107. Two Murders In Greensfork Township, Randolph County

Two Murders In Greensfork Township, Randolph County 

Winchester News-Gazette, November, 1978
by William Jackson.

  In the spring of 1891 Randolph County, and particularly Greensfork Township, was in the grip
of something of a reign of terror as a pair of unsolved murders was climaxed by the shooting death of James Oliver Morgan, a farmer who lived east of Lynn and the father of Frank Morgan, who now lives in Winchester. In May of 1891, and had been married for 11 years. He had two sons.
  The murder was well covered in the newspapers of the time, and excited a great deal of public interest because of the unsolved killings which had preceded it. Public interest was so great, in fact, that it nearly resulted in the lynching of the man who was accused and eventually convicted of the crime.
  James Oliver Morgan, known by the familiar abbreviation of the time as Ol Morgan, was 35 years old in May of 1891 and had been married for 11 years. He had two sons, one five years old, and another, Frank, who was only 10 months old. Morgan was well liked and respected and his neighbors were shocked to see the headlines which greeted them in the May 6 edition of the Winchester Herald:

Headstone of James O. Morgan located in Spartanburg Cemetery, Randolph County, Indiana.

A Horrible Murder  - Oliver Morgan Slain In His Own House By The Hand Of An Unknown Assassin.

 " Last Thursday evening Winchester was startled, for the third time within the past year, by the announcement that Oliver Morgan had been murdered by a tramp," the article stated.
  The murder had occurred during the afternoon of April 30, while the rest of the Morgan family was away. The Morgans had set down to their noon meal together as normal, and after eating Ol played for awhile with his two sons before returning to his field on the farm east of Lynn which he was plowing. His wife, the former Mary Etta Moore, then took the children and went with her mother, Mrs. Thomas Moore, to shop in Lynn. She returned home shortly after 5 p.m., and as the Herald describes it:
  "She tripped gaily up the stairs, opened the bedroom door, stepped lightly into it when, God in Mercy! the sight that met her eyes almost hushed the breath and froze her very blood. Before her, on the floor, in a pool of blood, lay her husband, dead by the hand of some fernal devil."
  Morgan had been shot shortly before in the left side of the chest, near the fourth rib. His wife thought she could detect a faint heartbeat, but he died soon after the discovery.
  The inhabitants of the area began a search for the culprit as soon as the murder was known, and it was soon discovered that J. F. Cloyd, a section foreman on the IB&W railroad, had noticed a tramp pass along the track westward toward Lynn. The description was circulated, and when a southbound freight train on the Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad pulled into Lynn that evening, a brakeman reported having seen the tramp walking northward along the tracks.
  Lynn's Marshal Stewart took Cloyd and several other men who could identify the stranger and started north along the tracks on a handcar. The party passed the man and then waited for him to catch up. When he did the marshal leveled a gun on him and told him he was under arrest. When the tramp asked what he was being arrested for, the marshal replied, "A man has been shot east of Lynn and we think you are the man that did it."
  The stranger then gave a fatal answer: "Is he dead yet?"
  He was taken back to Lynn, and from there to the jail in Winchester. The suspect was identified as Charles Kenney, and was described as "A wicked looking man, about five feet two inches high with a downcast countenance."
  Morgan, who was born in Spartanburg and spent his entire life in the area was buried on the next Saturday, May 2. The infuriated people of Lynn talked of lynching the tramp and went so far as to hold a meeting to take some type of formal action in the matter. Some of the relatively cooler heads prevailed, however, and they decided that they would give the court and jury a chance and if they failed in their duty the people would take the matter into their own hands and see that justice is done.
  The attitude of the people was understandable, considering the murders which had preceded Morgan's within a years time. The first, referred to as The Hinshaw Tragedy was still wrapt in impenetrable mystery at the time of Morgan's death and there did not seem to be much hope of the mystery ever being solved. The second murder, which occurred within weeks of Morgan's, was in many ways even more frustrating than the first, since the murderer was known, and was even in custody for a few seconds at one time, and yet he had not been brought to justice.
  Carrie Bass was a black woman, part of a black community which was thriving in Greensfork Township at that time. Carrie and her husband William and the couple's five children lived on the boundary road some distance from Bartonia, near the "Dismal Swamp and a dreary, dismal place it is." The murder occurred on the night of February 19, 1891, while William Bass was away and Anderson Bosswell, also a black and a friend of the couple, was visiting. Public feeling over the incident was increased, no doubt, by the colorful journalistic style of the day, which announced in the headlines of the Winchester Herald on February 25:

A Cold Blooded Murder-The Colored Population Of This County Are One Less Than A Week Ago

Anderson Bosswell Uses The Knife And Almost Severs The Head Of Carrie Bass From Her Body With One Stroke

