Alzemina Gertrude "Mina" Mudge

1862 - 1930  (67 years)

• Name	Alzemina Gertrude "Mina" Mudge
  Born	8 Jun 1862	, Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada   [1, 2]
  Gender	Male
  Family Photograph	Lewis Croin Mudge with wife Matilda (Maude) and daughter Alzemina (Mina)
  	Image from Ancestry.com
  		Mudge,LouisCroix-AncestryPublicMemberTree-wifeMatilda(Maude)-daughterAlzeminaMina.jpg
  Interesting	crime, story
  Residence	1870	Lapeer, Lapeer, Michigan, USA   [1]
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-176275
  Died	11 Mar 1930	Benton Harbor, Berrien, Michigan, USA
  Buried	Canning Cemetery, Canning, Oxford Co., Ontario   [2]
  Person ID	I176275	Generations
  Last Modified	12 May 2025

  
  

  Father	Lewis Croin "Lou" Mudge,   b. 2 Apr 1839, Blenheim Twp., Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada ,   d. 6 Aug 1897, , USA  (Age 58 years)
  Mother	Matilda Wood "Maude" Hunt,   b. 9 Apr 1846, , Brant Co., Ontario, Canada ,   d. 16 Jan 1924  (Age 77 years)
  Married	8 Apr 1862	, Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada
  Family ID	F50835	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  MAN MARRIED BY PARSON IN PAJAMAS Menominee, Mich., Aug. 21 1908 Twenty minutes past 2 o'clock this morning Walderman Hoffman of Milwaukee, 22 years old, was married to Mrs. Mina Fudge of Florence, twice 23. The ceremony was performed in twenty three seconds by the Rev. Jones E Jones in his pajamas. ________________________ WOLVES. HUMAN AND OTHERWISE DOSE AWFUL wolves!!!" .... One of the Lake Superior iron ore districts. Conditions here were similar to those of every new range. There is always an outlaw headquarters in all new regions remote from disciplined centers. Florence, at this period of the early eighties, was a metropolis of vice. There was gambling on the main streets, outdoors inclement weather and unscreened indoors when driven in by cold and storm. Prostitution was just as bold. Its red passion garbing paraded every prominent place in town. A mile out of town, Mudge's stockade was the central supply station. It was the prison used by the nerviest white slavers that ever dealt in women. A big log camp with frame gables held a bar and dance hall and stalls on the first floor. On the second Floor were rooms about the size of those in a Tokio Yoshiwara. A third floor attic contained dungeons and two trap doors. In the cellar were dark cells and a secret passage, well timbered with cedar, leading to where the hill on which the stockade was located broke down into a dense swamp. Surrounding this camp of death, and worse, were sharp pointed palisades, ten feet high, of the kind used against the Indians to inclose pioneer blockhouses. There were loopholes. Two passages led through the stockade. One was wide enough to admit a team. This was fastened with hornbeam cross bars. The other entrance was narrower and for commoner use. It was protected by a solid sliding gate of ironwood. On either side of this gate, inside, two big, gaunt, terrifying timber wolves were chained. It was the howls of these four wolves we had heard. This stockade was a wholesale warehouse of women. There were several in the Lake Superior iron country in the early days, but l think this one at Florence was the most notorious and the worst. It was built by "Old Man" Mudge. He was a white. livered, sepulchral individual who wore a cotton tie, a Prince Albert coat and a plug hat; even wore this outfit when he fed the wolves. Mudge worked as a preacher through northern Indiana and Ohio and the scoundrel used his clerical makeup to fine advantage. He had a ready tongue and roped in girl after girl. Not much attention was paid in chose days to pimping and procuring. Whenever a murder grew out of his acts, the old fox would so involve his trail that, if it led anywhere at all, a church was at the end of it, and that would throw off the sleuth. Old Mudge ruined his daughter Mina, and she was "keeper" of the place. Mina Mudge was a stunning woman. Her concentrated depravity, for she too had a child and brought it up in infamy, was glossed over by a tiny animal figure, a rubescent complexion, semi-pug nose, lurking gray eyes, sensual lips and sharpish chin. Her lips were the clew to passion, and eyes and chin betokened the cruelty of a she hyena. Girls were wheedled or beaten into submission, and nearly always when she sold them she had them broken to the business. Two days before, in the evening, a shrinking, girlish young woman was found just outside our door by my wife. She cowered and shivered and looked wild. eyed. It took some time to coax her in. After warmth and food, she told her story. Old Mudge had found her on a farm in Ohio. An orphan, she was sort of bound out, and her life was one of work and little else. Rather attractive, she was spied by the old serpent, and taken north "to a good home." In her heart the girl was good and she was brave. Mina Mudge starved her, beat her, tied her ankles and wrists with thongs and, to break her in with terror, fastened her just out of the reach of the wolves. It was night, and the girl grew cold with exposure and fear. Her wrists and ankles shrunk some, and she wriggled out of the cutting thongs. Then she fled to the swamp and hid until hunger forced her to search for food. We took as good care of her as our means afforded and planned her complete rescue. The day we heard the wolves howling, as men-tioned in the beginning of the chapter, the girl disappeared. It was years later before I knew what had befallen her. Mudge's gang had located and trapped her. They forcibly kidnaped her and carried her to the wolf stockade. There she was given no chance again to escape. Her spirit was broken. She was sold to a brothel. keeper in Ontonagon County, Michigan, and was murdered by him one night in a ranch near to the Lake Superior shore. Murders often occurred, but those guilty were seldom punished. When this girl so mysteriously disappeared from our house, I was suspicious. I went to the sheriff, an Irish saloon-keeper, but could not get him to act. He was either a member of the gang or honestly afraid.... The Iron Hunter by Chase Osborn 1919 [see father's entry]

  
  

• Sources

  [S2374] Census - U.S. Census Population Schedule, 1870 9th Census, Ward No. 4 Pg 3. Lewis Mudge, aged 31, b. Canada Saloon Keeper Matilda aged 24 b. Canada Abzamina aged 7 b. Canada Frank aged 6 b. Canada [S3231] Find A Grave, Canning Cemetery, Blenheim Township, Ontario.

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - 8 Jun 1862 - , Oxford Co., Ontario, Canada Residence - 1870 - Lapeer, Lapeer, Michigan, USA Died - 11 Mar 1930 - Benton Harbor, Berrien, Michigan, USA  = Link to Google Earth