Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1875 — An Innocent Man’s Imprisonment. [ARTICLE]

An Innocent Man’s Imprisonment.

A man was pardoned from the Charlestown State Prison, Friday, after serving almost eight years on a life sentence for a crime which be never committed. This was Moses B. Wheeler, -convicted of arson in February, 1866, on the testimony of his sister and'her husband, who said they saw him fire a house in Brighton occupied by a widow, and against his own oath and the testimony of the widow herself, who declared that Wheeler saved her house from burning, tlie actual damage the building sustained being thirty dollars. Two years after Wheeler’s entrance upon bis life-imprisonment the sister who had condemned him to it died of smallpox. On the day before her death she confessed to another sister, in an agony of remorse, that she had perjured herself at thi)4-trial at the bidding of others, and for the purpose of getting"her brother out of file wayq Before a legal deposition could be'obtained the lumiiui was too far gone to give it. The motive for this unnatural conduct was at the outset explained byWheeler to be that he was charged, by a brother who died in battle by his side' to see that their mother had his property, which, when he returned home, he found claimed by his sister on the strength of a forged letter purporting to be from the dead brother. Be the motive what it may, she and her husband had actually put him out of the way by perjury. Wheeler has made incessant efforts since to have his sentence revoked and at last Succeeds.— SpringfieiH (Mass.) Republican. —The, Board of Missions of the M. E. Church recently met in New Y»rk and made the following appropriations: Erie, $1,000; Florida, $3,800; Georgia, $7,500; Houston, $500; Mississippi. $7,000; Nebraska, $6,500; Nevada, £3,500; New York, $2,000; New- York. East, $2,000; North Carolina, $7,000; North Indiana, $500; Pittsburgh, $1,200; Kentucky, $6,500; Lexington, $2,500; Maine. $1,400; Michigan, $2.000; Louisiana, $8,000; Minnesota, $500; Northwest lowa, $5,000: Ohio. 1,000: Oregon. $2,500; Rock River, $1,200; Rocky Mountains, $10,000; S. Carolina $7,500; Southeastern Division of Indiana, e SSOO.