Before the Tragedy

The devil lives among us

After seven years in America, Norwegian immigrant John Hontvet had built up a successful trawl fishing business. He had his own schooner and was able to pay the passage for a woman named Maren Christensen to join him. It was probably an arranged marriage. Maren was a few years older than John. The moved from Boston to the Isles of Shoals where john rented a duplex house on Smuttynose Island. John's brother Matthew soon arrived to fish with John. Maren's sister Karen followed and she found lodging and work as a maid at the Appledore Hotel on a nearby island. In 1872 the Hontvets took on a lodger named Louis Wagner, a Prussian fisherman down on his luck. Wagner stayed with the Hontvets until Maren's brother Ivan and his beautiful bride Anthe arrived late that year. Wagner was forced to move back to a flop house on Water Street, the hard-knuckle "combat zone" in Portsmouth, NH. Wagner found work on a fishing boat called the Addison Gilbert, but the schooner sank, leaving him frustrated and in debt. Wagner was on the docks in Portsmouth when John, Ivan, and Matthew arrived on the afternoon of March 5, 1873.  When a train carrying bait from Boston was late, the three men from Smuttynose were forced to  wait until midnight before they could bait hundreds of hooks. Wagner asked John Hontvet three times if the women would be left alone on the island, 10 miles out to sea. Then, knowing John had significant savings and was trapped on the mainland for the night, Wagner slipped away, stole a fishing dory, and rowed in the darkness toward Smuttynose Island. With luck, he could rob the house while the women were sleeping, and be back before anyone was the wiser. It might have been the perfect crime. (Photo is from a film "The Ballad of Louis Wagner" by Gary Samson/ Portsmouth Athenaeum Collection/ UNH Media Services)