Between 1965 and 1981, the Clay County jail was run as a family operation. The late William “Bill” Gonser  served as sheriff and his wife, Maggie, ran the jail. From cooking, to cleaning, to keeping inmates in line, it all fell under her jurisdiction. All while raising her four kids … on-site. The previous jail, which was torn down in the early 1970s, included living quarters for the sheriff and their family. 

Short and small, Maggie didn’t gruff from anyone, least of all those in her care, kids or inmates. Though back then, prisoners weren’t dangerous, she said. 

“Most of our prisoners just had too much to drink, maybe they had some marijuana on them,” she said. In fact, some of them, it seemed, would go out and get liquored up on purpose. Usually on cold nights or near the holidays, when the promise of Maggie’s cooking sounded too good to pass up. 

Three meals a day, she cooked for her family and whoever may have been in jail at the time, she said. Chicken, meatloaf, goulash, tater tot casserole hearty family meals were her specialty. Scooping onto plates, she would hand the food through a two-way cabinet and into what they called the bullpen.

They were given dessert, too, until one disgruntled prisoner wrote a nasty letter. It told of the jail having dirty sheets and minimal food.

“From then-on it was no dessert,” she said. “If they were going to write lies about me I was going to stop doing extras.” 

Years later, after Bill passed away, former prisoners wrote to Maggie about how well they were treated and how tasty the food was. Then there was the man who went out of his way to get Maggie’s home-cooked meals. 

“One older guy, every year at Thanksgiving he would get picked up, the only thing wrong was he drank too much,” she said. Bill and deputies would search the hot spots in town: benches and bars, all in search of the man they called Sweed. They would process him and he’d stay until after Christmas. It was an annual tradition, she said. 

She even let him out of his cell to help the janitor. 

“He wasn’t going anywhere,” she said. One year they hadn’t seen Sweed; Maggie even sent a trooper to look for him. 

“A week later we found out he had a lady friend, so he was ok,” Maggie laughed. “Then come Easter, the doorbell would ring and there he was.” This time, Sweed had brought Maggie a flower to show her thanks around the holiday.

“He had been drinking but I wasn’t going to tattle on him, I just said ‘You be careful crossing that street.’ And I watched him go.” 

Though not on the payroll, Sweed was such a regular that Bill once took him fishing with a fresh inmate. She remembered the youngster, who was from Boston, asking what the cows were and when Bill asked him where he got milk he said “From the store in a carton.” 

One man, through the cooking window, called her Saint Mary. 

“That’s what he called me from then on, That was nice compared to everything else I’d been called.” 

And if anyone gave her grief, she gave it right back. One man came in angry, telling her he heard the food was $#!+. She stared at him, and said “Well I was just stirring the $#!+ when you walked in.”

She gained such a reputation as a spitfire, an article in a local paper was titled, “Sheriff’s Wife Bundle of Dynamite! The mid-60s article also stated, “This small, brown-haired young woman observes a daily work schedule that would leave a stalwart lumberjack flat on his back with a nervous breakdown within a week.” 

In addition to raising children, cooking, gathering laundry – she refused to include the family laundry with inmates’ sheets, she was also in charge of answering the phone and relaying information to officers in the field. 

“She ran the whole kit and caboodle back in those days,” said Dave Gonser, Maggie’s son. “She was trying to raise the family while being the nurse, cook, and jailer. She did it all.” 

Another communication portion of the job was handing out mail. 

“Their girlfriends wrote to them, very juicy letters,” she said. “But I would get onto them about what they wrote, I’d say ‘No you’re not writing that; I’m not sending it through the mail.’ But every time a new letter came in it was kind of like getting the next chapter.” 

Jailhouse Flock 

With living quarters intertwining with the jail, Maggie said it was a balancing act to keep her young kids from being too curious. The family had a living room, kitchen, and bedrooms that were connected to the jail cells. Maggie was quick to point out it was not a house. Behind the jail was a crawlspace where the department stored confiscated alcohol, she said. 

The north side of the building was the jail, she said, while they lived in the upstairs other quarters were theirs. They first moved in with two under 2 – a toddler and 4-month-old and stayed until 1971. The family also did weekend stints under the previous sheriff, Bud Harris, to get their feet wet. 

She said Dave would sit on the stairs and talk to various men. One asked if he wanted to escort him to Mexico. Another time, she shut her kids’ bedrooms when a prisoner was planning an escape. 

“He was working his way out; he really wouldn’t have made it but he was chipping away at the bricks and dumping that in the stool,” she said. “Now they have security all over the place and that’s great. We didn’t have any of that.” 

Her kids ran the Courthouse, she said. While their yard included the north side of the building, surrounded by a 14-foot fence topped with wire.

“They were busy little fellas,” she said. Once, John, another of Maggie’s sons, gave a prisoner something through the bars, but Maggie quickly caught the pair. 

“Mom caught him and that was the end of that,” said Dave.

John also got on Maggie’s radio and spoke to the deputies, causing them to radio back and ask if everything was ok. 

Many doctor visits were needed while staying in the jailhouse, she said. From the kids climbing the fence, dogs tripping them on the stairs, and more. Dave had taken to adopting stray dogs at the location, too, which meant animals on-site at any given time. And of course, inmates also had to be taken to the doctor. Officers escorted the men, while Maggie would taken females to their appointments.

Meanwhile, the kids became close with other police officers. They would watch cartoons together. Then-chief of police, Ernie Roll, gave Dave his first bike, while Wayne Ryan, a late attorney, handed them all nickels. 

Overall, of the family’s tenure, Maggie said it was a wild ride, but one she’d do again. 

“Oh it was fun. I just kind of worked into it.”