Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1897 — SOUTHERN. [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN.

The Vanderbilts have bought nearly half a million acres of coal and timber land in West Virginia. The object, it is said, is to control the coal market. At the hearing at Waco, Tex., in the ease of Col. G. B. Gerald, who was wounded and who shot and killed the Harris brothers in a controversy arising out of the Brann-Baylor trouble, it was shown that Col. Gerald was justified, and he was exonerated by the court. As a passenger train over the Evansville division of the Illinois Central road was leaving Dekoven, Ky., a steam heater in a crowded coach exploded, scattering pieces of pipe in all directions and filling the car with a cloud of scalding vapor. Six persons were injured and the coach totally wrecked. A 1 Chastan, deputy sheriff of Panhandle, Tex., has wired the Topeka (Kan.) officers to help him find the Rev. A. E. Morrison, charged with poisoning his wife. Morrison was released at Topeka the other day after the police had held him for three days, awaiting some action on the part ot the Texas authorities. The jury at Sevierville, Tenn., in the case against Pleas Wynn and Catlett Tipton, charged with the murder of William Whaley and wife iu that county last December, brought in a verdict convicting Wynn and acquitting Tipton. The crime of which the men were charged was a dastardly one, and was an outgrowth of the white cap organization existing in that county. A letter has been sent to the officers at Morgan, Texas, purporting to have been ■written by Joseph E. Blanther, alias Forbes, who killed himself in jail there March 2. In this letter Blanther confesses to having killed Mrs. Langfeldt, Blanche Lament and Minnie Williams, and urges that steps be taken at once to save the life of Theodore Durrant, convicted of the murder of the last two at San Francisco. The murderer of John M. Clayton of Arkansas, it is claimed, is now serving a term in the Georgia penitentiary.. He is a white man. and his term will soon expire. J. M. Clayton, a brother of Powell Clayton, a Republican leader, was murdered in November, 1888, and while the State of Arkansas was quivering with excitement the assassin escaped to the mountains of north Georgia. He remained there under an assumed name until the penchant for crime mastered him, and he worked his way fnto convict stripes. In a moment when his secret preyed too heavily upon his mind he imparted it to a fellow convict, who told a guard named Aiken. Aiken, who claims to hold the key to the mystery, was seen. He is holding his information for a reward, and declihes to disclose the convict’s name at this time. Gov. Jones of Arkansas has reopened the case, and has authorized a reward of SSOO for the arrest and conviction of Clayton’s murderer.