  The article then went on to describe in anatomical detail the cause and effects of the horrible wound, "ear to ear," which Bosswell had inflicted.  "It is not the first cutting he has ever done," the paper stated. Bosswell had apparently fled his home in Grant County for carving a couple of men there, and there was also an incident in Union City involving a razor which was attributed to him.
  What really angered the people, however, was the comedy of errors which followed in the case. It was soon discovered that Bosswell, after leaving the county, had been hanging out in the bars of South Marion in Grant County. The local sheriff, hearing that a $50 reward was being offered for his capture, determined to round him up and set out one day with several deputies. The deputies were apparently to do the work while the sheriff stayed a safe distance away in a buggy.
  Bosswell was tracked to a house where he was cornered and Deputy Sheriff John Daugherty called on the man to come out. "You come in. I won't hurt you," Bosswell replied. Daugherty however was understandably dubious of the man's word and seemed in no hurry to beard the lion in his den. Bosswell refused to come out and Daugherty finally entered the house covering Bosswell with his gun and demanding his surrender.
  Bosswell replied that he was ready to give up and Daugherty then turned his back to leave the house, trusting the gentle soul behind him to follow him out. Bosswell, however, had other ideas and immediately pulling two revolvers marched Daugherty and two other deputies out into the road. Bosswell then ordered them to take the straight road for town and to get of Lynn were not well disposed towards the accused, the paper said. They got.
  The last that was heard in that case was a telegram from Marion County's Sheriff Sanders to Randolph County's Sheriff Buck Fletcher which read, "Bosswell is in the county, if you want him, please bring a company of men to catch him." Bosswell got clean away, as they say, before anyone went to catch him.
  With this fresh on their minds, it is no wonder that the people of Lynn were not well disposed towards the accused murderer of Ol Morgan. The editor of the Herald, in a plea to allow justice to run its course without the interference of mobs, described the people of Lynn as not the ones to lead mobs or themselves violate the law in order to vindicate the law.
  In spite of the editor's faith in the people the case was venued to the Wayne Superior Court in Richmond, fearing that he would not receive a fair trial in Randolph County. Said the Richmond Evening Item of May 13, "Fearing the effect which the change would have on the people, the tramp was placed on the first train and brought here immediately. The prompt action probably saved him from being mobbed and surely lynched."
  If the people of the Lynn area were already in a lynching mood over the murder of Ol Morgan, the rumors concerning the confession of Charles Kenney did not improve the situation any. Soon after his arrest the rumor began to spread that Kenney had confessed, although the police consistently denied it for reasons of their own. The reason that this confession had an irritating affect on the people was that it presumably showed him guilty of a crime less than first degree murder, and the people would settle for nothing less than a death sentence.
  It was finally revealed in the Richmond Evening Item of May 22 that Kenney had indeed confessed to authorities, and that he intended to plead guilty to second degree murder at his trial. No doubt the people of Lynn will be greatly aggravated at Kenney's escaping the hangman, the paper stated, but there was little that could be done in the case and the text of the confession was published the following week in Winchester, showed why.
  Kenney had confessed to Sheriff Buck Fletcher on Sunday following the crime, stating that he had gone to the Morgan house while Ol was in the fields in the hope of getting some food as he was terribly hungry. When he discovered that no one was home, he went in to steal a suit of clothes, taking in the process a gun of Morgan's in the kitchen and loading up a gun of his own with some of Morgan's ammunition.
  He was upstairs in the bedroom when Morgan, who had seen him enter the house, came in to find him with a stone for a weapon. Hiding under the bed, Kenney almost escaped detection until the last moment when Morgan researched the room. Finding Kenney under the bed he called for him to come out, threatening to kill him. A fight ensued, with Kenney taking the worst of it since Morgan had the stone, and Kenney then drew his own gun from his pocket, an American Bull-Dog .32 caliber revolver, and shot Morgan once.
  According to the confession, Kenney was guilty not of first degree murder, which required that the deed be premeditated, but of second degree murder. His plea of guilty to this charge was accepted because of the lack of any concrete evidence to refute his confession and prove premeditation.
  Kenney entered his guilty plea on Saturday, May 23, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. By 9:30 he was aboard a train with Sheriff Marlatt on his way to Jeffersonville, where he would serve his sentence in Southern Penitentiary. The move was made quickly, in order to save Kenney's life, the sheriff having received word from Lynn that "If you people down here at Richmond don't kill him we will."
  Shortly before the sentencing and removal from the area of Kenney, the Richmond paper observed, "There is no doubt that if Kenney was in jail there (Randolph County) he would be lynched. That he deserves it there is no room for doubt, but in a trial at law a tramp, even, has rights that cannot be ignored. To plead guilty was one of those rights and by availing himself of it he has escaped the hands of the hangman.
  Kenney spent many years in prison, finally being paroled in the 1920's. It was learned later that he had violated his parole and finished his days in prison in Michigan City.

______________________

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105. Two Veteran Railroaders Retire- George Maloy & E. L. Clevenger

Two Veteran Railroaders Retire

The Winchester News.
January 13, 1956, 63 years ago.


  The Branham Café in Union City will be the scene of a large informal supper tonight when local Pennsylvania and New York Central railroad employees get together to honor two retiring veterans, E. L. Clevenger of 708 North Columbia street and George Maloy of 227 North street, Union City.

  E. L. Clevenger, who was born six miles west of Union City on November 6, 1886, moved to Winchester with his parents when he was a young man. In 1910 he became fascinated with telegraphy and became a student under Harold Mann, who was then the second trick operator, employed by the old Grand Rapids & Indiana (G.R. & I) railroad in Winchester. However, Mann was soon to move from Winchester, going to one of the Michigan resort towns located along the railroad and then George Robinson, G. R. & I. agent in Winchester, took the youthful Clevenger under his wing and completed the prepping.

  Late in the year of 1910, Clevenger was hired by the G. R. & I. as a finished telegrapher and assigned at Lynn as a clerk to the agent. Later, he became the first trick operator and after working this job one month, was ordered to Portland as the third trick telegrapher.
  While at Portland he became involved in a catastrophe that, although blameless, left its mark on his mind. He sent a southbound work train out of Portland one morning with proper train orders to run on a clear track and it became involved in a head-on smashup with a north bound fast freight on the single track between Portland and Winchester when a flagman failed to provide a necessary warning and three of the train crew were killed. Says Loren, "I rode out on the hospital train and although cleared of all blame in the accident, the scene of the dead and injured and the wrecked trains took its toll and I promptly gave up railroading on the G. R. & I. much to the consternation of my superiors." It was then that the New York Central (Big Four) railroad prevailed on him to engage his talents on that road.
  After working for the Big Four I relegated to the year of 1912, he married the former Pearl Hart who lived seven miles south of Union City in the Bartonia area and again gave up railroading for the pursuit of farming. During the next seven years Clevenger operated what is now known as the Herschel Gray farm, moving to the homestead of his parents in 1914 to complete the tenure.
  In 1919, George McNeal who was a section foreman in Union City, convinced him that he should return to railroading and Bud Connelly, who yet called Union City his home, hired him in his (Connelly's) role as chief train dispatcher.
  For the next six years he worked up and down the Big Four railroad through Union City as an extra telegrapher and when work became slack following the WW I period, he asked for and received a leave of absence from railroad service in order to obtain employment at the Union City Body Company, but always it was the lure of railroading which beckoned.
  In 1925 he transferred his railroad seniority to the Cleveland division and after performing service at Crestline and "UD" telegraph office in Cleveland, was assigned the agency at Vernon, Ohio. In 1940 he returned to Union City as an operator in the local office where he remained ever since, thus ending his long and brilliant career virtually where it began.

