[Who among us has never written a check, early in January, and written upon it the previous year’s date? The same pitfall awaits publishers. In 1886, our predecessor, Washington Freeman, fell victim to it. We did the same one year, we can’t recall exactly when. — The Ed.]
The police of Detroit, Mich., formed themselves into a mob on the night of Dec. 29th, and destroyed the office of the Sunday Sun, a sensational newspaper which had criticized their conduct.
The streets of Lawrence, Mass., are now lighted with the Edison incandescent electric light.
Judge Yates, of Peoria, Ill., has gone to Canada after stealing $250,000 from estates in his charge. [That’s $8,616,382 in todays currency. – The Ed.]
Calvin Pratt, a notorious western forger, has been caught in Japan, and a large sum of money recovered.
Richard A. Brock, clerk for Wilson & Rand, wholesale meat dealers of Manchester, has gone west with $500 of their money.
C.H. Eaton, Esq., of Calais, Me., has just made a trip in the little steam yacht Leila to Florida, arriving in safety. On the passage four men were rescued from death by Mr. Eaton. They were discovered clinging to the bottom of their boat, which had been capsized. Two of the men were wealthy New Yorkers, and the others were seamen in their employ.
William Brown, sixteen years old, was drowned at Waltham, Mass., and Walter Parker, aged twelve, at Hartford, Conn., Dec. 29th, by breaking through the ice while skating.
An attempt was made on the night of Dec. 23d to blow up the bridge of the Southern Pacific railroad across the Rio Grande river, several miles above El Paso, Texas.
Capt. Davis, with one company of troops and 100 Apache scouts, is in the mountains of Arizona, and has not been heard from for several weeks.
The woman who murderously assaulted Mrs. Fogg of Jamaica Plain, Mass. with a monkey-wrench, has been hunted out, and confesses the crime.
John T. Jones of Malden, Mass., a member of the Malden gun club, fatally shot himself by accident, Dec. 31st, with a pistol.
Brigham Young Hampton, who was convicted of conspiracy to entrap prominent Gentiles, was on Dec. 30 sentenced at Salt Lake City, Utah, to the maximum penalty under the law—one year in county jail.
[In the wake of a law prohibiting bigamy, Hampton had been authorized by Mormon elders to hire two prostitutes and establish a brothel fitted with peepholes in which to entrap law enforcement officers. The terms of his “imprisonment” were lax, to say the least. He frequently visited his family, and even staked out a gold and silver claim which he named, “Cheaf Conspiritor.”
Advices of Dec. 29th from Rome, Texas, stated that about 150 Mexican partisans were congregated on the Texas border preparatory to a raid on the Mexican town of Mier, where they proposed to settle an election dispute in the good old-fashioned Mexican style.
An unknown woman about forty-five years old was run over and killed at Manchester on the night of Dec. 29th. She was a passenger on the train from Boston, and jumped off before the train stopped.
When Congress re-assembles one of the first bills to come up will be the one to remove the sentence of the court martial from Fitz John Porter, and place him on the retired list. The bill will again pass, as it did last winter, and President Cleveland will undoubtedly sign it.
Peter B. Sweeney, Esq., the leading light of the notorious Tammany-Tweed ring, has returned to New York from a somewhat prolonged residence in France. There has probably not been a similar announcement of such interest since it was made concerning the late Aaron Burr, who also resided in Paris for some time, under circumstances which led him to regard the society of his native country as distasteful.
The Congregational ministers of Chicago last week listened to the views of August Spies, the editor of a socialist paper, upon the aims of the socialists. He said there were 500,000 socialists in the United States who believed in anarchy and resorting to force to accomplish their “levelling” process. He said marriage, as practiced today, was simply concubinage, and that when the socialistic revolution occured free-love would prevail.
Samuel Miller, a prominent contractor of Chattanooga, Tenn, and a leading member of the Baptist church there, disappeared eighteen months ago, leaving a beautiful young wife to whom he had been but three months married. He also left some debts, but his integrity was not doubted, and it was believed he was murdered. It has just transpired that Miller is secreted in Texas, and that he has wives in five different states, each of whom he deserted a few weeks after marriage. It is also alleged that he has left debts unpaid in half a dozen cities.
At Bath, Me., the New England Shipbuilding company will soon lay the keel for a four-masted schooner of 1500 tons for Boston parties. She will carry 2600 tons coal, and will be the largest schooner ever constructed.
A boat’s crew of the whaling schooner Mary E. Simmons, commanded by John P. Pereird, third mate, was taken down by a whale near the Cape Verde islands, Nov. 29th, and no trace of the boat or men could be found. Arthur Ward of New Haven was one of the crew, and all the others belonged to Cape Verde and the Western islands.
