Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1879 — A Herculean Negr. [ARTICLE]

A Herculean Negr.

A negro named Elijah, who died some time ago at Oxford, North Carolina, was famous throughout that whole region for his amazing strength. He was six feet four inches high, and weighed 230 pounds. He cotud take up a barrel containing thirty or forty gallons, stand erect apd hold the bung to his mouth and drink out of it* he could throw an ordinary sized anvil twenty-five yards; he * could “puli do wn” four men with ah&ndspike atone time; he could shoulder and carry a log that would make seventy-five or a hundred rails; and could lift a threeyear old colt over an eight-rail fence. He once killed a deer on Maysfleld’s mountian with a rock, oyerlook and dispatched a black bear with an ax, and caught and hamstrung a ferocious bull.

A Denominational Joke. A party of Baptist clergymen were blue-fishing off" Martha’s Vineyard the other day. A question arose as to whether a certain specimen was really a blue-fish. “We call ’em Baptists/’ said a native fisherman. The Baptist clergymen rather eagerly asked why. “Case they spile so soon arter they're taken out o’ the water.” Cincinnati for the National Conventions.