Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1877 — STATE NEWS. [ARTICLE]

STATE NEWS.

Several cases of scarlet fever are reported at Monticello. Wild pigeons are reported to be nesting in the timber in Starke county.

A convention of music teachers will be held at Columbus the 27th, 28th and 29th days of June. Mr. Thos. Miles of Angola has been appointed superintendent of buildings by the board ot directors of the northern prison.

Henry Fuller was recently sentenced to imprisonment in the Marion county jail ten days for robbing a postoffice in Bartholomew county. Governor Williams has appointed as state-house commissioners Hon. I. D. G. Nelson, W. K McKean, Gen. Thos. A. Morris and Gen. Juhn Love.

A series of meetings which Protestants would call a revival is in progress at Peru, under the conduct of a Roman Catholic priest from Ft Wayne. The number of pupils lhatattended the public schools of Indianapolis during the year that ended April 30th, was 22,916. The total number that attended in Marion county was 31,932.

One colored gentleman voted in Plymouth at the recent municipal election. He was the first negro to vote in Marshall county, and deposited a straight democratic ticket. Ga-lory. John Adams Smith, of Lancaster, Ohio, while walking on the railroad track at Fort Wayne, on Tuesday, was struck by a passenger train and his right foot crushed. He sustained internal injuries.

A youth named Thojnas Howe, while .attempting to jump from one car to another on the Peninsula & Lake Huron train Al Valparaiso, Saturday evening, fell between them and was ernshe<l to death.

Thomas Ellis, residing near Mount Vernon, attempted suicide last Monday night by cutting his throat with a pocket, knife. His wounds are not considered dangerous. Cause, domestic troubles. Mrs. Gabriel Sutton, an estimable widow lady residing near North Vernon, attempted suicide Tuesday, by hanging with a rope, but Tier cries attracted lielp, and she was cut down in-time to save her life.

Judge Chase of the Cass county circuit court gave a decision in a case that was tried before him recently to the effect that lhe state of Indiana received a fee simple title to the bed of the Wabash and Erie canal, and that now the r«. cent purchssers are the legal owners thereof.

A Carroll county circuit court jury has returned a verdict in favor of Mrs. Dick and against the city of Logansport and Mr. Farrington, the city water works contractor, for ®3,500 damages for the depth of her husband caused by an explosion in an excavation connected with the water works.

A lad by the name of Lamb, aged fifteen years, living with his parents in Warren county was offended because he did not receive a new suit of clothes at the same time one was bought lor an older brother, and while his parents were absent at churoh on the next Sunday committed suicide hy shooting the top of his head off with the load of a shot gun. A majority of our attorneys and collecting agents are holding notes left with them for collection, until another crop is harvested. It would be much better for all concerned and for the general prosperity of the county if fewer suits were instituted and collections enforced against honest, parties, who being unfortunate with their productions for two years, are unable to satisfy creditors. — Fowler Era.

The ‘'hard times’’ about which we have heard so much in the last few months have played sad havoc wi’h the membership of the secret societies hi this city, and presumably through the state and adjacent states. Men feel disinclined to join societies where they are required to spend money in the way of initiation fees, and those already enrolled default dues and permit themselves to lapse from active membership. This state of things is believed to be merely temporary, but it affects all organizations to a greater or less extent; the Knights of Pythias probably more than any other of the larger ones, though the Masons and Odd-fellows complain some.— lndianapolis journal.