The Race to the Finish: Fred C Monteith & Martin Rector

Andrew Monteith > Edward Boyd Monteith > James Robert Monteith > Fred G Monteith and Martin Rector

The Monteiths were a sprawling family, headed by Scotsman Andrew Monteith and his wife Isabelle Hendry. The family had lived in Penninghame, Wigtownshire, Scotland. They had 11 children, all born in Scotland, and all the surviving children came to the Wisconsin area along with the parents, except oldest child, Mary Ann Monteith McCullough, who moved to the Chicago area with her husband.

Edward Boyd Monteith was a stone mason by trade and was the fourth of Andrew and Isabelle's 11 children. When he came to Platteville, Wisconsin in 1854, he was employed in the building of the State Normal School. He ended up settling on a farm near Liberty, Wisconsin. He and his wife Agnes McCubbin had eight children.

Edward Boyd Monteith

Edward's third child, James Robert and his wife Elizabeth Barger had twelve children. The oldest child, Agnes Mary Monteith married Martin Frederic Rector in 1898 in Preston, Grant County, Wisconsin. They had three boys before 1903, the youngest being only 10 months old at the time of the story. Martin and Agnes farmed near his parents at Spirit Lake, Iowa, having moved there the previous year.

Fred G. Monteith, at age 21, was the middle child of Edward Boyd Monteith. He was a schoolteacher in Grant County and was visiting his sister's family near the east shore of Spirit Lake, Iowa. His visit had lasted 10 days by November 28, 1903. He was scheduled to return to Fennimore, Wisconsin the following Monday.

On the fateful day in question, Martin and Fred had been to town, having been dropped off by the

Okibojiin the Sumertime

Rector's farmhand in the wagon. They told the team's driver, Sam Rettig, if he did not see them along the way back, to go on home. The two dropped their overcoats off at the Schumen's home and stated they would race across East Lake Okiboji by skate and would return to the farm that evening.  At 11 o'clock, Rettig had returned and found the men had not returned. By midnight, Agnes was extremely worried. Rettig notified Martin's father, Dr. A. E. Rector, who along with his brother, the dentist, went to the farm to wait for the dawn so a search could go on.

Fred at about age 15

It didn't take them long, once dawn broke, to find the hole through which both men had fell. Their bodies were discovered immediately and floating side-by-side. They had fallen into water of about 9-feet in depth and gotten their feet stuck in the mud, evidenced by the mud on their skates. Had it not by then been dark and sleeting or had they fallen just a "few rods" in either direction, where the depth and mud would not have been so deep, the outcome might have been completely different.

Martin, the eldest of 10 children, would have been 32 years old the following month. 

Martin's wife Agnes raised her boys and died without remarrying on 23 Aug 1925, at the young age of 49.

Many newswire accounts list the dead incorrectly, naming Fred's brother Llewellyn "Clyde" Monteith as among the dead. The initial article from the Spirit Lake Beacon, on December 4, 1903, listed the dead correctly.