The one-act Trifles (August 20 fundraiser) was loosely based on the 1900 murder of a successful Wright county farmer, John Hossack. Margaret Hossack, his wife, was the main suspect, arrested and tried for the murder. Susan Glaspell was a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News and covered the story from the discovery of the body in December of 1900 through the end of the trial, April 11,1901.

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In 1916, Glaspell wrote the one act Trifles, which is loosely based upon her recollection of the Hossack case. Trifles is NOT a retelling of the Hossack murder. There exists, however, a strong spirit of the accused, Margaret Hossack, which will not completely absent itself from the play, nor subsequent writings, including several books about the murder.

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Glaspell's accused farmwife in Trifles is called Minnie Wright. Minnie is the only character in Milbre Burch's one-act Sometimes I Sing (also playing on August 20); it is set in the Anamosa State Reformatory while Mrs. Wright is held there for her husband's murder.

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Below is a guideline to the real and the fiction of the Hossack murder case of 1900.

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1900   

John Hossack dies of head wounds received while sleeping in his bed.

At the end of John Hossack's funeral, his wife, Margaret,is arrested.

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1900 (Fiction)

Glaspell's protagonist is named Minnie Wright. Unseen, she sits in the local jail as the Sheriff and County Attorney search everything at the farmhouse looking for a motive to convict her.

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1901   

Margaret Hossack  is tried in a sensational trial in Indianola, Iowa, and found

guilty.  Susan Glaspell covers the events for the Daily News.

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1901   

Margaret is sent to the Anamosa State Prison Women's Department

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1901 (Fiction)

Sometimes I Sing covers one day in the life of Minnie Wright as she speaks to a reporter in the Anamosa State Prison Women's Department visitor room in 1901.

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1902   

Margaret Hossack is given a retrial which results in a hung jury and the state of

Iowa decides not to retry Margaret. She lives out her life as a free woman.

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1916   

Susan Glaspell writes Trifles, about a farmer John Wright murdered in his bed.

Trifles covers only the initial investigation by the county attorney and Minnie Wright is never seen on stage.

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2011   

Milbre Burch presents a one woman show, Sometimes I Sing, set in 1901.