Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1902 — INDIANA STATE NEWS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

INDIANA STATE NEWS

The Alexandria Elks are planning a carnival for the week of June 2 and are considering the idea of having Carrie Nation, the saloon wrecker, here for a week. The decision of the Elks is awaited with a good deal of anxiety by the owners of saloons. At Fortville John K. Rush, nearly 90 years old, is dead. He lived in that section for seventy years. During a storm at Valparaiso lightning struck the barn of Hans Hanson and it was burned. Loss, $4,000. At Bluffton Peter Baumgardner, a farmer, 60 years old, was killed by a bolt of lightning, which also wrecked his barn. James Elliott, a manufacturer and member of one of the oldest families in southern Indiana, died at Evansville. Plans have been accepted by the Knights of Pythias of Alexandria for a. new lodge home, to cost $15,000. The building will contain a large armory on the first floor, with reading, card,

billiard, toilet and other club-life rooms on the second floor. The third floor will be devoted to the joint use of the Knights of Pytbias and the Rathbone Sisters. The building will be 66x134 feet, three stories high, with pressed brick front and stone trimmings, and will be modern in all its appointments. The design is by an Alexandria architect, James McGuire. The construction of the building will be pushed. Wesley Lytle, father of Zella Nicolaus, is dead at Wabash. He was a civil war veteran and had been in the soldiers’ home at Marion. Mrs. Margaret Uebelher, age 78 years, was burned to death at Evansville, her clothes taking fire from a burning brush heap. The Eastern lidiana Telephone company is enlarging its exchange at Winchester and putting in a circuit to Muncie and other points. Charles Trimble and Harry Gold, two boys, who disappeared from Chesterfield a month ago, have returned home after wandering through Illinois and Missouri. The farmers near Columbus are turning up large numbers of seventeen-year-locusts with their plows and say many are to be seen about the trees and fences.

Prof. J. W. Carr, superintendent of the Anderson public schools, is making arrangements for an excursion of the pupils and others of the gas belt to Mammoth cave on May 23. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Kay ton of Judson celebrated their golden wedding. There were about fifty guests present. They had lived all their lives in Park county. Kennard is in need of a the old one having resigned. It is said that an officer of the law there cannot Btand the pace for more than a month. The postofflce at Wirt was robbed of '*6o worth of stamps. Twenty-five men are on strike for an increase of wages at the Ober & Mann hoop factory at Windfall and the plant is idle. The firm is trying to fill the places with other men at the old wage scale. Captain Prouty of the Evansville Salvation Army has arranged several excursions to the country this summer for poor children of the city. In making a canvass of the city he says the number of children who have never seen the country is surprising. He will have excursions to the parks, large farms and on the Ohio river.

Patents have been granted to these Indianians: Emil R. Draver, Winchester, dust collector; Cleveland C. Hubbard, Lafayette, roller bearing; Henry Hunt, Indianapolis, clock-striking mechanism; John E. and B. Jones, Elwood, sheet metal heating furnace; John C. Kemp, Otterbein, feeding mechanism; John W. Lahmann, Indianapolis, building stone or brick; Simon A. Loring, Kentland, seed-drop-per; Wm. H. Osborn, Kokomo, cowtail holder; Pierre Planting, Ft. Wayne, apparatus for extracting tar from gas; Levi Richner, Crawfordsville, engine; Isom J. Ross, Waynes-* ville, band cutter and feeder for thrashing machines; Jacob Stout, Bluffton, combined harrow and roller; Frederick B. Whitlock, Indianapolis, stove top. The Indianapolis Southern and the Indianapolis, Bloomington & Bedford lines have representatives in Bloomington asking for a 2 per cent tax Both rads have filed petitions and eacn is asking for an election to be ordered. The Indianapolis, Bloomington & Bedford is being guilt by the Olivers, of South Bend, and will run from Martinsville to Bloomington and to the stone fields of Greene county, south of the latter place. Those backing the road say they will have it completed by Jan. 1. Rural free delivery service has. been ordered established in Indiana July 2 as follows: Bipus, Huntington county —Length of route, 201-4 miles; area covered, 23 square miles; population served, 711; houses on route, 158; carrier not yet % named. Star route 33,508 to be discontinued. Postoffices at Mankin, Bracken and Luther will be supplied by rural carriers. Mail to Bippus. Senator Fairbanks offered an amendment to the public building bill, increasing from $125,000 to $150,000 the amount to be appropriated for the federal building proposed to be constructat Hammond, Ind. The Democrats of the First congressional district will hold their convention some time in August. The National Tile Company has been formed with $150,000 capital stock. The plant will be erected in West Terre Haute.

