Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1909 — FIVE YEARS AGO TO-NIGHT [ARTICLE]

FIVE YEARS AGO TO-NIGHT

The “Tom” McCoy Residence on McCoy Avenue Was Dynamited. Five years ago to-night, Oct. 16, the fine residence of Thomas McCoy, or Mrs.-McCoy, rather, on McCoy avenue in this city was blown up with dynamite, and the house* stands there to-day in practically the same condition as it appeared next morning after the dynamiting. Nothing has ever been done to it except to rer move the broken and damaged household furniture, and there is no custodian here to look after it. The property has been neglected and allowed to stand as a monument to the vengeance of some person—still unknown—who is supposed to have lost heavily in the “political bank” of the McCoys, which failed for nearly a half million dollars in April, 1904, and only paid some 42 per cent, after five years of administrating on the estate. There are numerous briars and bushes now growing luxuriously in the front yard where once Tom had the finest bluegrass lawn in the city.

Tom,” who was stopping ilext door at the home of her father-in-law, Alfrd McCoy, was one of the first on the scene. Then it was found that the fine home of Tom McCoy was a mass of broken and twisted ruins. (An idea of its appearance can be had from the accompanying cut, taken from a photograph made next morning.) The work of the dynamite had been well done. Perhaps 20 or 30 pounds of dynamite had been placed in the cellar and shot off, raising all the floors above, breaking to bits the barrels of packed chinaware and cut-glass, bulging out the sides of the house, blowing the French plate windows out into the street, and damaging practically every timber in the structure. Little of value was saved in the furniture line, it is said, so complete was the destruction. The dynamiting was not generally known over the city until next morning, when almost everyone in town and many country people came to see the wreck. As might be expected under the circumstances—nearly every person of the hundreds who gathered to view the wreck having