Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1882 — INDIANA ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

INDIANA ITEMS.

A piece of the flag-staff of old Fort Recovery has been sent to the State museum. There are yet twenty-six counties of Indiana that have not taken the weather service. During January 149 letters were dropped into the Indianapolis postoffloe without stamps, and 181 during February. Thh Trustees of the Rose Polytechnic Institute, at Terre Haute, have completed arrangements which will insure its opening a year henoe. Postal Clrrk J. R. Gerhart was arrested at South Bend, for robbing the mails. He confessed his orime. A land company is perfecting arrangements to drain the huge marshes west of Fort Wayne. The company proposes to drain 7,000 acres of these lands. The County Commissioners of Huntington county have accepted plans for a new jail and Sheriff’s residence to be erected this summer. Estimated cost, $26,000.

Mary Herman, in the oounty asylum at Jeffersonville, was at last accounts still alive, after sixty-one days’ fast. The asylum was visited Sunday by hundreds of people. One of the able county ’Squires of Indianapolis indorses on the transcript in an appeal to the Circuit Court: “Jan uery 13 1882 fild in mye offes 14 day at 3 ocloc in the eiven.”

The prisoners in the jail at Evansville have oonceived the idea that the build ing is haunted, and tell a variety of strange stories about the apparition, which takes at one time the shape of a dog and again of a black hog.

Farmers in Southern Indiana are fairly pushing their spriug work. Most of them have sown their oats and planted their early potatoes, and many of them have their corn-ground broken up and are preparing it for planting. Wheat could not look better. While a passenger train was passing through Indianapolis a half-grown colored boy was seen to hurl a bowlder through a window, the stone narrowly missing a lady occupying one of the seats m the coach. Before the train could stop he disappeared on one of the cross streets. Orohardists residing near Seymour, and having some 80,000 bearing fruit trees, say the prospeot for an abundant fruit crop was never so good as at this time. Late frosts are the only thing to be dreaded now. A good melon and fruit crop alone is worth to them not less than $160,000. Maj. Trimble, a convict from Spencer county, died in the State Prison at Jeffersonville recently. Trimble was a prominent stumpspeaker and temperance lecturer in the last campaign. After delivering a speech one night, he was entertained by a friend, and committed an offense for which he was sent up for two years.

The southern portion of Miami county is greatly worked up over numerous proposed pikes to be ran from the out townships into the city of Peru. There are filed in the Auditor’s office eleven petitions for gravel roads in the abovementioned district, all of which will be viewed and some action taken thereon during the summer. The State asylums for the insane being over-crowded, the incurable insane are being sent to their respective counties as fast as accommodations are required for new patients. It is therefore proposed that two asylums for the incurably insane be erected, one in the northern and the other in the southern part of the State. A young man named Lesher, while chopping cord-wood, at Rushville, accidentally cut his foot so severely that he was unable to walk. Being alone in the woods, he attempted to crawl home, and, after traversing about one-half the distance, fell exhausted. Not returning at the noon hour, his widowed mother supposed he had gone to visit a married sister, and paid no attention to his absence until evening, when she started to hunt him. He was taken home, where he lingered until 4 o’clock the next morning, when ho died from loss of blood and exposure.