Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1905 — MORE ABOUT THE MIDDLECAMP FIRE. [ARTICLE]

MORE ABOUT THE MIDDLECAMP FIRE.

Further particulars are now available regarding the burning of the fine Middlecamp residence and I still finer contents, than were given in the previous account. Probably there is not another farm house in Jasper county the burning of which could cause so great a loss on contents as this did. It seems that two of the Middlecamp girls and one of rhe boys have long been connected at good salaries, with one of the mud bath hotels, near Attica,and have been saving money aud accumlating furniture, bedding etc., to start a hotel of their own, and most of these accumulations were in this house when it burned last Friday night. One of the daughters was home from the springs, for a visit, and had her trunk packed to return, the next day. In this trunk and burned in the fire, was some S4OO in money, which she had saved from her wages. Another item of loss, even greater, was a great accnnmlation. of goose fi .a* h ei». w h ic-h they had been keeping for pillows for their proposed hotel, and 40 of which pillows were already 7 made up. Some 800 pounds of these feathers, wo:th a dollar a pound are said to have been burned. The fire seems to have started from having a hot fire to bake cakes for a social to be given at the Methodist church at Kniman. Mrs. Kroeger, the mother of the family, was the first to discover the ’ fire and she became so overcome in trying to save some of the contents that she nearly lost her own life, and would have done so had she not been rescued by O. A*. Yeoman and Jim Sutton, the latter being the man who recently had a sen- i sational trial for insanity, before a ■ justice here. The family have moved into Sheriff O’Connor’s house in Kniman, until they can build an other house of their own.