The Lancaster national bank, of Clinton, Mass., has suspended. Cause, a light-fingered cashier.
The town of Solon, Me., is excited over a case of malpractice which resulted in the death of Miss Elora B. Bean of Skowhegan, a beautiful girl of eighteen. Dr. J. Moore is charged with the offence.
Dr. J.W. Griggs’ suit against the Western railroad was terminated last Friday. The jury gave the doctor damages to the amount of $260. We asked him what he proposed to do with so much money. He said: “I shall buy a first-class donkey and name it for the judge who presided in the case.” – West Point (Ga.) News.
Some individual better provided with breath than with brains amused himself about midnight on the night of Dec. 30th, by several times blowing the police signal for aid on a police whistle, in the vicinity of Market Square. It would have served the silly ass right had an officer caught him and given him such a clubbing as would have kept him in bed for a month. Who the fellow was should not be difficult to find out, for the whistles are owned by the city, and supplied only to the regular police, for their protection and the protection of the public; and if any officer loans his whistle, he should make sure it is to a man and not a jumping jack. The fact is, there is room for a great deal of improvement in the present police force, and unless such improvement sets in pretty soon the hoodlum element will have the upper hand entirely; it has pretty nearly got it now.
Editor Andrew J. Hoyt, of the Exeter Protest, was in town on the 29th ult.
Emancipation Ball
There was a grand ball held at Franklin upper hall on New Year’s night by the Austin-Lincoln association of the colored population of this city, in commemoration of emancipation. The hall was festooned with evergreen and decorated with flags of the Union, and the tables were laid by the colored ladies. Mr. James Adams, formerly a caterer at Washington, and Mr. Peter Williams, lately of North Carolina, assisted in making the arrangements. The colored brethren did well, and were well supported by their white friends of this city and the neighboring country, by whom the hall was crowded. The original fund for the celebration of emancipation was left by bequest of a late retired Unitarian clergyman, whose name is mentioned in connection with the association. Financially the ball was a success, and everything passed off pleasantly, the ball breaking up early in the morning. The music was by Medcalf’s band.
Write it 1886.
The New Hampshire Gazette, January 7, 1886
It has been discovered that the accounts of State Clerk J.W. McCarty of California, who lately sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu without mentioning his intended departure to his dearest friends, are short $12,000.
Two sons of Benjamin Wood, of Bolton, Mass., broke through the ice while skating, and were drowned.
Two noted desperadoes were killed in recent riots in Matamoros, Mexico.
Mrs. Lucht died in horrible agony in Milwaukee, Wisc., from hydrophobia.
Dr. W.H. Alexander, mayor of King City, Mo., has eloped with a sixteen-year-old girl, deserting his family. He is fifty years old.
A man named Anson Nason was instantly killed by the bursting of a grindstone at Bangor, Me. He was about thirty-six years old, and leaves a widow and five children.
A torpedo has broken loose from its moorings on the coast of Tripoli, and is now floating somewhere in the Mediterranean. This is pleasant for the navigation of those waters.
Great damage was done in Pennsylvania by floods on the 4th and 5th insts. At Duncannon a railroad train went through a bridge, and the firemen and conductor were drowned.
The city council of San Francisco has at last awaked to the necessity of active measures for the protection of its Chinese residents. Orders have been issued for the better security of the Mongolians.
Mr. John Ruskin in a newspaper article suggests that the virtues of the Irish people and their peculiarities be considered before arranging a scheme for managing them.
A funeral cortege in Macon, Ga., was broken up by two of the mourners, brothers-in-law of the deceased, engaging in a fistic encounter. Knives were drawn and the men badly cut.
The Hilton-Sanborn case is being made prominent again by the presentation of their respective wills for probate. The strange double lives which these two beings lived as philanthropists in Kingston, N.H., and trafficers [sic] in immorality in Boston, surround the case with a chain of odd circumstances which attach to it a peculiar interest. Their combined property amounted to over two hundred thousand dollars. [Or $6,893,106 in today’s debased currency. – The Ed.] The will of Julia A. Hilton, who was a native of Wells, and died several years ago, was presented for probate Jan. 6th in Saco, and with the exception of a few thousand dollars to her immediate family, her property was turned over to Sanborn. His will, which has also been presented for probate, in Exeter, N.H., donates both her property and his own to that object of unique philanthropy, the Sanborn seminary in Kingston. His will is being contested by Dartmouth college, to which Sanborn’s original will made a large bequest. Whether Julia Hilton’s will is to be contested does not yet appear, but the prospect now is that not only will the bulk of this great property go to the lawyers, but the wicked means by which it was accumulated will be pretty thoroughly exposed. – Biddeford Journal
The New Hampshire Gazette, January 14, 1886
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Our thanks to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, holder of the newspapers from which the items above were excerpted. – The Ed.