  George Maloy, ending 50 years of continuous service with the New York Central, all served in Union City, was born in Jay County on October 2, 1890. In 1896 the family moved to Union City into the old "Granny" Sullivan property that was located on the site of the present Wolf Pontiac garage. The following fall, at the age of 7, George began his education in the East Side school which stood where the present school building is.
  On June 5, 1905, he began his railroad career when "Irish" Pat Howard, section foreman, hired him onto his gang. After working for Howard into the fall of 1911, Maloy quit the section to go to work for his uncle, Aron Eley, who was foreman at the old railroad coal dock which stood just west of Howard street, directly south of the Pennsylvania depot but on March 19, 1912, he returned to the section gang as a hand and worked in that capacity until 1916 when he was relegated to a post of section foreman, a position he has held continuously in Union City since that time.
  Maloy helped double track the Big Four through Union City in 1917, 1918 and 1919 and every railroad track and every improvement made on the railroad in the city as it exists today bears the brand of his handiwork somewhere and in some manner. This in itself will remain a monument to the tow-headed kid who came to Union City in 1896 and not only helped build a modern railroad empire but helped build a prosperous community as well.

  And so, as E. L. Clevenger and George Maloy, two native sons, retire from service from their chosen vocations with more than 97 combined years between them, the loyalty and integrity that they displayed through all those years will remain on the railroad with their fellow employees and friends as a beacon to guide them through their service as well and the people of Union City join hands in saying-- "Well done!

106. It Was Brother Against Brother For One Local Soldier In The Civil War

It Was Brother Against Brother 
For One Local Soldier In The Civil War 

News-Gazette
September 30, 1978
By William Jackson
______________________

     The route to Randolph County for many of the early settlers and first families of this area began on the Eastern Seaboard, particularly in the states of Virginia and North Carolina. By the time the nation was split apart by Civil War in 1861, Indiana was populous enough to furnish a large number of men to the Union cause, but because of the ties to "Old Virginia" and her neighbors this became much more than a civil war for many Hoosiers -it was in many cases a family affair, literally putting brother against brother. 

Some of the Civil War artifacts on display in The Annex of The Museum at RCHS, Inc. 

     This was the case for at least one Randolph County man who lived near Deerfield at the time the war broke out. The Steed family traces its roots in this country to Warren County, Virginia, and at least one member of that family made his way westward in the 1840s or 1850s, passing through Ohio and settling in the northern part of this county. Lemoine Wright, of Winchester, is this Steed's grandson, and remembers his grandfather's tales of the war which he heard as a boy.

     Steed traveled from Virginia with about 20 other persons in a wagon train, Wright recalls. There were six wagons in the group, one of which was pulled by a team of horses. The rest were pulled by oxen, and the trip into the west took the small party six months to complete. Roads at this time were, for the most part, non-existant. What roads there were consisted mainly of dirt traces, which became almost impassable with mud when it rained. Much of the time it took the party to reach Indiana was filled with felling trees in the forests of Western Virginia and Ohio to make the corduroy roads which were necessary to move the wagons over the mud.
     Indiana was no longer filled with hostile Indians, but Indians were still around. Steed became acquainted with one Indian in the state, whose name was Lemoine, and later his grandson was named for this early Hoosier friend.

     Steed married a woman named Minerva, and the couple had a daughter, who became Lemoine Wright's mother. In the prime of his life, Steed stood over six feet tall, was broad shouldered, with a dark complexion, black hair and hazel eyes. Land was what drew the settlers to Indiana from the more established eastern states, and the settlers put this land to use by farming. Steed was a farmer both before and after his service in the Civil War.
     These early farmers in the county cleared the land themselves, cutting down the trees, or girdling them and leaving them to die and fall on their own. Once the trees were down the logs would be piled together to be burned. Lemoine recalls that his grandfather would make the most of clearing the wood by covering the logs with earth once they were burning and making charcoal from them. The charcoal would then be burned in the home during the winter.

     Home for the Steeds in their early years in Randolph County was a log cabin with a dirt floor downstairs and bedrooms upstairs, heated with fireplaces on the ground floor. To keep the bedrooms upstairs warm, coals from the burning charcoal would be put in iron kettles and placed in the unheated rooms.
     Steed retained his health for most of his life, working on the farm until a few years before his death at the age of 92 in 1929. Lemoine took care of his grandfather in his reclining years, but remembers that only three years before his death Steed, with the flowing white beard of a patriarch, would help in the butchering on the farm, carrying half of a butchered hog over his shoulder.
     Lemoine was a young man when his grandfather died in 1929, but can still recall his tales of the Civil War years, and the accounts of the hardships of the life of the soldier.

