Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 114, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1904 — RECORD OF THE WEEK [ARTICLE]

RECORD OF THE WEEK

INDIANA INCIDENTS TERSELY TOLD. Farmer with Gun Stope Survey for Electric Road Across Hia Farm—Temperance Lecturer Stabbed by Rowdies —Costly Fire in Prison. Standing guard on his farm with a big dog and a shotgun, Cal Osenbaugh, who lives three and one-half miles southwest of Hartford City, defied the engineering corps of the Indianapolis, Hartford City and Celina Traction Company of Indiana to come on his place to make the survey of the right of way. When the surveyors came to the Osenbaugh farm tlie owner refused to allow them to come on his place and told them they would have to go around. Osenbaugh was accompanied by a fierce-looking dog and said if they attempted to-' cross his land he would set the dog on them. They started across and Oseiihaugh hurried to the house and procured a shotgun and compelled them to get off his farm. Condemnation proceedings will be taken and in all probability the line will cross Osenbaugh’s place. Temperance Man Stabbed. Rev. M. E. Long, lecturer of the Kansas State Temperance Association, was stabbed while trying to drive away disturbers of his meeting at Zion Baptist church at Farmersburg. He was seriously injured in the shoulder with a knife by one of the disturbers, while the lecturer had hold of the arm of another-mid was pulling him from the church window? Which had been raised by the rowdies to enable them to shout into the ehurcM Several men sitting near the window —had shut it, but the rowdies opened it again. Mr. Long went outside to stop them. As soon as the audience knew of the stabbing men tried to capture the fellows, but they escaped ni the darkness.

SIOO,OOO Fire in a Prison. I Fire in the Michigan City prison wrought considerable damage to State property and to J. S. Ford Johnson & Co., chair factory, and the Reliance Shirt factory, whose plants were located inside the prison walls. The fire also created a panic among the 800 prisoners, who almost escaped. The J. S. Ford Johnson & Co. loss aggregates $50,000 with $45,000 insurance. The State, the nejrt heavy loser, sustained a loss of $5(mXX)i and carried no insurance. The Reliance, the smallest loser, sustained only $7,000 loss, which was- covered by insurance. The loss on the prison supplies and cold storage is given as $ 10,000. ’ Dead Official Accused of Theft. Leander M. Robinson, for thirteen years City Treasurer of Madison, and who committed suicide a month ago, was short nearly $19,000 in his accounts, according to Henry K. Nobloch of Jeffersonville, who has completed an examination of the books. Along with his statement, Mr. Knobloch advances the opinion that there was an unknown influence behind Robinson pocketing the money and that the City Treasurer himself got no use of the stolen funds. For Trade Schools in Prisons. The Indiana prison board will recommend to the next Legislature the establishment of a trade scnool, in which the inmates of the prison may learn trades and make things to be used exclusively in the State institutions, with military drills and schools of letters added, to take the place of the prison contract system. They will also submit a plan for the establishment of State workhouses and the abolishment of county jails. State News la Brief, Several small fires in Anderson. Glass factories are resuming work. Clover hullers and tomato peelers are busy. Tipton Lutherans will erect a new church building. Cambridge City Casket Company is doing a kind. office business. Wabash counts on having sufficient natural gas the coming winter. Fred Albrecht, 17, Ja>gansport, fell from a train and perhaps was fatally inju red. C. M. Karnes fell from a scaffold in Columbus and it is believed he is fatally hurt; Handsome new school building at Avon has been dedicated. It replaces the building burned a year ago. C. M. Lucas of Washington died in St. Louis after a short illness from a disease of the head. L. C. Powell, Shelbyville's oldest grocer, has suspended business and turned .his stock over to creditors. Football teams are springing up all over the Rtate at a lively rate. Undertakers have ordered more Bloomington people fear that the proposed electric line to connect that city with Martinsville never will be built. A Shelbyville mule was so nngry at seeing an automobile that he kicked the buggy he was drawing almost to pieces. Joseph K. Little, a trustee nt Danville, has sued the town for $250 salary. It is said the town has no fixed salary for officials. William Stephens and «wifc, believers in divine healing, are said by Prosecutor Dentler to be responsible for the death of their 1-year-old -baby, which was, found dead in the family home in Marion by John Golding, humane officer, and Dr. Brose Horne, city health officer. The parents had been given medicine to administer to the child, but instead of doing as directed, it is alleged, the father threw the medicine in the street. Prosecutor Dentler declares he will prosecute Stephens and his wife on the charge of manslaughter. The largest mortgage ever executed in Marion county was filed in Indianapolis, when the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Company recorded a refunding mortgage for $25,000,000 in fnvor of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company. Miss Nellie Kroh, 29 years old, committed suicide by drinking carbolic acid while riding in an automobile with Dr. Martin of Kokomo. Dr. Martin said that owing to the speed of the macthine he could not let go of the steering wheel i> time to prevent her from aecomplishher purpose.

