BP family history goes on trial

Chances are, it had been a few years since the Herdina girls – Judy, Mary, Becky and Andrea – had made their father, Chuck, unhappy.
He’s in his 90s now, and they’re all grown with children of their own, but that didn’t stop him from sharing his displeasure about their plans last week:
“Why are they bringing all of this up again? There were plenty of Petersons and Johnsons that were tried, too,” Herdina told Becky Herdina Jensen.
It had fallen to her to tell Chuck that a bit of family history was going to be back in the public eye – nearly 145 years after it happened.
“He wasn’t happy about it,” she said.
Judy Herdina Esplan, Mary Herdina Idso, Jensen and Andrea Herdina Simon had all grown up hearing the story of their great-grandfather, Adolph Herdina, who spent four years in prison for a fight back in July 1877 on a dusty lane in Somerset Township.
“My grandmother always said they were railroaded,” Idso said. That grandmother had married Adolph Herdina’s son, Adolph Jr.
Of course, family lore being what it is, the women figured the exact details were probably lost to time – until a poster caught Esplan’s eye.
It was an advertisement for “History Uncorked,” a program at the Steele County History Center that invites guests to be the jury as actors share historic case law by bringing historic legal battles to life.
At the bottom of the poster: The State of Minnesota v. Herdina.
It had to be her ancestors, and it had to be the case they’d grown up hearing about, in bits and pieces.
Esplan got the word out to her siblings, and the four sisters and their spouses watched as the story became real – sort of.
The Program
“History Uncorked” is a partially interactive event; after attendees watch the trial, recreated through available court and newspaper records, they become the jury. There are discussions about the testimony, the evidence and the attorneys’ handling of the case, then each table of participants renders its verdict.
The cast is often made up of local legal experts – Steele County District Judge Karen Duncan was the host of last week’s event – and the performances are convincing.
She acknowledged the trial was “not entirely historically accurate,” and that while the word “murderous” was often used, no one actually died.
Prior to the testimony beginning, the jury selection process was replicated. Those chosen had to be landowners, men and white. In this case, they could not be Bohemian.
The Case
The defendant was actually one more generation removed from the Herdina girls; it was the trial of their great-great-grandfather, Frank Herdina Sr.
He was travelling by wagon with his sons Frank Jr. and Adolph, his daughter, Agnes, and a friend, John Kroulik, when they encountered another wagon, carrying a wealthy farmer, his family and two of his hired hands.
Both sides agree that Adolph produced a knife and stabbed one of the hired hands, William Barker. They also agree that Frank Sr. had already broken up one altercation between the two parties earlier that day – started by Barker.
In that dust-up, Barker threw a rock at Frank Jr., who was singing loudly and off-key. A skirmish started, but was quickly stopped by the elder Herdina.
What was less clear was who started the second incident, the one that led to the stabbing, and whether Frank Sr. was trying to break up that fight or enter into the fray.
He was charged with one count of assault with intent to do great bodily harm.
Though he was defended by an able attorney, much was made of the fact that the Herdinas were Bohemian; Bohemia was the western part of the Czech Republic.
Their work ethic was mocked and much was made about the fact that they were drinking – though Barker admitted on the stand that he, too, had been drinking.
“They’re hotheads and alcoholics,” said Walter Prescott, a law clerk for Judge Joseph Bueltel who played the role of Barker. “You can’t trust these folks.”
Frank Sr., played by former Owatonna Police Chief Gene Fisher, also took the stand, downplaying his own stab wounds. He was “trying to get Barker away so nobody would get hurt,” he said, by getting in the middle of it all.
The Verdict
Because his attorney made it clear there was no intent – or event an assault, really – by Frank Sr., the 100 or so ad hoc jurors at “History Uncorked” overwhelmingly found the defendant not guilty.
The Herdina girls, though, knew the truth.
“He didn’t even speak the language,” one of them said, though during the performance, a translator was provided.
“We were told there was no translator,” Jensen said.
“There wasn’t,” Duncan confirmed. “We took a little creative license.”
The rest of the crowd was shocked to hear Frank Sr. had been convicted and spent a year in prison. Frank Jr. got two years and even Kroulik served time.
It certainly wasn’t a jury of his peers, one woman said, and the discrimination was evident.
The majority of the participants said it was the lack of intent that formed their decision – but “that was not an argument the defense made at the time,” said Esther Sherman, who played the female version of Frank Sr.’s attorney, Amos Coggswell.
In reality, however, Coggswell did take the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The justices upheld the verdict in a landmark ruling that “a parent has no right to protect his child in the commission of a crime.”
The child in question, Adolph Herdina, was still a teenager when he went to prison. He would go on to marry and have children, including Adolph Jr., whose granddaughters seemed to feel a sense of vindication that a jury today would have acquitted Frank Sr.
“Maybe I’ll go home and tell Dad how it went,” Jensen said with a smile. “It might make him feel better.”
There was one more order of business, one that brought the mood up.
“I just want you to know,” said Ivan Idso, Mary’s husband, “that these Herdinas still can’t sing.”