     Steed knew about the hardships of the soldier's life from personal experience, having served for a year in the 9th Indiana Volunteer Infantry after being drafted in September of 1864. Since he served only a year, Steed never rose higher than a private, but his name gave him a dignity he never attained in rank. His full name was Colonel M. Steed, which probably game him the distinction of being the only Private Colonel in the Civil War.
     Discipline in the army was much stricter then it is now, Lemoine says of his grandfather's tales. Steed related to his family how soldiers would be punished with hanging by their thumbs for minor infractions of the rules. One soldier was so punished and left hanging overnight, with his toes just touching the ground, and the boy swore to get even with the sergeant responsible for this. The next time the regiment got into a fight, Steed saw the soldier raise his gun towards the sergeant. Steed knew what was coming, but there was nothing he could do and the soldier fired, killing the sergeant.

     The campaigns in which the 9th Indiana fought after Steed joined its ranks included the race against General Hood's rebel army through Tennessee to Nashville, which resulted in the fights at Franklin and Nashville. Following this, Steed took part in the pursuit of Hood back to the south. During these rapid marches the men slept in the mud and water of winter, and at one point Steed had a horse shot out from under him.
     When the marching columns would come to a stream or a river, the men filled their canteens while they could, mindless of the dead soldiers and horses in the water. There was no time to search for cleaner water.

     But what bothered Colonel Steed most following the war was the fact that his brother, who had stayed behind in Virginia, had joined the confederate army and had been killed in the war. Steed always worried that perhaps it was a bullet from his gun which killed him.
     The Randolph County soldier needn't have worried on this account, for by the time he shouldered a gun for the Union he had missed his chance to cross paths with his brother by 3 years.

     The rest of the Steed family had remained in Warren County, Virginia, when Colonel left for Indiana, and it was in this county that Companies B and E of the 7th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry, were raised. Six Steeds enlisted in this outfit at the beginning of the war: Charles F., Chaney J. and John W., all in Company B, and Frank S., Shelton and William T., in Company E. One, or perhaps more than one of these men were Colonel N. Steed's brother. Almost undoubtedly these Steeds were all of some relation to Randolph County's member of the family.

     In the fall of 1861 a Union force consisting of the 8th, 9th and 14th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, with Winchester's Silas Colgrove, and two Ohio regiments, moved into Western Virginia under the command of John F. Reynolds. It was at the Greenbriar River, in Pocahontas County, that the men of the 9th Indiana first "Saw the elephant," and went into battle with the rebels.
     The experience was not a happy one, as 100 Confederates from the 12th Georgia held off the three Indiana regiments for two hours at a pass until additional Confederate forces could be brought against the Yankees. While the Hoosier soldiers were moving along a cow path in an attempt to flank the rebels, the southern soldiers shot down the marching men as if in a shooting gallery. One of the rebel units brought into the battle at this point, also for its first taste of enemy fire, was the 7th Virginia Cavalry with the Steed family.

     The ancestors of one other Randolph County resident, James Ponder, also served with the 7 Va. Cav. at this time.  Many of the Branner family enlisted in Rice's 8th Star Artillery, which was attached to Company K of the 7th Va. Cav. Fortunately, one of the Branners recorded his experiences on the 3rd of October, 1861, in a letter to his brother Josiah, a copy of which is now in Ponder's possession. This simple account of the battle tells the story of the clash between the 7th Va. Cav. and the 9th Ind. from a point of view very close to that of the Steeds':
     "Dear brother,
     "I seat myself to inform you about the battle on yesterday as well as I can. They commenced firing on our pickets about half past 8 o'clock. They came down with 8 cannons and opened on us. We just let them fire till they shot some 25 or 30 rounds and then they came up nearer to us and we opened on them. We shot 65 or 70 rounds with one cannon, and then a ball struck Frank Graves and tore off his left leg and then we moved to another place, and fired 4 times and then Luther Tidler was killed: a cannon ball struck his head and tore the whole top of his head off. Capt. Rice pulled him back and walked about ten steps when a cannon ball struck his foot and tore it off; and the same ball tore one of our cannon horses legs off. They were all taken away to some doctors that were up the mountain about 2 miles. Capt. Rice had his leg taken off about three inches above the ankle, and is doing very well now. Graves died last night at 11 o'clock. Roby and Stillwell were also wounded; Stillwell was not hurt much, but Roby had his hand tore up right bad. They are all that were hurt in our company, and ours suffered most of all. Some of Shumaker's men were wounded and some of the pickets were killed, ut I do not know how many. I tell you it was awful to be in a battle to see men fall and others hollering. I never expected to escape the way the balls fell around me when I was holding the horses. I am tending to the horses Rafe Estep had. Mike (Branner, Phillip's brother) was in the ditch with a musket, and therefore wasn't in as much danger as we were with the cannon. I have told you all about the fight or at least as much as I know, and therefore I will close for this time by saying that these few lines leave us all well."

     After this initial engagement of the two units, the paths of the 9th Indiana and 7th Va. Cav. did not again cross. When Colonel Steed joined the 9th Indiana for the last year of the war, the two regiments were fighting in different theaters, and Colonel Steed's brother was killed by a stranger.

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104. Alma Price Remembers Winchester

Alma Price Remembers Winchester

Winchester News-Gazette, 1973.

Alma Meier Price, who lives just across Pearl street south from the Goodrich elevator now being demolished at Winchester, has some reminiscences about the area (the Meier/Price brick house is still standing on the southeast corner of N. Meridian and Pearl, 2019.)
 "With the passing of the Goodrich elevator my memory goes back to the time before it existed-the early 1890's."

Feed sack on display in The Annex at The Museum for RCHS, Inc., Winchester, Indiana. 

