Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 138, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1904 — THE WEEKLY HISTORIAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE WEEKLY HISTORIAN

One Hundred Years Ago. British West Indian ports were closed to all American coriimeree. Napoleon and liis wife Josephine were crowned at Paris by Pope Pius VII. The governor of Haytl ordered a duty of $2 per gallon on all liquor imported into that island. The elector of Salsburg suppressed in his states the tax imposed on Jews. The legislature of South Carolina rejected by a single vote the bill prohibiting the importation of slaves into that State. The first accurate map of Virginia, prepared by James Madison, was completed. By a treaty concluded between the State of Georgia and the Creek Indians the Okmulgee River was named as the boundary'.

Seventy-five Years Ago. The United States government sent a commission to Georgia to discover the true boundaries of the Cherokee and Creek nations in that State. The British government abolished the right of “suttee,” or immolation of widows on the funeral pile of their husbands. Extensive cotton factories were being erected at Calcutta, India. Twelve slaves, who mutinied on the schooner Lafayette, were tried by the United States court of Louisiana. Russia ordered all her troops to evacuate Erzerum and all territory annexed to Russia by the treaty of Adrianople. J. K. Mitchel, of Philadelphia, Invented a method by which India rubber could be made Into thin and almost transparent sheets. London papers were urging parliament to repair the cloisters and interior of Westminster Abbey, which was in a sad state of dilapidation.

Fifty Years Ago. Admiral Ilamelin resigned command of the French Black Sea fleet The United States steam frigate Susquehanna arrived at Acapulco to coal and water. The conference of Roman Catholic bishops at Rome adjourned. Austria concluded a convention with the western powers, defining its future policy in time of war. * The people of Mexico completed three days’ balloting and unanimously decided that Santa Anna should continue as governor. The Panama Herald published a statement that a treaty had been ratified between the United States and Ecuador by which the latter ceded to the United States the Galapagos group for $3,000,000.

Forty Years Ago. The taking of evidence at the trial of several persons for treason at Indianapolis, Ind., involving the Knights of the Golden Circle, closed. The first fire alarm box in Chicago was placed at Polk and Canal streets. Sixty natives of the Southern States, residents of New York, were arrested and examined as to their knowledge of the dynamite plot to destroy the city. President Lincoln tn a message <o Congress urged the curtailment of the increasing circulation of State banks. Presidential electors met in the sev. eral Union States and cast the ballot that re-elected Abraham Lincoln.

fhirty Years Ago. Many thousands of miners were kll? in the Lackawanna valley.- Pennsvl vania, and misery and crime prevailed to an alarming extent. The managers of the western railways at a meeting in Chicago voted to abandon the free pass. President Grant made Ids sixth au ntial message to Congress, and recommended a return to specie payment. The United States Supreme Court Iti denying to a litigant the right to collect frorti the government for cotton brought from the Confederacy, and seized by Union troops, held the Con federacy to have been a conspiracy. The striking from the budget by Bismarck of the appropriation for a legation at the Vatican precipitated a row in the German relehstng. Reisirts that the Czar was ill and insane were sent out' from I.ondnn. The famous Washington “safe burglary” ease was dismissed on a technical ruling, which declared the grand jury' which Indicted the defendant* had been illegally dra'wn. Twenty Years Ago. Science ball at the University of Wisconsin at Mndisou burned, wttfc, loss of 1250,000.