Badge from Fallen MN Officer Found After Nearly 130 Years

Nearly 130 years ago, Hastings, MN, police officer Albert Jacobson was shot to death while pursuing a burglary suspect who had been spotted in a railroad yard.

As time passed, Hastings police didn’t have much about the killing, other than old newspaper articles of the July 10, 1894, shooting. Around 2013, the police department made several public appeals in city newsletters asking for relatives of Jacobson to contact them in the hope they would have photos or other mementos of the fallen officer, who was 33 years old.

The pleas wouldn’t pan out until 2017, when Jacobson’s great-granddaughter Gloria Hagestuen called Police Chief Bryan Schafer and said her cousin had recently given her a brittle photo of the officer. On the anniversary of his death that year, she met up with Schafer and handed him the only known photo of Jacobson, TwinCities.com reports.

But Hagestuen, believing there could be more relics to discover, kept pursuing.

It paid off this past August, when that same cousin, Michelle Groeneveld, called to say she had discovered something else in an attic hope chest: Jacobson’s police badge. Earlier this month, Hagestuen returned the badge back to the department.