Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1901 — WESTERN. [ARTICLE]

WESTERN.

Cresceus broke the world's trotting record for a mile at Cleveland, covering the distance in 2:02%. Fire in Davenport, lowa, destroyed property worth $700,000 and rendered homeless hundreds of persons. Kansas coal mine operators have advanced the price of soft coal to dealers 35 cents per ton. Dealers expect it to go still higher. Supplies of fat cattle are small at Kansas City and one packing house is shipping export cattle from Chicago to be slaughtered there. C. G. Swain of Richmond, Ind., has been made superintendent of the rural mail delivery service of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan. A young man supposed to be Henry H. Armstead of New York stabbed himself with a pocketknife on a train at Butte. Mont., and may not recover. James Winters has been killed at his ranch near Landusky. Mont., presumably by “Kid Curry," the train robber. A posse is in pursuit of the murderer. Drenching rains in five States of the great corn belt broke the drought and revived the shriveled crops. Millions of dollars will be saved to the farmers. John Mellish, a building contractor of Toledo, Ohio, has filed n petition in bankruptcy in the United States Court. His liabilities are $911,000 and assets $11,500. Fritx Pfluger was suffocated in a fire which occurred in the Burnside lodging house at Portland, Ore. The police believe the fire to be the work of an incendiary. A telephone message from Seger, O. T., says a boiler belonging to a thrashing crew exploded, killing three men and injuring four more, two of them probably seriously. County Commissioner George B. Whitehorn of St. Pau) is charged with “forgery, cheating and fraud” in a warrant sworn out for his arrest by County Auditor Johnson. Youthful counterfeiters, who had been coining lead cent pieces and using them In slot machines in Minneapolis, were arrested by the police almost as soon as the spurious coins appeared. More than half the horses in Chicago are said to be afflicted with grip. Animals in the stables of both rich and poor have a high fever and violent fits of coughing. The epidemic started in New York. El Verde Rio Oil Company of Ogden. Utah, filed articles of incorporation. The paid-up capital is $1,500,000, the company owning nearly 3,000 acres of petroleum land in the heart of th<* Green river oil fields. W. E. Moses of Denver has made claim to four islands near the mouth of the Maumee river at Toledo, Ohio, The islands nre valued nt $150,000 and are now claimed by the State under the swamp act of 1850. John Ballard, town marshal of French Lick, Ind., shot and fatally wounded his brother, George Ballard, after the latter had knocked him down with a beer bottle. There had been trouble between them for years. Dr. Milo B. Ward, aged 50 years, died in Kansan City. During the Spanish war he nas appointed to the volunteer

army by President McKinley, being commissioned a Major Surgeon and assigned to duty at Chickamagua. E. Kirby, proprietor of the Park Hotel, Dodge City, Kan., shot and killed hla wife and then shot himself, both dying instantly. The cause assigned is a disagreement over property. Kirby was 40 and his wife 36 years old. A gravel train iised in the construction of the traction line between Dayton, Ohio, and Troy was wrecked eight miles north of Dayton, resulting in two deaths and the serious injury to four persons. Fourteen persons were aboard. The Missouri River, in adopting a new channel, bus cut away almost the whole of Howell's Island, three miles below Missouri City. The island was one of the largest in the river and contained more than 1,000 acres of rich corn land. Samuel Hill, son-in-law of J. J, Hill, announces that he will construct an electric railway paralleling the present road between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and that he will reduce the fare to 5 cents. He is said to be backed by his father-in-law. One man dead, one dying, another probably fatally shot and a fourth man with the back of his head crushed in. This, with the threatened lynching of a negro is the result of a free-for-all fight at King's mines, Cambridge, Ohio, the other day. Freight train No. 9 on the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf road was wrecked near Palestine, Ark., by running into an open switch. The engine and seven cars were demolished. Engineer Shelley and Fireman Simmons, both of Little Rock, were killed. J. L. Collins, 52 years old, was killed in a peculiar elevator accident in the Masonic Temple in Chicago. He was caught between the open door on the fourteenth floor and the bottom of the car and dashed to the basement to instant death. Eight thrashing machine crews reached the town of Colwich, Kan., the other day and because they could not get liquor they smashed five joints and in addition wrecked a number of pumps. The citizens organized a party to cause their arrest, but the thrashers mnde them retreat. Four cars from freight train No. 514 on the Rock Island road were blown away by a cyclone near Hamblin, Kali. The ears were picked from the center of the train and set down twenty yards from the track. There were about twenty more cars on the train, but they were not even derailed. Fire that broke out in the rear of the Boonville, Mo., steam laundry destroyed SBO,OOO worth of property on the west side of Main street. Several hundred head of mules, which were to be shipped to the British War Department, were saved from n building, in which a number of horses were burned to death. Much damage was done by a heavy rain and wind storm that prevailed ov»*T a good part of North Dakota. The greatest ravages are reported at Tappen, where the storm amounted to a tornado. A church, a store and some dwellings and barns were blown down and the Northern Pacific depot was unroofed. F. M. Smallwood, living at Indianapolis, a clerk in the railway mail service, was arrested at the union station in that city, charged with taking money from the mail. Smallwood was on what is known as the Pittsburg run. Smallwood after arrest admitted his guilt. Mail matter that he had stolen was found on his person. Cole and Jim Younger began business as tombstone agents, and such a crowd flocked to the office of the Peterson Granite Company in St. Paul to see the famous outlaws that office hours had to be established." The management decided that the Younger brothers should receive from but 11:30 a. m. to 12:30 p. m. and from 5:30 to 6 p. m. Following close upon the death of young Hugh Tevis at Nagasaki on his wedding journey, comes the Btiici.fe in San Francisco of youthful Lloyd Breckinridge, nephew of Hugh Tevis, and grandson oC the famous Breckinridge of Kentucky. The young man, who was only 23 years old, was afflicted with spinal disease and recently became despondent. After an absence of twenty-one years. Martin Rajek, or Martin Wright, as he now calls himself, returned to St. Louis to claim a legacy left by his father, Mathias Rajek, w r ho died in 1886. Rajek has already been declared legally dead, but he returned just in time to be legally resuscitated. His estate for the last two years has been administered upon by Herman J. Krebs and would have been forever closed after the September term of the Probate Court. Now, however, the letters of administration will be revoked and Rajek put in possession of his patrimony.