In 1881, a German architect named Emil Strassburger and his wife welcomed their first child, a little girl named Gertrude. Shortly after her birth, they moved to the United States. They moved first to Texas and eventually settled in the little town of Crookston, Minnesota.
The Strassburgers enjoyed a comfortable life. Gertrude was soon joined by three siblings: Richard, Henry, and Ella. Gertrude seemed to be a very happy girl. She got on well with other children in the area and in her teenage years, she met a boy named Will with whom she fell deeply in love. People settled down early in those days and Gertrude and Will expected to be married.
Tragedy struck, and Will died. I haven’t been able to learn much about Will, or how he came to such an untimely early end. When he died, Gertrude was crushed but she clung to her certainty that Will’s body was dead but not his spirit. Eventually, she came to believe they would be reunited though it’s unclear how she expected this to come about. At any rate, she paid no attention to any other young man in the area.
On December 1 or 2, 1902 (depending on the account), when Gertrude was 21 years old, she and some friends went ice skating on the Red Lake River. It was a mixed group of men and women and they were all good friends. For about half an hour, they skated around the lake. It was very cold and the lake was well frozen. Gertrude was in good spirits that day. She made one odd statement to a friend, saying, “Do you know, I feel so queer. I have been hearing music and voices, it seems to me, and they seem to come from a distance. Just a little while ago I heard Will call for me, and it seemed for a moment as if I must go to him.”
A few minutes later, the group decided to race to a bend in the river, approximately a quarter mile away. Gertrude excused herself from joining them. She was a little tired, she said. She spotted a log along the riverbank and offered to watch the group and judge the winner of the race. One of the boys in the group gathered a few small branches and started a small fire next to the log for Gertrude to warm herself. She was stretching her hands over the fire when the little group took off.
They were back in less than five minutes, but Gertrude was gone. The little fire was still flickering and one of the girl’s gloves was left on the log. Curiously, only two sets of footprints approached the log, and they belonged to Gertrude and the boy who built the fire. His footprints led back to the river where the group was waiting. There were no animal tracks.
The log where Gertrude was sitting was in plain view from the river. Had anyone looked, they could have seen her most of the time they were racing.
Panic set in almost immediately. Where could she have gone in so short a time? Why were there no footprints in the snow? They checked for thin or broken ice where she might have gone under but they couldn’t find any.
Gertrude’s disappearance was very out of character. Despite losing Will, she seemed to be a very happy girl. She had plans for upcoming Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. No one imagined she would run away. If she had, she would have at least taken whatever money she had and a few belongings. No one in their small town had seen her pass through.
Search parties found nothing. No tracks of any kind in the snow or in the forest. Detectives concluded the girl could not have left the particular spot where her friends last saw her because of the lack of footprints. They questioned all of the friends in the skating party. No one heard a sound from Gertrude, there were no signs of a struggle. They even measured the ice and found it was a foot thick over the lake.
old spirituals 