Sixty-five year-old Fredrick Ernst was listed in the 1900 federal census as born in Hanover, Germany in 1835. He is a hotel keeper for the Mascot Hotel, and his wife Anna and seventeen year-old daughter Mae live with him, as well as a young widowed waitress named Ellen Peaterson and three boarders.

Jesse and his brother John stayed in the Mascot Hotel on Saturday, March 16, 1901, and then mentions him again on Thursday, March 21, 1901. He mentions them a few more times in April, 1901, until they continue to travel south.