 "On Pearl street in Winchester facing south, Stephen Clevenger owned and operated a coal yard-also sold a great deal of lime. He delivered by horse and wagon. A building east of this-also a one story place-housed a gun and locksmith shop owned by Wesley Ginger, who lived nearby on North Main street, his granddaughter is still living. She is Mrs. Arlene Browne Cheney Hubbard now of Cincinnati, Ohio. Then directly east of the gun shop was a blacksmith shop. This was a busy place. Then east of this and on Main street, a hay shed began business. This was owned by the late Jay Goodrich."

  In summertime, Pearl street on many days was a busy street. Roving gypsies would pass through town and stop for hay. Also to have their horses shod at Mr. Shaver's shop and their guns repaired at Mr. Gingers. They spent the day in Winchester. The women would go from door to door to entice the citizens to have their fortunes told. The women were gaily dressed and wore gay head-dresses and many, many beads around their necks: also many bracelets. Since they were a roving group of people, they were not very cleanly clothed. Some merchants locked their doors because the gypsies were considered to be shoplifters. Children of the neighborhood would gather at a distance to see the gypsies, who usually bought staples at the groceries and bakeries located nearby and eat in their wagons. Gypsies usually had a goodly number of children with them. Their children learned the tricks at an early age.

  On the southwest corner of Main and Pearl streets stood a pretentious 2-story hotel. It served the traveling public, or traveling men who brought their trunks filled with the latest merchandise which they sold or would take orders from the uptown business places. At this period of time all travel at distances was by railroads. This hotel was called the Upper Irvin House, owned and operated by Sylvester Irvin: very fine foods were served also in a large carpeted dining room.

  Across east from the Irvin house on Main street, a Mr. George G. Keller owned a grocery store. He owned the two-story building which still stands and is in good condition. (Vacant in 2018, was Chuck Reeve's Café for many years.) Mr. Keller later took his son in as partner. In a few years the elder Mr. Keller retired and sold half the business to his son-in-law John C. Miers, who had learned the baking trade in Cincinnati, so a bakery room was built on the back of the grocery to take care of the expanding business. In these years Winchester had at least 4 bakeries, bread selling at 10 cents per loaf or 3 for 25 cents. Mr. Keller then sold out to Mr. Meier who owned the grocery for 20 years, selling out to Mr. Hugh Hill about the year 1910.

  There is a 3-cornered lot at the present time on N. Meridian and West Pearl streets. (Andy Reed's transmission shop 2018) In the early 1870's an elevator stood there and did a flourishing business.
The railroad constructed a 'y' so as to connect the CCC & St. Louis railroad (The Big 4) with the Grand Rapids & Indiana so that grains could be shipped on either railroad. This 'y' still can be used. A Mr. Joseph Bishop owned the elevator, which was torn down in the early 1900's.

  The Solomon Yunkers lived in the red brick house across south of the elevator. A real-life story, told in connection with the young Yunker girls, is that one winter night they watched the elevator being robbed. They were awakened by noises as the Yunker's horse had been turned loose by the thieves when they broke into the Yunker barn where they stole carriage blankets. They used these to deaden the sound when they blew the safe at the elevator. A usable pump and well stood in front of the elevator so they used this to wet down the blankets which were then laid over the safe.
  "This all took place before telephones were around here and I am not sure if there were police. This occurred before I was born."

______________________

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103. Colonial Houses in Winchester

Colonial Houses in Winchester

Winchester Journal Herald
November 15, 1947

     "Of particular local interest have been the last two editions of P. E. Goodrich's "Down in Indiana" letters, inasmuch as they have been about "Colonial Houses in Winchester," in which he tells of a few old colonial homes built here around 1830-1945.

     Quoting from Mr. Goodrich's letters.

     "The first one built is a brick house on South Meridian street (416 South Meridian Street), on a large lot (a full half block) with an iron fence around it, built and lived in, until he died in the late 1860s', by Carey Goodrich, my grandfather's brother. The house is a two-story affair, brick, built low to the ground with a solid wooden door in front, with side lights on either side and a transom over the full width of the entrance. The entrance is in the middle of the house and enters a wide hall and a beautiful colonial stairway leads tot he second floor, high ceilings and usual sized windows.

     "On the outside, south of dining room and a few feet south is the kitchen of large proportions, equipped with a fireplace and all facilities of its time, but the outstanding feature of the ouse is the cast iron railing and posts, and cornice made of castor iron, known as the grape pattern, picturing a grape vine crawling with heavy bunches of grapes hanging below, up each porch corner support. It's a place of interest today, the house originally was covered with a dark green slate roof.

     "The cast iron grills were cast in France and brought to Winchester, following a design made by George Goodrich, a brother of Carey Goodrich. His wife and mother lived in it until they passed away in 1869.

     "The property is well kept and has outlived three different families and to my knowledge has never been a rental property. Looks as sturdy as ever and will outlive many more generations of prosperous people.

     The Second Colonial Home 
     "So far as I know the next oldest house, and the best one in our city, was built in the 1830's by Moorman Way, an eccentric North Carolina lawyer. He came here about the same year as my grandfather, Edmond B. Goodrich, as an old bachelor. He bought a large tract of land in Winchester and to the east and about a mile and a half mile north to the swimming pool in Goodrich Park. His home was a two-story log cabin built before I can remember, on (247) East Franklin street, where he later built his fine home which yet stands and is occupied by my brother, Edward S. Goodrich, and his family.
 
     "It is a two-story brick, at the base a 20 inch brick wall, high ceilings. The bricks were hand made and made in a small field just across the road from his home. The lot was about 300 feet east and west and extended north to Washington street about 300 feet. The log cabin and log stable were still standing when I was a child.

     "Moorman was not related to us though his wife's name was Ellen Bell, the same as her cousin Ellen Bell, my grandmother, and she came up with them from Virginia. This house was the outstanding home in our little city, as it is today.

