Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1885 — THE SOUTH. [ARTICLE]

THE SOUTH.

An incendiary fire destroyed the CourtHouse and County Treasurer’s office of Leon County, Texas, many valuable records, which cannot be duplicated, being destroyed.. . .At Fannin, Clay County, Tex., Valentine Sanford, 14 years old, deliberately assassinated his mother, and later assisted his father in searching for her. When the body was found the boy confessed the crime, saying he also had determined to kill his father, then sell the plantation, and become a brigand. The Department of Agriculture at "Washington, in its November report, says of the cotton crop: • The cotton returns of November are local estimates of the yield per acre. They are somewhat higher than those of the last two years, but materially lower than those of 1880 and 1882. The increase over the yield last year is most marked in Texas and Georgia. In Arkansas and Tennessee, where the average is usually high, the rate is depressed by the unfavorable condition of August and September. The rate of yield by States is as follows : Virginia, 152 pounds per acre; North Carolina, 157 ; SouthCarolina, 142; Georgia, 150; Florida, 105; Alabama, 145; Mississippi, 165; Louisiana, 223; Texas, 182; Arkansas, 200: Tennessee, 155. The weather has been favorable for picking, and killing frosts are only reported in the northern border of the cotton belt. The top crop is very light, and scarcely an appreciable quantity. The past month has been generally favorable for picking, which is well advanced, more than three-fourths of the crop having been picked. Rains have interfered with harvesting more in Georgia and Alabama than elsewhere. With good weather hereafter the proportion to be gathered in December will be confined to localities favored with a top crop worth harvesting.

Judge Ford, of New Orleans, who is serving a term of twenty-five years in the Louisiana penitentiary for participation in the murder of A. H. Murphy, now confesses that he fired the fatal shot. Patrick Ford, his brother, who is under sentence of death, had made a similar admission. ... .Riley Pyle, who killed United States Commissioner McDonald in Pickett County, Tennessee, sixteen months ago, -has been captured, after a desperate fight in which he and two companions were wounded. / A fire which started on the Strand at Galveston, Texas, swept southeastward with great rapidity, destroying 400 dwellings and residences, many of the inmates narrowly escaping. A high wind which prevailed at the time aided the progress of the flames, which found easy prey in the wooden structures covering the burned district. One thousand families were rendered temporarily homeless, and the financial loss will approximate $2,500,000, with less than $1,000,000 insurance. The buildings on forty and one-half blocks, or one hundred acres, were swept away by the fire. ——— Because of family troubles William E. Stone shot and killed his wife at Baltimore and then shot hiniself. The couple had been married twenty years, nine children being the fruits of the union.