The Schoolteacher of Del Norte

Miss Adeline Fry was twenty-six years old in the autumn of 1884, in her second year of teaching at the Del Norte public schoolhouse on Spruce Street, boarding with a widow named Clara Hobbs two blocks east of the building. She had come from Alamosa the previous year, was said to be a careful and patient teacher with the younger grades, and had given no one in Del Norte cause to remark on her particularly, which in a small town means she had made herself a part of things without friction. She walked to the schoolhouse at the same hour each morning. She returned to Mrs. Hobbs's by the same route each evening.

On the morning of Tuesday, October 7th, Miss Fry did not appear. Mrs. Hobbs knocked on her door at seven, found it unlocked, and entered to find the bed slept in and the room otherwise undisturbed. The coat was gone from the hook by the door. No note had been left inside the house and no words had been exchanged the previous evening that Mrs. Hobbs recalled as strange. She contacted the schoolboard president, who went to the schoolhouse. On the front door of the building, pinned with a common nail, was a folded piece of paper. It read:

The Rio Grande County Sheriff, a man named Ira Telford, was brought in that morning despite the instruction. He examined the note, questioned Mrs. Hobbs and several neighbors, and organized a search of the roads south and east of town without result. He took statements from teachers, boarders, and two men who had recently sold firewood to the Hobbs house. None of it produced a lead. No one had seen Miss Fry leave the boarding house or had heard anything in the night.

The schoolboard deliberated on the payment. The official record states that no money was deposited at the bridge. Whether this is accurate has been disputed quietly in Del Norte for as long as the case has been discussed. The south fork bridge was not watched on Thursday night — Telford had too few deputies and judged that visible surveillance would endanger the woman. What was found at the bridge on Friday morning, when a deputy rode out, was nothing. No money, no note, no sign that anyone had been there. The board maintained no payment had been made. Telford recorded the same.

Miss Adeline Fry walked back into Del Norte at noon on Friday, October 10th. She came in from the south road, on foot, her coat muddy at the hem and her hair unsettled, but otherwise showing no injury. She had been absent for seventy-two hours. Dr. R. H. Colwell examined her at the Hobbs house and reported no physical harm.

Her account, given to Telford that afternoon, was consistent and spare. She had been taken from the boarding house before dawn on Tuesday, blindfolded almost immediately, and transported by wagon for a duration she estimated at two hours or possibly less. She had been held in an underground space — a root cellar, she believed, based on the smell and the cold and the wooden steps she had descended. She was brought food twice a day: bread and broth, left without conversation. She heard no voices raised, no argument, no sounds that she could identify as belonging to a specific place. On Friday morning she was blindfolded again, driven for what felt like a shorter distance, and left on the road with the blindfold removed. She heard the wagon move away. She walked north until she reached town.

She could not describe her captors. She had not seen their faces. They had spoken to her a total of three times — to instruct her to come quietly, to tell her she would not be harmed if she cooperated, and to tell her she was being released. All three exchanges were brief. She said the voices were men's voices, more than one, and that there was nothing about them she could identify.

Miss Fry completed the school term through May 1885. She gave notice at the end of the year and left Del Norte that spring. She did not leave a forwarding address with Mrs. Hobbs. She was not located in subsequent county records for Rio Grande or any adjacent county. Telford's investigation produced no arrests. The note was retained as evidence and has not been located in surviving county records. Whether the money was paid, and by whom, was never established to the satisfaction of anyone who looked into it.