I Fire in the cold storage plant of Sw!» ' dell & Brothers at Plymouth destroyed' [ the entire structure and 100,000 dozen of i eggs. The loss on the building is estimated at $15,000. Mrs. Lizzie Likely was buried at Sugar Branch. It is said that she grieved herself to death for her son Will, who has been roving Over the country for yeArs. She advertised in many papers for him, but received no tidings from her son. Percy Wilson, 25 years of age, a member of Fred M. Berger’s company, presenting the “Sign of the Cross,” died at the Westcott Hotel in Richmond, as the result of a stroke of apoplexy. At the inquest it developed that Wilson was seated in his room writing a letter to his mother in. Montreal, Que., when he was stricken. At the Mundy carnival shows in Richmond, Arthur Holden, a loop-the-loop artist, fell from the top. of the loop, but landed in nets and was uninjured. His bicycle flew through space into the crowd of spectators and Willie Davis, 15 years of age, was struck and perhaps fatally injured. Three ribs were fractured and internal injuries received. Miss Ida E. Michener, the young Colorado Springs waitress who will soon come into a fortune of $15,000,000, together with seven brothers and sisters, has quit work at the Colorado Midland eating house at Cascade and returned home to Carmel. She says her great-grandmoth-er, who left the estate, Lady Margaret Michener of. Essex, England, married against the family’s wishes, causing all the trouble. Surveyors have begun work on an electric railway which is to complete a chain of electric lines from Benton Harbor, Mich., to Cincinnati. Considerable of the right of wayjias been purchased for this bystem, part of which is in operation. The plan of the projectors of the •numerous systems in operation in northern Indiana is to make South Bend the great radiating point for Chicago and to points in Michigan. William Gordon of Elkhart talked incessantly the other day, using his vocal organs for the first time in mouths. The young man fell from a tree at Celina, 0., last April and hovered between life and death for two weeks. When able to be out again he found his hearing and speech gone. One night he was seized with excruciating pain between 8 and 11 o'clock; then suddenly his hearing and speech aeturned. Doctors had abandoned the case. Too late to save his wife from a murderous and mysterious attack by a thug, William Hoagland emerged from his homohr Elkhart just as an unknown man dealt the woman a blow from'which she is now in a critical condition. Mrs. Hoagland went into the back yard and was. seized by an unknown man, choked, dragged to the back of the yard and beaten. Her husband heard the struggle and went to the’rescue, but too late to catch the man. Sylvester Speiker and Gus Hehnke are detained on a charge of grand larceny in Evansville. It is alleged Helmke got SIOO from David Becker, clerkrof a bank on the West Side, and Sjeiker secured S2OO from Becker. The men promised Becker to invest the money in the corn market, but it is claimed they never did. The police say they’ have been getting money right along from Becker since last February, amounting in all to $5,000 or more. The Rev. Mr. Spicer of Nashville, who is conducting services in a gospel tent, preached his wife’s funeral in the tent to a large audience. One of the incidents was a song rendered by the choir, written by Mrs. Spicer on her deathbed, the inspiration for which she claimed to have had direct from heaven. All parts of the music were completed save the tenor. Her own voice was also heard from a phonograph, into which Mrs. Spicer talked two days before her death. The mysterious attack on Mrs. William Hoagland in South Bend has been rendered more perplexing by a similar visit which the supposed same assailant has made on Mrs. Clhit Nolan in tlie same neighborhood. This time, however, he did not succeed in his purpose, for his intended victim fought with vigor until the appearance of her husband and his brother with weapons, who alarmed the fellow and he fled. The neighliorhood is greatly wrought up by the occurrences. Ralph Thorpe, a 7-year-old child of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thorpe of Linton, is in a very critical condition at his home as a result of falling twenty feet from a tree. He, with several other children, • were in the woods gathering hickorynuts, and he had climbed up the tree about twenty feet when he lost his balance and fell, striking Ms head on the ground. He was carried Iwme for dead, and lay unconscious for six hours. It is not thought he will recover. William McNeely, who moved to the Ehrmandale mine three years ago from Wilke.sbarre, I’a., after spending the past year visiting that city trying to prevail on his wife to live with him in Indiana, has arrived in Terre Haute with their son, whom he kidnaped some days ago. The wife would not come and the father made way with the boy, coming back to Indiana by the way of Canada, Detroit and Chicago, and on his arrival here employed a lawyer to defend his right to the jiossession of the boy In an; ticipation that his wife will take action. Gustav Helmke and .Sylvester Speiker were arrested by the Evatisville police on tlie charge of grand larceny. It is charged the young men secured S3OO at one time from I>avid Becker, aged 24, on the pretense that they would invest the money for him in corn. Becker ad» mitted to the police that he had given the young men money on several occasions to speculate fqr him, but they told him the bottom had dropped out of corn and therefore he did not get any returns. The police assert Helmke and Speiker have gotten between $5,000 and SB,OOO from Becker since last February. Becker is a clerk in a bank and hie father recently gave him $5,000 to deposit in Iris own name. Rev. E. O. Ellis, former pastor of the South Eighth Street Friends church of Richmond, a trustee of Earlham college and clerk of Indiana yearly meeting of Friends, haa been entirely dropped by the Friends denomination, which issued a statement assigning grossly immoral conduct for such action. Some time ago Ellis created a sensation by disappearing from the city in comjMiny with a young woman. Upon Ms return he was declared iiMane and sent Na. a sanitarium, but he left the institutlmi in company with the woman and has not since been seen.