Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1910 — Monon Township Trustee Charged With Violation of Trustee Law. [ARTICLE]

Monon Township Trustee Charged With Violation of Trustee Law.

Otto C. Middlestadt, present trustee of Marion township, White county, and a member of the well known Middlestadt family, is charged by the field examiners with having let the contract for the erection of a fence around a cemetery and paying $563 for it without having advertised for bids. The accountants hold that he is liable to the township in the sum of $563. Mr. Middlestadt is a democrat, but there is no indication that he did anything dishonest in the transaction, but that he was ignorant of the law. About the worst case the examiners have run across in this section of the state at Chalmers, Big Creek township, White county, where Scott G. Ross, a former grain elevator man, was the trustee prior to May 1, 1904. There was nothing really new in the information which the examiners furnished, as it was well known at the time that Ross was a defaulter. Suit was started against he and his bondsmen. The report made on Jan. 1, 1904, by Ross, showed that he had on hand $2,178.48, and the receipts prior to his resignation on May 1, of the same year, swelled the . total to $4,375,90. His accounts showed that he had only $79.27 on hand, and he even took this with him and did not turn a cent over to his successor. Mr. Ross was a democrat. The examiners report: “Taxpayers brought suit against Ross and his bondsmen for violations of the township reform law and extravagant use of funds not appropriated By some crook he nonsuited them and before they could reflle, the liability of the bond had passed and the principal had left the county.” Several other trustees in White county are given a clean bill.

Joseph Thomas, 83, inventer of the hoop-skirt and the filing machine, from which he made millions, is dying at Hoboken, N. J. Thomas also invented the machine for making derby