Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — BOUGHT A BOGUS BRICK. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BOUGHT A BOGUS BRICK.

HOW G.W. SWYGART, OF SOUTH BEND, WAS SWINDLED. The Old | Antiquated, Moss-Covered Gold Brick Trotted Out for the Edification of a Hoosier Whose Passion for Money Exceeded His Horse Sense. Taken In for 87,000.

OUTH BEND.Ind., correspondence: George W. gwygart Mr was taken in for j|l $7,000 here on the gjW- gold brick game. Ml 1 If the swindle had | been of any other ’ character it would not have been so

bad. But that anybody should be caught on the gold brick game at this late day in the century is considered a reflection on the intelligence of the community where it occurs. Swygart is 70 years old, is worth about $300,i 00, and lives atone over on the same fashionable thoroughfare as the Studebakers, and in,, the atmosphere in which once moved the Colfaxes. Swygart came here -with his partner, Bockafelier, in 1855. They were stonemasons. Together they began to amass a fortune. Swygert was particularly far-sighted in his real-estate deals and is now the owner of farms, town ibts, business-houses, and residences. By his first wife there were four children, allof whom are brightand prosperous. None of them live with him. Their mother lives in Koekford, 111. His second wife was a domestic in his family, a young woman who secured a divorce and made SIO,OOO by the operation. Swygart makes no display in his appearance or manner of living. He, dresses and lives in the plainest manner, and

the way he was hoodwinked out of $7,000 shows how a man who has made money in his dealings with others can make a fool of himself in less time than it takes to tell it. Cutting His Second Teeth. Sunday three men and a woman left the eastbound Lake Shore train at this point. The men went in one direction, the woman in another. Monday morning one of the men met Swygart as he was leaving home and called him “Uncle George.” He had the Swygart pedigree down to a nicety. Swygart took the young man in and boasted of his possessions', and the two came to the unanimous conclusion that the Swygarts were smarter than most people. Then the nephew’s'turn to tell a story came, and it was the unreeling of that romance which caused the old man to cut his second set of teeth all at once. The nephew said: “lam a Swygart when it comes to making money; I have struck 1 it rich, too, Uncle George. On my way from the West to Chicago I camfe across an Indian on the tijain who owns a gold mine so valuable he will permit no one to work it but himself and his squaw. He has an Indian’s distrustful nature. I won his confidence and he showed me two gold bricks whieh he was taking to the mint in Philadelphia. He is - afraid he will be robbed, and I so mahhged to exaggerate-his fears that he sfrfpped in Chicago and finally agreed to’ sell me the bricks for $7,000. Mother told me how rich Uncle George was;so I brought the Indian oyer with me from Chicago to see if you wanted to furnish the money and go halvers with me in the profits. Luckily, I met in Chicago a friend of mine, an assayer from the Philadelphia mint on his way to the San Francisco mint, and I, paid him SIOO to eome down here and test the bricks.” An agreement was prepared in writing. Swygart was to furnish $7,000 and the profits were to be equally di-

Tided. The meeting place was to be at a certain point in the Coquillard Woods near the Clay Township line, and where the French picnics used to be held. fieap Big Injun. Monday afternoon the parties met there,. The “lone Indian,” glum and stoical, had the. tw.o bricks in a stout canvas bag. %?. Taylor, the alleged mint assay er, had a bottle of acid and a boring tool. At the request of the nephew the Indian dumped the bricks out of the bag with as little unconcern as Swygart would throw a couple of S bricks from his yard at a yellow dog. The aesayer bored into the bricks, made a test; and pronounced it the finest s«id purest gold he had ever seen in all his years of experience at the mints. The nephew showed a card from Frank Mayr, a jeweler in South Bend, on the back of which was an indorsement purporting to Be from-Mayr attesting to the genuineness of the brjpks. The nephew read this Indorsement snd Swygart cut Wanked giwn the Cash. Then the nepSw and Thcle George Bwygart came MWk tb town, and Swygart made a n«g to-.the bank for $7,000, which was indorsed by a merchant. Bwygart had no ready money at hSjd,' hut it was never *ny trouble for him to

