Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2025
“When we were quite small, my father (John Herman Henry Abeln) ran the St. Paul House, which was on the corner of Second Street and Fuller Street.”
In March of 1921, Jordan had four arrests, and 100 gallons of liquor was seized, 25 coming from one house alone. Belle Plaine had three arrests, including ten gallons from a single restaurant. In New Market, a drunk man bragged that he was arrested after he had made $16,000 (around $300,000 today) from the sale of illicit liquor.
In Shakopee, there was just one arrest.
This was not because Shakopee was low in crime, but rather because complicit police were tipping people off to the raids.
According to Betty, “…I was a booze peddler! Surprise! I was just a little girl (during Prohibition) when my mother sent me down a few times, with a little grape basket with a bottle in it, covered with a napkin,” said Elizabeth “Betty” Mary Abeln Schultz in the book, As I Remember Scott County, by the Scott County Historical Society, 1980.
“During this era most of the places bootlegged, as there was no such thing as a three percent or six percent.
“You took a chance.
“Well, a stool pigeon turned my father in. The Feds came. He threw the glass on the floor, but there remained enough evidence in the glass to take him in.
“He (John Abeln) was sent away (I think LeSueur) on December 27, my mother’s birthday.
“He was only gone a couple of months.”
Elizabeth “Betty” Mary Abeln Schultz was born August 27, 1915 in Shakopee, daughter of John Herman Abeln (1887-1939) and Minnie Catherine Thiede Ablen (1884-1955). Her grandparents were Henry Abeln (1862-1922) and Mary Braun Abeln (1868-1916). Her great-grandfather worked at Ries Bottling Works for many years.
Her maternal parents were Herman Julius Thiede (1845-1922) and Elizabeth Reinisch Kopp Thiede (1839-1932). Her grandmother married Leonard Kopp on the boat to America. After Leonard died, Elizabeth married a second time to Henry Julius Thiede, who was Betty’s second maternal grandfather. Herman J. Thiede was a prominent blacksmith and owner of Thief’s Wagon Factory and Blacksmith Shop. The story goes that Jesse James had him shoe his horses with two forward and two backwards to fool the lawman. According to Betty, “True or not, I do not know.”
Betty’s parents married on October 12, 1914. Betty was baptized by Monsignor Alois Plut at St. Mark’s Church.
The family lived on the corner of Sixth and Scott Street, and on May 28, 1918, her mother birthed three triplets. Then the family moved to a house across from highway from Wampach’s Cafe. Betty remembered, “I was wheeling around one of the little doll buggies that had a top and then sort of went down by the foot part…I went to my mother and said there was a big bug in the buggy. Well, it was a snake curled up in the bottom end. Math Annen killed it.” After that, they looked for another place and ended up at the red brick house across from St. Mark’s Church. Betty’s father died there at age 51.
John Abeln ran the St. Paul House. “I can still remember just what it looked like in the inside. My mom would clean the upstairs hotel rooms every so often, and we kids could roll the balls on the pool table. Also, I also remember, too, the candy case to the left as you came in the back door. We would get a penny or two once in a while. We would run to the case and say we wanted a penny’s worth of this and a penny’s worth of that!”
Across the alley from the St. Paul House was used for many years as a place on fair days by farmers to sell their livestock on the first Monday of each month.
Later, her father ran Clair’s Bar for a short time. Next door was the confectionery store. “I remember my mother telling me that my father would bring her ice cream from there almost every night.” Clair’s Bar (now Babe’s Bar) had beautiful artwork painted directly on the walls. It was torn down a few years ago.
“I also remember my father having a team of horses and getting rides in the sleigh, sitting on straw and covering with a pretty horse high with a green felt pool table backing. We also had chicken and a cow. All this was in the barn and chicken coop with a French around it, behind the big red house, just across from St. Mark’s Church. Our chicken produced big brown eggs which were my mother’s pride. She’d enter win the county fair each year for many years and always got a blue ribbon.”
Betty remembered that her father then ran the Minneapolis House, called Abeln’s Bar until he died in 1939.
Betty married Donald Emerson Schultz (1918-1985), and they had five girls and three boys.
Donald and Betty worked at the Minnesota Correctional Institute for Women. Don retired on January 1, 1976, after 27 ½ years, and Betty retired July 1, 1979, after 3 ½ years.
Elizabeth “Betty” Mary Abeln Schultz, at age 89 died on March 30, 2005. She is survived by children, Donald, Mary Kathleen, Anita, Monica, Elise, Peter, Joseph; 19 grandchildren; ten great-grandchildren. Funeral was at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee, and she was interred at Shakopee Catholic Cemetery.