     "An interesting story was handed down to me by mother. Carey Goodrich, who built the large home on Meridian street, and Way were bitter enemies. When they locked horns in a law suit the fur would fly, so Moorman determined to build a larger and better home when he was sure Carey was through. His house was larger, more stately, in a grove twice as large as the other and more pretentious in every way. First he built the same entrance, only larger and more massive, solid brass locks, hinges, etc. Then to cap it he sent over to Paris and had built a two story porch much more decorative with much heavier iron railing, great flood of grapes and vines.

     "The entrance was a single slab sandstone brought from Cleveland Ohio, by team, the sills and joists were hewn from black walnut and yellow poplar timber on his farm. You enter the house exactly as you do in the South Meridian street home, but inside it is different. Much heavier woodwork, baseboard 1 1/2 inch poplar, the stairs leading upward on entering the home is solid mahogany, so is the woodwork in the hall and living room.

     "I'm sorry to say that some 30 years ago the wonderful double porch was discarded, though they were finer than anything in the French quarter of New Orleans and a pure colonial fluted column porch was built. Stately and superb but without the foreign charm of old France, which George Goodrich, the architect, had designed in Winchester's outstanding home today.

     The Third Old House
     "Is the one just north of the city library, corner of North and East streets (133 East North Street), built in the late thirties, designed and built by George Goodrich. It is different from the other two but still a colonial, heavy brick construction. Twenty-two inch wall at the base high ceilings 11' first and upper floor. Plain colonial cornice heavy but no dentals or other embellishment, the entrance is similar to the other two, but this entrance is on the left hand front corner.

     "Large door of 1 1/2" poplar and window each side, no porch, but an over hanging roof full width of the door and sidelights with about a 6' x 8' stoop.  When I first knew the house it sat on the corner of a lot about 300' x 300' facing south, now there are four other houses on the same ground with room for tow more facing east.

     "On entering the house you enter a wide hall and a fine old stairway leading to the second floor and back to the rear rooms on the first floor. The woodwork is massive and much like the other two. This one is all poplar lumber, heavy but plain. George Goodrich and family lived in it until they moved to Peru, Indiana, to assist engineering the Erie and Wabash canal. He served also as county surveyor for may years and died there. The house is well preserved. It's good for another 100 years. It has always been well taken care of.

     Jerry Smith Home
     "Is the last old house I will write about, it being built around 1837. Jerry Smith was a unique character, a lawyer, a fine litigant, and was in great demand in eastern Indiana. He called his home "The Mansion." I'm positive that the same architect designed this home, I am sure George Goodrich made them all. In general design it is just like house No. 3 situated on about the same sized lot, but the house was set facing south on Franklin half a square from the public square (125 East Franklin Street), the lot a full half square and but the one house on the lot between Franklin and Washington streets on North and East streets.

     "When I can first remember it had an ornate iron fence on two sides of the place with a cut stone base up to ground level, which the fence sat on. The entrance on this home is on the west end of the house with a one story porch and a balcony above with an iron ornate railing around it. The columns are square wood New England colonial type supports with a flag stone floor. The whole house is larger than the others, but outside of the front and stoop it is the same. The interior is the same massive doors and trim. It has been altered some, but the floor plans are the same.

     "Jerry Smith came to Winchester before the Big Four railroad was built as a part contractor on some of the construction. He was a lawyer, had a little colonial office on the corner of his lot, closest to the courthouse. There are other old houses in town but as I was asked to write only about these old colonial homes, finis."

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102. Murder In Winchester-Feud Between Laisure & Weese Families

Winchester Journal-Herald

March 26, 1942, 77 years ago.

  A long standing Winchester family feud between two neighbor women went beyond the verbal and rock throwing stage about 5 p.m. yesterday, with the result that one woman is in the Randolph County Hospital and the other is behind bars in the county jail.

Mrs. Lucy Weese (unidentified man)

  Critically injured, with a gashing hole in her abdomen, is Martha Laisure, 39, wife of Wesley Laisure, a veteran of World War I and holder of the Purple Heart award for injuries received in battle.
  In jail is Lucy Weese, 60, wife of Goldie Weese, who carries mail from the railroad depots to the Winchester post office.
  Mrs. Laisure was given a blood transfusion last night in an effort to save her life.
  Having argued verbally in the morning, neighbors say the two women have quarreled off and on for the past year-the argument went into the rock throwing stage later in the day, with the result that Mrs. Weese, after allegedly having been struck by three rocks thrown by Mrs. Laisure, brought a 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun from the house, put the gun to her shoulder and fired one round into Mrs. Laisure's abdomen from a distance of about 12 feet.
  Mrs. Laisure was felled beneath a small tree in the backyard of her home, 638 North Meridian street, the house faces west toward the Pennsylvania railroad tracks-and lay there in a semi-conscious state until removed to the hospital in the Summers ambulance. The shot was fired over a wire fence separating the two homes, Mrs. Weese firing north.

  Accused by Mrs. Laisure, Mrs. Weese readily admitted the attack, expressing her pleasure at having fired the shot, would do it again and hoped that her victim would die.

  The Weese home, 634 North Meridian street, is an unpainted, forlorn dwelling just south of the Laisure residence.

  Mrs. Weese was arrested by Sheriff Kora E. Davis and accompanied in the sheriff's car by Deputy Lester Puterbaugh and Winchester Officer Ray Gettinger, was taken to jail. She did not resist arrest, showed no reticence in detailing the shooting incidents leading up to it and made a statement to Prosecuting Attorney Meeks Cockerill at the jail.

  Sheriff Davis told of the affair:

  Mrs. Laisure was lying on the ground under a tree when the officers arrived. Asked who shot her, the victim of the attack said: "Mrs. Weese shot me. That woman standing over there."

