Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1885 — SOUTHERN. [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN.

At the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church South in Houston, Tex., forty-eight presbyteries voted in favor of omitting from the Confession of Faith the provision forbidding marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Seven voted against the amendment and fourteen did not vote at ail on tho question. Archie Gibson, a negro wife-murder-er, was executed in the presence of 3,000 persons at Richmond, Texas. John Terry (colored), who killed the Rev. John G. Session a year ago, was hanged at Barnwell, S. C. The rain-storm that recently deluged a large section of Texas was one of tho most terrific on record. At Waco, eleven and a quarter inches of water fell in five hours. In an incredibly short space of time the Brazos River became a wild, raging flood, In many places five miles wide. Some idea of the wholesale destruction may be had when it is remembered that the Brazos is the richest and most prosperous farming country in Texas. There is a very heavy population of negroes, who all live in tho bottoms, and the rapidity of the rise did not permit them to save anything but their lives. A vast destitution must be the result. The damage to the growing crops on the Brazos, to say nothing of the shrinkage in real values, is beyond calculation, perhaps reaching to beyond $20,000,000. Six hundred indictments were found against tho Wheeling, W. Va., saloon-keepers, some time ago, and have since been stolen. Charles P. Barnes, of Woodlawn, Cecil County, Md., shot and killed his brother-in-law, Thomas E. Brown, and then butchered his own two children. The Governor of New York has vetoed the bill for taking the State census passed at the extra session of tho Legislature. Thomas Brown, oil merchant, Erie, Pa., failed, his liabilities amounting to nearly $500,000. E. P. Burnham made a fifty-mile bicycle road race at Boston In three hours and five minutes, which is the fastest time on record. In Boston Judge Allen refused to grant a divorce to the wife of John L. Sullivan, the bruiser, because he did not think that Sullivan had been proved a gross and confirmed drunkard. Business has been suspended by the Shackamaxon bank, of Philadelphia, on account of its holding SIBO,OOO of the paper of the late William Brumm. The capital and surplus of the institution was $150,000. The city has SIO,OOO on deposit. •