This High School Girl Has Been Abducted by This Man

Balsam Lake, WI: Sheriff of Polk County, Wisconsin, 1923. First Edition. Ephemera. Very good. An illustrated circular seeking information about Marion Christopherson who disappeared with Dr. Robert Frank in December 1923. The title of the circular describes Frank as abducting Christopherson, but the lengthy narrative text, inset with pictures of "the girl" and "the man", tells a more complicated, but still troubling, story. Christopherson boarded a train with Frank, who was her uncle by marriage.

Online newspaper accounts reveal that they eventually washed up in San Francisco, where it turned out that Frank was a bigamist and had married or swindled a number of women across the country.

While such circulars are not uncommon, this one is particularly descriptive, describing Frank as a man who "always carried a loaded six-shooter" and had a bad cough: he "spits frequently, raising a good deal of discharge, sometimes blood." Christopherson is a young woman whose "upper teeth protrude slightly" and "usually smiles when speaking." Her distraught parents, "who are farmer folk of small means" offered a $400 reward for her return.

8-1/2 by 11 inches. Printed in two colors. Folded for mailing, else very good. Some adhesion scarring on the verso from where it was removed from a scrapbook or wall.