People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — INDIANA STATE NEWS. [ARTICLE]

INDIANA STATE NEWS.

Natural gas accumulated in the joint cellar under the establishment of C. C. Porter, druggist, and Jones <fc Perry, grocers, fronting the State Blind institute, Indianapolis, and a boy with a match caused an explosion which ruined the grocery and damaged the druggist $1,200. William Schultz was badly burned, Dr. Potter was hurled against the wall and severely bruised, and Minnie Purcell, colored.who sprang through a second floor window through fright, had a leg broken. At Dillsboro, after a terrific battle with fire George Cain’s farm is now a prairie of ashes, neither fences nor buildings being left standing. Jim Bailev turned plow boy, and with the assistance of neighbors plowed up the ground through fields and woodlands, thus checking the fiery element that was spreading rapidly to neighboring farms. The fire origuated from Cain burning stumps and brush. Burglars at Crawfordsville helped themselves to SIOO worth of firearms and knives at Houlehan & Vancleave’s hardware store. David Lilly, a farmer of Jefferson township, Carroll county, drove a thief from his hen roost the other night and found a strange horse Jand wagon hitched near by which the thief had left

Joseph Radcliff, a young man who lives at Algiers, was arrested at Vincennes the other morning for stealing a watch from Tindolf, the jeweler, and forging an order on which he secured a suit of clothes from M. Rindskopf. Louis Gerke, a young farmer, was working with his team in a gravel pit four miles south of Ft Wayne, when the bank cavpd in and he was crushed to death. Mrs. Henry Nierbugok, living near Dillsboro, was seriously if not fatally injured by a cow while milking. Stella Clipp, while returning from school in company with other little givls, played with a turn-table near Bedford and got her left limb caught between the table and the track, and may lose the limb as a consequence. Decatur has secured another factory. T. M. Talbot, of Pennsylvania, will locate his egg case and filler factory there. It will employ about-seventy-five hands. Jacob Slussman, of Montpelier, a well-known conductor on the Wabash road, while attempting to uncouple a train at Brownell, north of Peru, fell across the rails and was cut in two. Tiirjce gas well drillers, Jesse Gordon, Jack Weir and Bob Kern, were brought in from a well near Kokomo totally blind. While standing over the well fishing for lost tools the sulphuric gas or other substance burned their eyeballs until they looked as though they had been seared over with a redhot iron.

Rev. J. F. Booker, of the Evangelical German Lutheran church, Anderson, has been elected president of the Synod of Indiana, in session at Frankfort. The Goshen and Elkhart Implement Co. assigned, with liabilities of $45,000 and assets of $60,000, made up chiefly of notes and book accounts. The company was capitalized at SBO,OOO, and had branches at Elkhart, Milford and Wakarusa. The close times have made collections absolutely impossible, and failure to procure further extensions from creditors precipitated the failure. It is thought that careful handling of the assets will pay dollar for dollar. The other evening pedestrians at Brazil were startled by seeing a large ball of fire, apparently about the size of a tub, appear in the western part of the city. It passed entirely over the city, and seemed to be no higher than the tree tops. From the burning ball streamed a long tail, which passed and sputtered, continually sending out a perfect shower of sparks. The most learned are unable to account for the strange phenomenon.

George Weager was fatally crushed by falling slate in the Nickel Plate mine of the Jackson Coal and Mining Co. at Eemvood the other day. He was 36 years old, and one of the most prominent miners in the district. At Terre Haute Dr. A. T. Spottswood, aged over seventy, found a burglar standing at his bedside. He grappled with him and held him till his son came to his assistance from the next room. Then they turned him over to the police. The fellow gave his name as John Smith. He got a sentence for four years and was taken to the state’s prison within twenty-four hours. The Hartford City board of health seized on an old house southeast of town, on the Dowell farm, to use in quarantining Muncie suspects, and in case smallpox developed, to use as a pest house, tanners in the neighborhood were indignant, and the other night fire broke out in the old house and it was destroyed. There is no doubt that the fire was kindled by those who objected to a possible pest house near their homes. Mrs. Andrew Schrader, of Waymansville, of Bartholomew county, has so far recovered as to be able to go to Columbus, and swear out a warrant for the arrest of John J. Chafy, John Snyder, Ham Leasman and Henry Mundt, whom she claims to have recognized as among the number who whipped her. Officers at once went to the homes of the defendants and placed them under arrest