “an inquiry was made at the several places where she would be most likely to be found, but it was fruitless. A general alarm was given over all the telephone lines at nine o’clock and searching parties were formed shortly afterward which scoured the neighborhood all night.”

The next edition of that weekly newspaper reported all possible efforts had been made, including dragging the river. A $50 reward had been offered for “any clue which will lead to her recovery.” That amount in 1928 had the purchasing value equivalent to $933 in 2025. 

Schaffer removed from the wall of her home a wooden oval frame to show the reporter an old family photograph of white-haired Anna Vogel and her husband John, surrounded by their adult children and grandchildren. “She was a small lady, only about 5 feet tall or so, and she wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said her 4-foot-11 granddaughter. “It must have been very hard on my mother, who was pregnant with my brother, Bill.”

Schaffer said the family had no theories about foul play. “We knew practically everybody in Hokah. It’s just a real mystery. I remember that they searched for her with bloodhounds.” 

At age 93, Frank Fairbanks vividly recalled working with those bloodhounds when he was an 18-year-old high school senior. When those intimidating dogs picked up a scent, it took the strength of two adult men to control them.

“I knew Mrs. Vogel very well. She was just a delightful old lady,” Fairbanks expressed while being interviewed in the kitchen of his farm home. “My mother told us that Mrs. Vogel had turned up missing that morning and that there was no trace of her at all. They were bringing bloodhounds over that were owned by George Brooks of Onalaska to help in the search.”

Because Fairbanks “knew the lay of the country” around Hokah, he told of helping Brooks, the sheriff and a deputy sheriff with the bloodhounds. With so many people at the Vogel home, the dogs had difficulty picking up a scent. “Those dogs were so powerful. When they came up to you and smelled your clothes, it felt like they were going to be pulled right off of you,” he recalled. “Never once did those dogs give an indication of Mrs. Vogel’s presence.”

Fairbanks offered his own theory about Vogel’s disappearance. “She must have been going across Highway 16 to visit a neighbor and perhaps she was struck by an automobile,” he surmised. “Someone may simply have then stopped, picked up her body and took her somewhere and buried her somewhere up in these hills.”

The occasion for the 2003 interviews was an unexpected discovery the previous weekend. The owner of a home only a block away from Schaffer’s residence had found human bone fragments while digging and moving a stone foundation in preparation to repair a sagging kitchen floor.

The two men working on that home repair project, after first finding bones, continued to dig and unearthed additional bones and a human skull. They then stopped digging and went to notify the police. Hokah Police Chief Rodney Blank said, “It appears to be an adult’s remains and appears to have been there for quite a while.”

Schaffer had already heard about the bones before Chief Blank phoned her to ask if she would help with a DNA sample for a comparison if the bones turned out to be a female. 

“It would be a miracle,” granddaughter Schaffer thought, if indeed this discovery would finally bring some closure for descendants. “But then who did it?” she posed. “My gut feeling is that the bones aren’t her.

“It might be Evelyn Hartley,” she added, acknowledging a 1953 unsolved abduction of a 15-year-old girl from La Crosse. “Who knows?”

The skeleton remains elicited considerable speculation in Hokah, even 75 years after Vogel’s disappearance. When Fairbanks heard about the recent discovery, he said he immediately thought about Anna Vogel. “You never forget something like that.”

According to Sheriff Blank, it might take a state forensics team and investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension several weeks to ascertain the age of the bones. Three days after the discovery, they were already on site to dig for additional remains.

The house had been constructed in 1865, but the bones were found beneath a later addition. It was about a block from where remains of a Native American had been found more than 20 years previous.

The remains were later identified as being those of two females, both dead for at least 50 years, probably much longer. One like Anna Vogel between 5-foot-2 and 5-for-8 in height. But unlike Vogel, one died at age 33 to 44, the other at age 14 to 20. Both were likely American Indians, one maybe with white ethnicity as well.

Ed Littlejohn, public relations officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation, said there had once been a campground in that area.

Sources: Hokah Chief newspaper, December 13, 1928 and Dec. 20, 1928: “Human Bones found under kitchen of Hokah home,” by Dan Springer, La Crosse Tribune, December 3, 2004; “Hokah bones stir up theories,” by Linda McAlpine, Winona Daily News, December 4, 2003: “Forensic experts take close look at Hokah bones,” by Linda McAlpine, La Crosse Tribune; “Public asked to help ID remains,” by Betsy Bloom, La Crosse Tribune, February 7, 2004; “Report: Bones found in Hokah from two females,” Winona Daily News, May 5, 2004