  Mrs. Weese at that time was standing in the door of the kitchen in the rear of her home. Sheriff Davis climbed over the fence, about six or eight feet from Mrs. Laisure, went to the Weese home and told Mrs. Weese she was under arrest. Going into the house, the sheriff confiscated the shotgun where it had been placed in the dining room.
  It was loaded with one shell in the left barrel, the empty shell from the right barrel being found in the backyard.
  Enroute to jail, Mrs. Weese said;
  "I shot her and hope to God she dies."
  Mrs. Weese, the sheriff said, detailed how she had left her back door to go to the outside toilet, Mrs. Laisure calling her vile names, the throwing three well-sized rocks at her, all three hitting their mark, one on the forehead, another on the shoulder and the third in the abdomen.
. While Mrs. Laisure was still picking up rocks and throwing at her, Mrs. Weese said she put the shotgun to her shoulder and fired.
  Mrs. Harry Newman, 639 North Main street, just a lot east of the Laisure home, heard the shot and said she was first to reach the prostrate woman. She heard the shot from her kitchen, which faces the Laisure home to the west. Mrs. Newman said that Mrs. Laisures first words were to call the police and that "I'm dying now, I know I am."
  Mr. Newman arrived shortly afterward and verified his wife's statement. Mrs. Newman declared that Mrs. Weese, who was standing across the fence less than 20 feet away said:
  "I did it and I'm glad of it. I've taken enough off of her."
  Frank White, an eyewitness to the shooting, who lives the first house south of the Weese residence, told Prosecutor Cockerill that the women had quarreled in the morning and that Mrs. Laisure had thrown three rocks which hit their target. Mrs. Weese, he said, was sitting on a tree stump in her backyard, holding the shotgun in her hands and fired without aiming-not putting the gun to her shoulder.
  Mr. White said he heard Mrs. Laisure shout, he was about 50 yards away- "I'll kill you, you damned old _______." Mrs. Weese, he said, answered: "You will like hell."
  Then Mrs. Weese, he said, pulled the trigger, firing from "the hip" as it were.
  It will be recalled that Mrs. Laisure and Mrs. Weese were hailed into the justice of the peace court of Albert King last fall, each promising not to speak or molest each other.

March 27, 1942.
Shotgun Blast Victim Dies:
  With Mrs. Martha Laisure, 39, dead, her assailant, Mrs. Lucy Weese, 60, faces possible indictment for murder when the Randolph county grand jury begins next Monday at 9 a.m. it's investigation of the Wednesday evening killing on North Meridian street in Winchester.
  At the request of Prosecuting Attorney Meeks Cockerill, Judge John W. Macy ordered the grand jury into session and directed the clerk of the court to issue to Sheriff Davis a venire for the following persons: William H. Sadgebury, Wayne Township, Harry Wright, Stoney Creek, Birch Shroyer, Green, Eva T. Wysong, Washington, Emerson Meeks, Green, and W. Rollie Harper, West River Township.
  Mrs. Laisure died at 7:16 a.m. Thursday at the Randolph County hospital.
  Causes of the friction between the two neighbor women began to unravel yesterday, each new argument and quarrel adding fuel to the smouldering fire of hatred between the two.
  One of their disagreements concerned some shrubbery growing along the fence separating the two lots. Claiming that the bushes grew through the wire, over which Mrs. Weese fired her shotgun blast into Mrs. Laisure, one of the women cut them off, causing a quarrel.
  Another disagreement pertaining to chipping off of a new curb running on North Meridian street in front of both homes. Mrs. Weese said yesterday that they also disagreed on which was to clean up after boys in the neighborhood who had "done their business" on the curb and sidewalk, not explaining what she meant by this.

March 27, 1942.
The Signed Statement By Mrs. Weese Given To Dr. Lowell W. Painter, Randolph County Coroner:
  "On the afternoon of March 25th, 1942, I went out to the street with my husband at 2:30 to 3: p.m.
My husband got into the mail truck and drove away and I turned around and started back to the house. I had my cane and my dog was with me and wanted to play. I pushed my cane at him and told him to hurry up and repeated it.
  Mrs. Laisure was raking her yard and she said 'Hurry up-yes hurry up you ______ you ______ old _____ you." I walked on into the house and did not answer her. I sat down and stayed there quite awhile. Then I started out to the toilet back of the house and Mrs. Laisure was spading in her back yard. She laid her spade down and she said 'you ___________, I'm going to kill you."
  She picked up an object about as big as my thumb. It was as long as a broom handle. She folded it and reported that she would kill me.
  She said the next time I catch you out I'm going to beat you up. I told her she should be able to, that she was strong and I had been crippled for years and that she should be able to do that thing. I turned around and went back to my house. She followed me and called me all sorts of names and cussed and said that Mr. Daly and Meeks Cockerill told her to knock my _______head off if I didn't stay in the house and let her alone.
  I stopped and said I have as good a right in the yard as you have. She said that I wasn't fit to talk to and I said why don't you stop talking then.
  She wanted me to go out in the road and fight. She kept on. I stopped by a block of wood and she ran into the street in front and came running back.
I said, I'm not fighting with you or anyone else, that I wouldn't put my hands on you.
  When she said I was too cowardly to fight, I told her, Martha if you don't stop and behave I will do something you won't like.
  She said you're too cowardly to do anything and she said some very vile and nasty things and called me names. I just looked at her. She called to Mrs. Cash to come out and see the old______ standing there and not answering. She picked up a rock and threw it at me and it hit me in the stomach. I walked in the house, picked up the shotgun and went back out there.
  She threw another rock which hit my left shoulder and said bring your shotgun out on me you____worn out old _____ and kept throwing rocks. I dodged several and I shot her as I sat on a block. I am not sure whether I put the gun on my shoulder or not, but it kicks like fury and my shoulder wasn't hurt. I fired the gun once and she was in her yard and I was in mine with a fence between us, probably about 15 to 20 feet.
  She fell down and hollered that she was shot, she was going to die and she knowed she was. I got up and walked the width of our house after setting the gun down by the rain barrel and just looked at her.
  Mrs. Alec Newman came over and asked Martha what happened and she said 'That woman shot me.' She (Mrs. Newman) asked me and I said yes, I did. She asked Mrs. Laisure what to do and she said call the police and I said yes that would be a good thing to do.
  A man came and said, 'oh my, my, what kind of thing would make you do that, what would be bad enough.' I said I was tired of hearing her call me all sorts of names and if she tried it again, I'd give her the other barrel, or implied that. The police and sheriff came and took me to jail.
  We have had trouble since the fall of 1940."   LUCY WEESE.