Nearly $20,000 has been raised for Terre Haute Y. M. C. A. building, which amount will cover the purchase price of the Terre Haute club property and pay the running expenses for two years. Fifteen thousand dollars more are wanted for the construction of an additional building and for a gymnasium. The contract for the work on the gymnasium will be let in a few days. It is expected to move to the new home Sept. 15. The corporate existence of the First National Bank of Fort Wayne has been extended until the close of business May 6. 1922.

So many strangers are arriving at Newcastle that a bureau of public information will be opened. Its chief purpose will be to find shelter for families who are seeking a location there. Carrie Nation has asked for an engagement to give a series of lectures at Elwood during the street fair. She says she will bring her hatchet, but does not Indicate that she will put it to practical use. Bloody clothing of a child, found in a hog pasture at the outskirts of Rockport, has led to the belief among the authorities there that a child murder has been committed. The Vanderburg county council has appropriated $4,000 for smallpox. This makes a total of $14,500 for this purpose this year. Up to date there have been 268 cases in that county, while there are now less than twenty cases in the pesthouse. The Rev. M. W. Harkins has had a second call from the First Christian church of Connersville. He is pastor of the Central Christian church at Anderson, where he has served for eight years, and the church officers urge him to remain. It is doubtful if he goes to Connersville.

George C. Halleck of Muncie has been appointed game and flab commissioner for the Eighth Congressional district on recommendation of Congressman Cromer. He will have charge of all the county game and fish wardens of the district. Mrs. Mary Biddinger of Chesterfield is the owner of a coverlid that was made 160 years ago ,by her grandmother, Elizabeth Jones, of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Biddinger has been in possession of this relic over sixty years, it being given hdr at the age of fourteen. It is beautifully flowered and lettered, and is in the best condition. The grandmother raised the flax, wove and spun it and made the coverlid complete. Miss Lottie McClain, living four miles west of Ladoga, is now doing substitute work on a rural free delivery route out of Crawfordsville. She is the third young woman in Indiana to take up this kind of work, having

received permission from the Postoffice Department to assume the duties of carrier, provided she could fill the requirements. This she has done. William Kepp, a Muncie fisherman, had an attack of sunstroke while fishing along White river and his recovery is doubtful. Several cases of heat exhaustion in the factories have been reported. Alexander Mason was born in Knox county, and who has resided on a farm near Bicknell for fifty years. Mr. Mason is seventy-three years old, and he has been a class leader of the Methodist church for over forty-four years, without intermission. He does little now save to visit the sick. He is regarded as one of the best Bible students in that section, and in his time has been the teacher of hundreds of persons in his classes. Henry Overmire, a farmer residing near Yorktown, is still alive and in fairly good health, with five bullets in his body, three of which are in his head. Overmire attempted suicide by shooting himself more than a year ago, and physicians, thinking he could not recover, left him with his family to die. But Overmire Immediately began to get well. Overmire says he does not know whether a man who commits suicide is sane or not. He said that “something came over” him to kill himself and he tried it.

The body of William Patey, fifty years old, veteran of the civil war, was found lying on an island in White river, beneath the railroad bridge, near Muncie. Patey attended a ball game here and is supposed to have started to walk home and to have fallen from the bridge into the river. During an electrical storm, which was one off the severest that ever struck Fort Wayne, eight of the police call stations were burned out, demoralizing the entire system. Lightning struck the wires of the Jenney Electric Power Company and destroyed a large generator at the plant, the’ Idas being $2,000. Two hundred telephones of the independent system were burned out and destroyed. A thunderbolt struck the Paragon shirtwaist factory, causing some damage and a small fire. The storm was accompanied by a heavy rain. Deputy Fish Commissioner Roy King of Princeton and James Hamilton, a deputy of Marion, are satisfied that the refuse from the oil wells kills the fish in streams around Marion. A test was made, 114 fish being placed In the water, and within four minutes all were dead. The greater' part of them did not live over three minutes.

While sawing a white oak log at the mill of the Dearing Lumber Company at Petersburg, a bone was found in the heart of the,log. The bone was six and a half inches long and had two prongs, each starting off from the center. One of the prongs was sawed in two. As the tree stood in the woods the bone was hbout five feet from the ground. It kk thought that a wild animal years ago carried the bone to the tree and that the wood grew around it. The log was not hollow, but showed that it once had a small opening in it. It is thought that the bone was from the breast of a large fowl. The senate passed the following house pension bills: Indiana—granting $36 a month to James C. G. Smith, late of company D, fourth regiment, Indiana volunteer infantry, and S3O to D. J. Bailey, late of company I, twen-ty-third regiment, Indiana volunteer infantry.

trhe body of William Woehr, age twenty-four years, was found on the Wabash ‘tracks at Ft. Wayne. It is supposed that he was struok by a switch engine. Pieces of the body were along the tracks for a hundred feet He was a tinner and unmarried.

ALEXANDRIA PYTHIAN HOME.

MISS LOTTIE M’CLAIN.