Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1891 — CHANGED PLACES. [ARTICLE]

CHANGED PLACES.

A Counterfeiter Turns into an Evangelist. While the Evangelist Turns Counterfeiter —Justifies His Condufct in an Ingenious Maifiner. Capt. Porter, of the U. S. secret service, returned to Chicago on the 29th from southern Illinois, where, within the past week, he has put behind the bars the preacher counterfeiters, George-Vancil and Jeremiah Holmes.

He tells a queer story of mutual conversion, in which a counterfeiter became a preachor and a preacher a counterfeiter. Jerry Holmes was a counterfeiter and general outcast In Duquoin, 111. The Rev. George Vancil was a Baptist minister. He undertook to convert Holmes to Christianity, after everybody had given him up as incorrigible. Ths men met one night under the stars and Vancil preached a sermon to Holmes with such good effect that he professed repentance. He fell on the ground, and with his hands toward heaven declared he would forever renounce his ways, and he afterward said that he had been converted like Paul, on his way to Damascus, The conversion of the hardened sinner was heralded throughout Polk county as miracle, and the people marveled greatly at the strangeness of it. Holmes turned preacher and became the pastor of a Canqpbellite congregation in the country near Duquoin. At was not long after this that Holmes gave Vancil some counterfeit money and Vancil passed it. Later on Holmes gave him some more and he passed that upon some members of a traveling circus. This the Rev. Mr. Vancil confessed, but declared that he took the money and continued the acquaintance of Holmes for tho purpose of learning his secrets and exposing the gang of which Holmes was the leader.

“It makes no difference where this lands jne,” said Vancil, after he had been landed In a cell, “because I have been serving God and my country at one time. Serving God in preaching His word, and my country in taking this money from those ners that I might finally bring them to justice,’* The Rev. Jerry Holmes, who made the coin, and who was captured a week ago, held religious services in jail last Siinday, and had all his fellow prisoners shouting for glory. He preached a regular fire and brimstone sermon, He was still poffiessed of the true spirit, he said, and glad that he had confessed his sins, as they vere great weight on his mind.