Mrs. Weese was charged with second  murder by the county grand jury on Apr. 3, 1942, she entered a plea of not guilty on Apr. 9 and her trial started on June 22nd where she was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on the 27th and received a 1-10 year sentence at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis.
  Inasmuch as she had been continually confined in the county jail since March 25th, it was the judgement of the court that when she has served nine months in prison, providing her record is exemplary, the remainder of her sentence will be suspended, but she will be under probation for five years.
  Due to the fact that she has no property, the court relieved her of paying any court costs involved in the trial.
  Judge Macy allowed Malcolm V. Skinner of Portland, her chief defense counsel, $375 attorney fees from public funds.

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100. 100th blog post: 1903 Winchester Newspaper Building Comes Down

Winchester Journal-Herald, Dec. 1966
by A. M. Gibbons, 52 years ago.

  One of Winchester's landmarks, and a landmark in the history of the city's newspapers, came down this past week as Jim Grove's demolition crew made short work of its old-fashioned brick walls.
  This was the former News and Journal-Herald building located in the 100 block on North Meridian street, site of a newspaper building for possibly over 100 years. The stone steps leading into the building were worn down in the center by the thousands of feet which had walked up and down them since it was erected 63 years ago. With the exception of the front facing, the brick for the structure was made in this community in a brickyard operated at the turn of the century by Charlie Kelly, north of Winchester which was originally the Martin Tile and Brick Company. The building was abandoned three years ago by the present newspaper organization which needed more space for offices and modern press equipment. Buildings adjacent to it were destroyed a year ago in a Christmas night fire, and plans to demolish the outmoded newspaper site followed.
  The 1882 Randolph County History relates that the Gazette, a very early Winchester newspaper, was purchased sometime between 1876 and 1878 by E. L. Watson, a local attorney, and sold by 1878 to John Commons. Watson had renamed the paper the "Herald". His grandson, John Watson, is certain that a wooden building predated the brick structure which is the subject of this article, stood on the same site. Since the Herald's ancestor, the Gazette, was founded in 1853 it is possible, though not established at this writing, that there has been a newspaper office in the same place in Winchester for 110 years.

  In 1901, Seward Watson, son of E. L. Watson, became sole owner of the paper, having been part owner for some years previously. Two years later, in 1903, Seward Watson built the brick news building. In 1926 he purchased the Journal, and combined the two weeklies into a semi-weekly, the Journal-Herald. Within the next few years, the Journal-Herald was sold to J. M. Bridgman, and then purchased from him by the Journal Herald Corporation in 1937, with the late Robert M. Kist as editor. The corporation also purchased another Winchester paper, the "News" and combined the two into the present News and Journal Herald. At this point the newspaper became a daily. For some years, printing was done at Portland, but from 1940 the daily was printed in Winchester. (In the days of the Watson ownership and earlier, printing was done locally, mostly with hand-set type and hand-fed presses.
  In 1962 the Gazette Publishing Company purchased the stock of the Journal-Herald Corporation and the following year the old building was abandoned for larger quarters at the newspaper's present location on West Franklin street.
  Not only does the demolition of the old building bring to a close a tradition of publication on the same site, it revives among older residents memories of men who have learned their trade on a small town paper and gone on to make names for themselves in the publishing world, in the days when news reporting was regarded as a most glamorous profession.

  Among those who worked for the Herald or Journal Herald at one time in the last half-century were the late Frank Litschert, brother of Cecil and Ralph Litschert of Winchester, who became part owner and editor of the "National Republic," the official GOP publication in Washington, D. C.: the late Arthur Remmel, who became city editor of the Fort Wayne "News Sentinal": Jack Ferris of Muncie, now retired, for many years managing editor of the Muncie "Star"; the late Jody Miller, onetime dramatic critic and feature writer for the Indianapolis "Star": Homer Peel, who became editor of the Cambridge City newspaper. Also included, in more recent years are Jerry Davis, a former editor of the News and Journal Herald, now an editor of the REMC magazine "Rural Indiana"; and Tony Sollenbarger, former apprentice printer with the local paper, who is now night superintendent at the Dayton Daily News and Herald.

Gone. 

  The basement where the marks of the old hand-press could still be seen is filled in with rubble of the bricks from the walls of the building and the ground is smoothed over leaving no trace at all of a company's memories. These memories have included news of all kinds, the locally important daily happenings with which every small town newspaper concerns itself, and the national and worldwide events which become the tragedies and triumphs of world history. They have also included the private triumphs and worries of many hopeful editors, reporters, printers and newsboys, concerned with getting the news in print and to the public, day in and day out.
  Although the newspaper has moved its location, and in a physical sense the demolition of the old building brings a tradition to a close, it is the hope of the present publishers and staff that the tradition of news gathering and public service will be continued for many years to come.

(Ed. Note: Source material for this story has been obtained from John Watson of Winchester whose family was engaged in newspaper work in this community from the post Civil War period through the first three decades of the 20th century; from Cecil Litschert, brother of the late Frank Litschert; from the papers staff; from the 1882 Tucker History and from county records.)

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