Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1885 — SOUTHERN. [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN.

James Ruckman and his son, the former being one of the wealthiest men in Pleasants County, West Virginia, have been arrested for shoplifting at Parkersburg. For years small thefts have been committed where the Buckmans resided, and hundreds of stol en articles have been found in their possession. Three masked robbers, after vainly searching the residence of Elias Marting, near Wheeling, W. Va., applied red-hot pokers to-his back, burned off his hair with live coals, and at last enveloped him in straw and set it on fire. He was found nearly dead by neighbors, but revived sufficiently to relate the story of his torture. The north-bound express train on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad was thrown off the track by obstructions near Purvis, Miss. A number of passengers were injured, and the engineer and fireman were killed. An aeronaut named Mac Neal made a balloon ascension at West Point, Ga. The balloon fell into the Chattahoochee River, and Mac Neal was drowned. t At Long View, Ky., an unknown assassin fired through the window of a farmhouse, instantly killing Jacob Torian, and dangerously wounding Peter Adcock. Lewis Lucas, a Sheriff in the Choctaw Nation, invited Squirrel Hoyt to spend the night at his house, and then quietly shot him through the heart. A wall-digger at Atlanta, Ga., found, at a depth of sixty-five feet, oyiter shells and varieties of sea shells never seen in the region. Geologists are investigating. The Miles Block, at Alma, Ark., contalning several stores, was burned, the loss reaching 126,800. i Bainwater & Sterns' elevator at DalJac, Tex., was burned with SO,OOO bushels of

grain. Three persons perished in the flames. The loss was $50,000, and the insurance $33,150. Two of the train robbers involved in the job a month ago near Little Rock have been sentenced to six and seven years in the penitentiary respectively.