Iowa Old Press


Cedar Rapids Gazette
Cedar Rapids, Linn co., Iowa
November 1, 1888

NEWS AROUND IOWA

A woman living a few miles north-east of Cedar Falls was suddenly taken sick last Monday night and a neighboring woman went to wait upon her and then went to another neighbor to request him to go for the doctor. He declared that he would not go if a half dozen women died.

Onawa had another narrow escape from a disastrous conflagration Monday. Fire broke out about 2 o’clock in the restaurant of Scartac Carmon and but for prompt action great loss would have been sustained. This is the second narrow escape the town has had in less than a week, and some of the citizens are becoming suspicious.

Mrs. Leindecker of Keokuk, was arraigned in the supreme court of Keokuk on Saturday and plead guilty to eight counts for selling intoxicating liquor. She was fined fifty dollars and cost on each count. Her husband is wanted for the same offense but the officials did not succeed in finding him and it is presumed he is out of the city.

Margaret Curran, of Sioux City, was before the commissioners of insanity on Monday. Hamilton Curran, her husband, has appeared before the commission three times on the same errand. He wants Margaret put in the insane asylum. Twice she has been sent to the asylum and then released because she did not need the care there. This time the commissioners gave Curran a good “raking.”

Southwestern Iowa seems to be good enough for the Kansas farmer who sent this note to the Indianola Advocate: “A subscriber writing from Topeka, Kansas, speaks of that vicinity as “this sun-burned desert,” and adds, “tell all Iowa people for me to stay in Warren county. It is so dry in some of the western counties they have to soak their hogs in wet sand over night, to get them so they would hold slop the next day.”

Dick Hitchcock, a dissolute character, is in jail at Dubuque charged with the crime of bigamy and starving his wife to death in the town of Liberty, Wis. He has two wives living in various parts of the county. The one he starved to death was from Dubuque and was named Messersmith. When his inhuman treatment became known to the people of Liberty, they drove from that place, threatening to resort to lynch law if he ever returned. He fled to Dubuque and was nabbed.

[transcribed by L.Z., August 2018]

Iowa
Linn County