raise money here. As the hour was late, I the banker who cashed the note asked: “What are you going to do with so much money at this hour?” The old man cocked up his ears and replied: “That’s my business.” The banker begged his pardon. Then the “nephew” and “uncle” drove back to the picnic grounds, and the game took another turn, for the “sucker” had not been effectually landed. • The “assayer" said he had concluded to buy the bricks himself, and had offered the Indian $15,000. The “Nephew” became excited, abused the “assayer” for taking advantage of his kindness, and talked about “the unprofessional conduct of a hired assayer. ” While this wrangle was going on, old Swygart’s desire was sharpened at every breath, and he stepped over to the “Indian,” paid him $7,000, and took the bricks. Then, with the consciousness of having done something smart, he called to his nephew: “Come on! I’ve got the bricks!" And the deal was over. The two men drove back to town. The old man drove to his house and sent his ! nephew to a restaurant to get a square meal, saying ho would come over and for it. When Swygart called at the restaurant for that purpose he was told that the young man had paid for his own meal and was gone. A Terrible Moment. Swygart probably felt a sensation in his gums at that moment. Walking up to Mayr’s store, he said to the jeweler: “You saw the bricks, did you? How much are they worth?” A recollection passed over the joweler’s mind. A woman had called in the morning, and asked him for one of his business cards, and he had given it. He knew Swygart was the sort of a man to be on the lookout for anything that promised money, and he asked him: “How much did they do you for’” Swygart culled on City Marshal Bose and told him all, and he and the official went to the picnic grounds, but the Indian and the assayer were gone. Swygart returned to town and sent away enough telegrams to Indiana points in the course of an hour to molt the copper wires. The woman in the caso had hired a buggy in the morning, paying for it in advance, saying she would return the rig late in the evening. She waited on the edge of the picnic grounds for the “Indian” nnd “assayer,” and drove them to Mishawaka, a station near by, and then dro.vo back, tying the horse to a tree in front of a physician’s house. Then she disappeared. What direction the “nopliow” took is not known. “He Laughs Heat,’*Etc. Swygart sticks to it that the young was his “nephew,” and that the shrewd way in which ho played him (the old man) proves it. The reason why South Bend people are embracing each other over this event arises from the following incident: Several years ago a mad came hero and met Swygurt’s partner, Bockafolier, and called him “uncle" and so on. The young man had a scheme and would let his "uncle” in for $2,000. Bockafolier did not have the ready Cash, but borrowed it from Swygart, who took a mortgage as security on two of Eockafeller’Blots. When the swindle dawned on Bockafolier nobody laughed as vehemently as old Swygart, and when the mortgages fell duo ho foreclosed on his old friend and partner, and later on when he began building on the lota Swygart used to stop people and tell them how Bockafeller had been taken in and how he (Swygart) got the lots. The same man who caught Bockh-' feller caught Swygart. Those who saw the man several years ago. identified him as the same man they saw with Swygart, but no one gave Swygart a tip. It Was George Post. This man, from all descriptions and from comparison with a photograph, is none other than George W. Post, the bunko man, whose partner, O’Brien, was brought to cover in Havre by the

French police but escaped. A young man had been here getting points on Swygart’s characteristics. Tne same sort of a-game was attempted at La Forte. Swygait refuses to show the bricks, and all he has to say is that he has enough money left to live on. It is related as a singular thing that bunko men are always more numerous in Indiana during a Presidential year than at any other time. The actual value of the bricks for which Swygart gave up $7,000 good money is $4.20 apiece.

A Girl’s Room,

The girls of the household should have cheerful rooms, where they may receive their girl friends and feel a pride in playing the hostess. Says a writer in the Hew York Tribune: *

Such a room need not be of a large size, but it should be daintily and neatly furnished. There is no better way in which you can educate a girl to be neat and orderly than to give her a properly furnished room, and require her to take proper care of it. In this way she receives her first lesson in thorough housekeeping, and acquires habits of order and neatness.

The pleasure a girl takes from such a room as this, and the influence it exerts toward making her a womanly and domestic person, should in themselves be strong enough arguments to induce a mother to sacrifice some of the showy fittings of her parlor in order to pjqqyjde comfortable rooms for her girls. It should above all things be thoroughly neat, sunny and cheerful, and should be the girl’s private room, and all the belongings should be her personal property. It sfiwild be her daily duty to keep it in thorough order.

THE NEPHEW FROM THE WEST.

THE DEAL.

ARRIVAL OF THE GOLD BRICK AND ITS ESCORT.