Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1885 — THE WEST. [ARTICLE]

THE WEST.

The Michigan and Mississippi CanJa Commirsioners met in annual session at the Grand Pacific Hotel and elected officers for the ensuing year. Addresses Were made by Judge Murphy, President Utley, Governor Bross, Congressman Plumb, and others, expressing the fullest confidence that Congress at its next session would make the necessary appropriation for the construction of the Hennepin Canal. The steamboats Mountain Girl and James W. Goff collided on the Ohio River, near Aurora, Ind., the former sinking immediately. She carried a circus and variety show, two of the members of which were drowned. The concern also lost ten valuable horses and ajiumber of snakes. ....John Peterson, a wealthy farmer of Mansfield, Ohio, was inveigled into a lottery scheme by two confidence men ana lost $2,000 by the operation. The swindlers escaped with their b00ty.... A loss of nearly $400,000 was incurred in Chicago, by a fire in the old Farwell block, on Franklin, Monroe, and Market streets, occupied by several clothing and shoe firms. The cloak-house of Mannheimer, Lepman A Co. reports having suffered to the amount of $100,000... .Willard Sears, one of the street-car conductors now in arrest at St. Louis for placing dynamite on the track, is a graduate of Shurtleff College, who failed to earn a living as an attorney. His father is a prominent Methodist preacher in the Southern Hlinois Conference.... The State Veterinarian of lowa finds hog cholera increasing, and gives as a remedy isolation and quarantine, as the disease is not contracted from dead animals... .Milk sickness caused the death of a herd of twenty-four eattle in Jasper county, Illinois, and is said to be spreading in Gibson County, Indiana. Something of a sensation has been created in Kansas City by the discovery that a supposed man who has done business there under the name of Frank Gray is really a woman —a Mrs. Mary Wolcott. Mrs. Wolcott is said to have "maintained the deception for some years, and to have shown exceptional business ability ....Indians sacked and burned the Missouri-Florida Cattle Company’s ranch, near Deming, N. M. The wife and 11-year-old son of Mr. Sny, principal owner, were shot' apd killed.... A fire m the McMicken University at Cincinnati damaged the building to the extent of $30,000, and destroyed the valuable library of Professor Eddy... .The Government troops captured 100 settlers who went into the Oklahoma territory contrary to the President's orders.