Turkey with Legal Sauce: The Great McGovney Turkey Debacle of 1907

    Helping your neighbors with chores on their farms, looking out for their children, and knowing them all on a first name basis all belonged to everyday life in the Mokena of yore. In this bygone rural atmosphere, it wasn’t unusual to even know the local animals by sight. It so happens that this small town familiarity, mixed with a certain flock of turkeys, led to a particularly nasty lawsuit in the autumn of 1907. 

     At the center of this feathery affair was a young farmer named George McGovney. A member of a long established Mokena family, he noticed around October 20^th of that year that about 25 of his bronze flock had gone missing. While collecting his mail not long thereafter at the post office on Front Street, McGovney heard some buzz that another farmer, one Peter Thimsen, had been seen herding some turkeys to his place. McGovney’s ears perked up, and as he didn’t know of Thimsen owning any turkeys, he grew suspicious. 

 

     He gathered an acquaintance, and together the two paid a visit to the Thimsen farm. As they walked onto the property, they were intercepted by Mrs. Thimsen, who claimed to know nothing about any new arrivals in the gobbler line. Nevertheless, McGovney had a look around, and while there, he inspected some winged fowl in a woodshed. At first sight, he knew these were his turkeys. He would recognize their distinctive legs anywhere, not to mention the fact that they gobbled with delight when they recognized him, McGovney would later proudly state. 

 

     So sure was George McGovney not only of the true identity of Peter Thimsen’s turkeys, but also of their competence, for upon a second visit, he told Thimsen directly that if he turned the birds loose, they’d surely find their way back to the McGovney place on their own. If they didn’t, Thimsen could consider them a gift. At some point, in a less lucid period for McGovney, he also challenged Thimsen to settle the issue in the road with fisticuffs. Stoically, Thimsen wouldn’t have it, although he would later quip that he couldn’t fight without first having been given the chance to switch the slippers he was wearing for sturdier boots.

 

     The supposed brazen theft of these winged creatures set off a firestorm in Mokena. George McGovney enlisted the help of the village constable, who compelled Thimsen to let the gobblers go, although this itself would prove to be a prickly incident – neighbors wondered how close McGovney was to the turkeys during their trot home. Was it not more like a forceful drive? By November, the case landed in court at the county seat before Judge A.O. Marshall. The whole trial was a debacle of hilarious airs; a debate flared over the proper method of lifting a turkey, a witness named George Smith was called to the stand and it was discovered that this man was the wrong Smith, and on one occasion, Judge Marshall sternly rebuked the jury for laughing during testimony, warning them that George McGovney “probably knows more about raising turkeys than you do.”

 

    The turkey fiasco also had the misfortune of being tried in the days immediately before Thanksgiving, when it received coverage in the Joliet Weekly News. Reporters laughed themselves silly with wordplay; the Thanksgiving day issue having enjoyed such headlines as “Turkey with Legal Sauce” and “Talk Turkey in Court Today”. The columns cracked that the jury had “thirteen good men smacking their lips” and that it “tickled the palates of Circuit Court”. 

 

     The trial took up two whole days, and on Thanksgiving Eve, November 27^th, 1907, the verdict was in. Peter Thimsen was to return the turkeys to George McGovney, and to pay him $60 for his trouble. So Mokenians, enjoy your rich, hearty Thanksgiving feasts, may the cranberries, sweet potatoes, and stuffing delight your taste buds. Just double check that the turkey is actually yours. 

Mystery Upon Our Years: The Wondrous Rock of Herman Lehmann

    Mokena is no stranger to the bizarre and unusual. From our haunted flower shop to unexplained disappearances to UFO sightings, more than a few mysteries can be found in the pages of our history, if one knows where to look. We can’t quite say that we have our own Sasquatch or Loch Ness Monster, at least not yet, but there is one puzzling case that stands out upon our narrative. This author would like to take you on a trip to the distant past, to explore one of the more spellbinding open questions of our years. 

   The man at the center of this question is one Herman C. Lahmann, a member of a long-established area family. Born in 1887 in Homer Township, he was the son of William J. Lahmann and Wilhelmine Mindemann, both devoted members of the German United Evangelical St. John's Church. The elder Lahmann was the owner of two farms on 179^th street, one of which was tenanted by Herman. The story starts out so simply, on a day on which routine work was being carried out by him on the farm. Sometime around 1920, while working in the field, Herman’s plow turned up a stone that was buried about ten inches under the soil. When Lahmann went to pick up the dark green, three-pound rock, its weird, egg-like shape caught his eye, along with the many white spots that covered it. His fascination was fleeting, however, for he quickly moved on and chucked it into a pile of many other stones that he had found in the field.

 

   The next spring, he carted the rocks away with the intention of using them in a foundation for a new outbuilding on the farm. Once again, his interest was piqued by the oblong, speckled rock, but this time he set it aside, and it found a home in his barn. The matter with the stone wouldn’t go away, for during some down time in the winter of 1922, Herman Lahmann polished it, and took it into his house for a closer inspection. Upon giving it a thorough looking over, Lahmann was flabbergasted at what he saw. Upon holding the rock in the light at just the right angle, he was thrilled to discover that upon every one of the 200 or so tiny speckles that covered the stone, were etched tiny pictures. Depicted in lilliputian form were everything from animals, fish, snakes, and even one likeness that Lahmann declared to be Noah’s Ark. Even more baffling, he found human faces, including that of none other than Jesus Christ. 

 

   Perplexed and astounded by his find, the farmer wanted to show off the stone, if only maybe to get some clue as to its origin. He gingerly carried it into Mokena, and brought it to the Front Street office of the News-Bulletin, the village’s weekly newspaper, where it was inspected by Bill Semmler, the paper’s editor. Astonished, the newsman noted that “some of the inscriptions and carvings are so fine that they can only be discerned thru the aid of a powerful magnifying glass.” Semmler recounted seeing all the same things that Herman Lahmann did, even describing a figure with a halo around its head, as well as various letters, including the German word Thal, which signifies a valley. 

 

   Lahmann and his wondrous rock made the front page of the News-Bulletin’s October 6^th, 1922 issue. Editor Semmler asserted that “…whether this curious stone is a freak of nature, or whether it was made by human hands, is a puzzle.” He went on to say that “whether this stone tells the history of some ancient race or civilization is a conjecture.” He also wondered that “if some expert geologist would examine the stone, he might be able to decipher some of its odd figures, which surely must interpret something.”

 

   Many people came to see Herman Lahmann’s mysterious rock, and around the time the article in the News-Bulletin appeared, one bewondered viewer even offered to buy it from him for the princely sum of $100, or around $1,550 in today’s money. Nevertheless, the farmer refused to part with it, perhaps in a testament to the oddity’s authenticity. At the time the story broke, it was noted that no other stones of this sort had ever been found in the area, especially not by Lahmann. 

 

   Whether this extraordinary stone was the real thing, or simply an incredibly elaborate hoax pulled over on Bill Semmler, has long since vanished into the ether of posterity. Any photographs of it have also disappeared to the ebb and flow of time. Whatever secrets Herman Lahmann may have had, he took to his grave in 1961. Also unknown is just whatever happened to the mystery rock. Maybe it has stayed in our midst, silently residing somewhere in Mokena. Who knows, maybe it’s even serving some innocuous purpose such as a doorstop, its uniqueness long since forgotten by the ages.