Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1905 — Old Time News [ARTICLE]

Old Time News

Facts from Jasper County’s First Paper. February 23rd, 1854

A two and a half column article was copied from the ludianapoli* Daily Sentinel, giving an enthusiastic prophecy of the future of the United States. By 1900 there would be three railroad to the Pacific, a northern, central and southern. There really were four counting the Canadian road. The news of today in San Francisco and New York would soon appear side by side, in the newspapers m both cities tomorrow. We really go that one better and much of the news of “today” is published todayin the evening papers. Within 100 years from 1851 the United States would comprise all of North America, and all the islands neighboring thereto and 450 millions of people. But we guess it will not reach that magnitude, either in extent or population. Portland, Maine and Oregon City, Oregon, were to be the two greatest cities of the continent, which we think is where he missed it again.

Poor men were urged to secure a farm and home by getting some of the swamp lands in Jasper county, practically for nothing; for they could earn back all they paid for them by digging ditches on their own land.

Many citizens were preparing to make large improvements, both in town and country; and the material for the new court house 'was on the ground, and its construction would begin as soon as the weather would jiermit.

Lawson Bruce, the county auditor, had a red hot card in the paper, going after some fellows who had been intimating that he was being crooked in regard to selling swamp land' He denied all these charges in toto, and wanted the fellows who were making them, to come out in the open and make them publicly instead of “sneaking behind wood-piles filling the ears of citizens with secret scandal.”

Webster & Harding advertised •‘an excellent quality of CODFISH for saleat the Drugand Book Store.” And therein may be a valuable hint for some of our present drug stores to ginger up a little by adding a line of codfish, and mayhap, •in assortment of limburger cheese to their present business as side lines.

Samuel Davis advertised that his wife Elinor Davis, had left his tied and board without any just cause or provocation, and that he would pay no bills of her contracting. All right, Sam, she will have to dig up the cash if she buys anything around here, but all the same, we are pretty tolerabjy certain that a man mean enough to advertise his wife in the papers, was also mean enough to give her plenty ol provocation for leaving him. A Company had Isen organized in New York to build the Pacific r tilroad, but they had decided on the extreme southern route, and Texas and Arkansas had appropriate 1 land enough toj>uild| and eq ip it — maybe.