How Many Children Have You?

News for the Lawrenceville and Vincennes newspapers June 18 1880

Robinson was going to have an old fashioned barbeque to celebrate the Fourth with an ox roast.  From the courthouse cupula, 47 reapers and binders could be seen at work harvesting wheat.  The blackberry crop was splendid. Garfield was running for President. The Olney Driving Park Association were planning on distributing prizes amounting to $1500 at their summer races July 2 and 3.

 W F Curry of Russell twp. estimated his wheat crop would bring in 35 bushels per acre. Wages for reapers are $2.00 per day. Prof and Mrs. P J Anderson would remain in Lawrenceville another year.  The insurance firm of Ryan and Teschemacher was dissolved. In a lawsuit against Whitfield Hawkins, Kate A Hawkins and William P Hawkins, Gilbert F Nigh prevailed. Mathew Martin sued Catherine Martin for Divorce. The Dalrymple boy fell out of a cherry tree and received fatal injuries.

The usual harvest of the village of Lawrenceville was suddenly disturbed by rumors that Mrs. Elizabeth Lindley aka Paker (She was the sister of  T W Roberts) had gone unnoticed to the country west of town under considerable aberration of mind. Mrs. L had been more or less afflicted with kleptomania for a number of years and her victims put up with her depredations on account of her known weakness.  However, she developed symptoms of insanity and was not considered responsible for her actions.  She prowled around sacking private residences and made herself conspicuous in church and other public meetings. She tried to borrow a horse and buggy to go out into the country, but no one would accommodate her so she struck out on foot. She was seen on the road about three miles north east of Lawrenceville where she went into a house for a drink.  Subsequently a farmer met her on a crossroad leading in the direction of the river.

A large number of citizens started out, mounted and afoot, to the river bottoms above town some five miles near where she was seen near the residence of Wm Dickirson. The searching party patrolled the woods thoroughly, but no trace of the unfortunate woman was found, save an occasional footprint in some soft ground where she had waded through small branches and sloughs in the neighborhood south of Joseph Griggs, crossing Muddy Creek twice in the dismal wilds of that dark bottom, evidently in a fearful state of insanity.  Late in the evening her stocking was found and soon her rapid strides were again discovered near the riverbank where she walked or ran into twenty- foot of water.  With such appliances as could be improvised with an old dug -out and poles, efforts were made at sounding the deep stream but without success and the search was abandoned at nightfall. 

The next day another company of searchers were organized with grab-hooks, skiffs etc. and whilst these were sounding the water about one hundred yards below the footprints along the bank, the lifeless body of the poor deluded woman arose to the surface and was speedily recovered.  Apparently, she had her clothing caught in some snag that prevented her floating or sinking until relieved by the grab-hooks.  The body was brought home and interred that day at noon. Although sometimes her mind had been unbalanced from troubles within and without, she never had been known to exhibit a disposition to harm herself or anyone else.  She was on the street the morning she disappeared cheerful and pleasant but this condition proved deceitful as that afternoon she sought the darkest gloomiest spot in the county where the surroundings intensified an already overtaxed mind, resulting in her untimely death.

Grand jurors for the August term of Circuit Court 1880 were John Copp, Joseph Hollingsworth, J A Allison,  R R Phillips, Theodore Miles, Morris T Mills, John Jackman, George Barnett, John Seed, J K McCleave, Ashael Rawlings, John G Fritchey Sr., George H Corrie, James Saunders, Stephen Morgan, C B Carter, Suncon (?) Clark, Merrill Clubb, James Bower, Samuel Gray, Sr., James F Jennings, Thomas Shaw and Samuel Laird.

Bills paid by the county treasurer after approval by the County supervisors were: Kelly & Slater for locks for courthouse $13.50 ; James Sandiford for cleaning and whitewashing jail $5.00; George Clark for repairing county jail $4.50; F W Cox superintendent quarterly salary $75.00; Isaac Potts quarterly salary as county judge $162.50; Cornelius Meadows for tin cups furnishing county jail $2.40; T J Grayson medical attention to Martin McKinney, pauper $10.00; H P Smith medical attention to John Gray, pauper $12.50;A Q Baird medical attention for Mr. Herron, pauper $7.00; George M Claycomb whitewashing poor farm $7.76; and Mary L Claycomb making and mending clothes at poor farm $3.75.

Bridgeport Brevities: There were said to be too many dogs in town. No potatoes were for sale. Cherries were selling for 25 cents a gallon. Mr. Turner was the agent for Lankin & Co of Cincinnati, who owned Capt. M O’Donnell’s farm south of town. Bridgeport, boasting that they had advantages over the other towns in the county being centrally located, with the most beautiful grove and an abundance of shade and water, invited all citizens in Lawrence and adjoining counties to celebrate the national holiday on Saturday July 3.  

Prof Henderson of Sumner and Miss Eva Page of Olney and Miss Emma Ray of Crossroads would be the teachers in Bridgeport in the coming fall and winter. Luella Baird and her brother Austin Baird both mutes returned home from the deaf and dumb school at Jacksonville. There were quite a number of boarders at Stiver Springs. Summer school closed at Bond with Willis H Stoltz as the teacher. Miss Mattie Souder left her Spring Hill residence to engage as a trimmer in a millinery establishment in Vincennes.

The Vincennes newspaper reported that the roust abouts employed on the steamer Belgrade struck for the harvest fields and $2.00 per day when the steamer arrived at the wharf. They did not even wait to unload her.

 Genealogists: The 1880 census takers did not have an easy job.  The newspaper editor stated that a new method of propounding questions should be adopted for the convenience and protection of census enumerators, or the more timid ones would certainly be foully dealt with. For instance, nature has not endowed every old maid with a sweet temper and amiable disposition.  "It is just a little more than the weaknesses of human nature can withstand to have an ugly- looking man with a great big book ask of a meek- eyed little 'miss' whose auburn locks have been tinged by the frost of no less than 60 winters, how old she is, when one glance ought to convince him she wants it distinctly understood she is only 30.  But the succeeding question is more likely to raise their ire to a white heat and will result in the loss of blood before the campaign is over— “how many children have you?”  This question, at least, according to the editor, should be struck from the list as it may save the  lives of some census enumerators."