Martin Nikolai Hextell, was the second child of eight children born of Rasmus H. and Julia Sjursdatter (Severson) Hextell. Martin was born on February 9, 1881 in Lisbon, Illinois.

While childhood stories are not known to me, it is of interest to note his service to Kendall County as a Sheriff officer. Sheriff Hextell was commended by the Kendall County Record in an editorial of August, 1921, "The people of Kendall County gave every reason to be proud of their sheriff, Martin N. Hextell. This officer has shown that he is in possession of that element that goes to make up a good police officer--practical bravery. There is nothing gaudy about the fearlessness of this man. But when duty calls and his services are needed, Mr. Hextell steps in without a pang of fear. Last Friday night, Sheriff Hextell walked into a dangerous gun man and desperado, gave him shot for shot, and was ready for the final blow when the man committed suicide. The incident took place in downtown Yorkville; the man was suspected in the murder of a police officer at West Chicago, and was confronted by Hextell in what amounted to a gunfight.
While not being confronted with the famous criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde, an interesting sequence of events could (see below*) have played out differently in the following account as Deputy Sheriff in 1933.
The famous criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde may have had complicity to the robbing of the Company E, 129th Infantry, Illinois National Guard armory in the County town of Plattville on August 20, 1933 according to archival records filed by the Bureau of Investigation according to a discovered historical account in FBI records. (The armory heist occurred on April 19, 1933). Sheriff Hextell was interviewed years later indicated it was difficult to trace the robbers for it was "clearly a job of outsiders, and no clues are said to have been found."
A report from the BI Chicago office in mid-October of 1933 says the weapons ended up in the hands of Bonnie and Clyde. The weapons were recovered from the gang following a shootout at the coincidentally named Platte County, Mo. The firearms were taken from the Barrow gang and are said to be in the possession of the the Kansas City office of the FBI.
* The only problem is, some local historians and most Plattville natives who spoke to this newspaper had never heard of the legend. Nothing in the August 1933 issues of the Kendall County Record can be found, nor in the daily newspapers which also covered the area at the time.
One article, from May 10, 1933, in the Sycamore True Republican newspaper, has a headline: “Plattville armory entered; big loss.” However, there is no mention of Bonnie and Clyde in the article. The incident, however, is mentioned in several books on Bonnie and Clyde.
From the book “My Life with Bonnie and Clyde” by Blance Caldwell Barrow, Clyde Barrow’s sister-in-law and wife of Clyde’s brother “Buck,” co-authored by Esther L. Weiser: “Aug. 20, 1933 – Clyde Barrow and W.D. Jones rob a National Guard Armory in Plattville, Illinois. Jones leaves Bonnie and Clyde not long afterward. He is later arrested near Houston, Texas.”
According to a book by British author and historian Winston Ramsey, Jones told a jury in a later trial that he and Clyde robbed an armory in “some small town in Illinois” and that they “stole BARs and six .45s.” He quotes a Texas prison official’s memoirs that state that “records show that the Plattsville (sic), Illinois armory was robbed on August 20, 1933.”
The 2009 book “Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde” by Jeff Guinn explains that Clyde, Bonnie and Jones planned to flee west in the summer of 1933, but in Colorado learned that the state police were looking for them.
“Since Colorado apparently wasn’t safe, Clyde decided to throw off potential pursuit by following a zigzag route that took the trio as far north as Minnesota and Illinois before dipping back south through Nebraska and eventually into Mississippi,” Guinn’s book states. “They got the money they needed through an ongoing series of small town robberies. Their take was never very much, just enough for food and gas and some clothes. They tried to avoid even medium-sized towns where local police might be lurking. On August 20, Clyde and W.D. broke into an armory in Illinois, and came away with three BARs, a number of handguns, and lots of ammunition. Now they felt they were sufficiently armed again.”
The 2009 book “Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend” by Paul Schneider, gives a more detailed, yet conflicting, account:
“Less than a week after the shootout in Joplin, a Ford sedan with Missouri plates and carrying three men and two women turns up in Plattville, Illinois. ‘One woman was a blonde, the other a brunette, and both looked like hard characters,’ a witness says,” the book states.
It continues, “One of the men, a small guy with a southern accent who ‘had a rather thin face and sickly looking’ comes into the grocery store there. He buys a little something and asks casually at the checkout counter if there’s an armory in town. Next morning, when the supply sergeant shows up at the armory he discovers that the front door is wide open and all the locks in the place were busted. Three Browning automatic rifles are gone, along with 10 pistols, assorted other rifles, and a whole carload of parts and accessories. Even the bayonets and scabbards are gone.”
The armory in Plattville was the site of the Company E 129th Infantry of the Illinois National Guard. The captain of that company from 1925 to 1941 was Charles G. Howell of Plattville, who died at the age of 83 in June of 1969, according to his obituary in the Record.
Fletcher said Howell was able to get the armory located in the small town of Plattville because he knew people in Washington, D.C.

The site of the armory has a plaque, placed as part of the county’s American bicentennial celebration in July of 1976, that states that Plattville was the smallest village in the U.S. to be awarded a National Guard armory. The armory was established on July 16, 1923.