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(Copvrlclit iburieicauseMoorcsville’s Oldest Mystery(By Solon M. MicNab)When ! was a boy. another boy said to me one day as we were passing hv where Joe Cummins liyjHl, There was a feller killed in there oncet.” This house, evidently built ; long before that time, stood at the edge of the sidewalk on the lot where W. F. Hadley now lives. It was a story and a half high in front, but to the rear was a longer, one story . addition, and it was in this part that 1 Mr. Cummins ami his wife stayed; i of town.perhaps, since they were an old, quiet-loving couple who lived there alone, on account of its being farther from the noise of the street. At any rate. I had never seen the front door open, nor the green blinds raised of the two old-fashioned windows or of the two half-windows above them under the eaves. This had already given the house an qir of mystery to my boyish eyes, and when the other boy had said what he did, I was at once on tiptoe with eagerness 4to learn more; but h hue*—anyone then living ever new tain—in that one sentence.The sandstone step which projected on the sidewalk was too much worn to have always lain before a door that was never opened, and I learned afterwards that the old house had once been a pioneer tavern kept by one John J. Cox: and that it was to this period of its history the other boy's words had referred. Though I tried to get more of the story. I never did until I gathered it the other day from the lips of John H. Rusie. As told by him it was interesting.I Whether my report of it will be or not is a matter of which I am much ! less certain: nevertheless. I am going to retell, as well as I can. the sub-■ stance of what I then heard, for it is■ a part of Mooresville’s early history ; many details of which must soon belost unless someone makes it a matter of record.1i In 18:8, John Day. Mrs. James Barnett's grandfather, hail a brushboy; *•. it came about that he waited on the sick man. This arrangement iaccou it wo and I not Then, could had ; diflici tomhadhad probably Jasted until the patient was able to be on his feet again, else Cox’s story of what happened later would have been wholly incredible.He that as it may, Cox said to Charley one afternoon that he would not be needed that night, and might go home. Accordingly, the boy did so. and on his return the next morning, learned that the sick man had gone away during the night—when or where no one knew—and, what wi^s yet more strange, had left behind him his horse and saddlebags.Some months later, the horse was sold to pay for his keep, and my informant, Mr. Rusie, though a very small boy at the time, s.i’J remembershow he looked when put up for sale. ______^s has been seen, this disappear- | agair had been attended with verybut Cox than dti-marriedr, he was everybody's whereas the missing mansoil ’ dense grow scatti their the s midn So fi genei cover ing t To at th rumo taine to a of itIn thwas;n simply a stranger in whom cul;had any particular interest so th^ little flare-up of talk soon died down, and the incident had almost been forgotten when it was revived with ten-fold intensity two years later by the arrival of the man’s brother.It was then learned that the stranger had come from Ohio, had left home with twenty-five hundred dollars, ami hail been on his way further west to buy land. Naturally, the brother put no faith in Cox's account of the missing man’s disappearance, and at once set about searching for the body. All the unused wells, out of the way p'aces. and the wild land at the edge-; of town were carefully examined; but nothing came of it, and at last, after having spent two weeks in such efforts, the brother returned home. Cox had begun keeping tavern intherumciS■ *ions relia very that strar eight tave everMdam—not to be confused with the j 1S-J4. and up to this time had done more substantial one afterwards built . well; but the lamely accounted for a little higher up the creek—a few; disappearance of a guest who was feet above where the bridge now j reputed to have had a large sum of crosses Hast White I.iek: and at the , money, carried with it suggestions of east end of this dam was a flutter- i a nature that caused his business to wheel that drove the sandstone buhrs drop to nothing. More than that, he of the corn-cracker which ground ; had come to be hated by his neigh-T1clubmakforderlookto rtellswillto nmuswonan\a lavsensGeocetmucseera vanvbe*do simeal for himself and neighbors. If!bors; so it is not surprising that h ‘L . ..... . .... kla i a. .. I Li M 1.1*4* I a. A f ♦ A r ft f fttlf t • A if *llt; A A HAlTM A t A ♦ O I L* *he was working there late in the , after a few years he began to talk afternoon of a certain day early in} of going West. This he did, finally, the fall of that year, he doubtless i in company with a crony of his who I noticed a man coining down the hill i ved northeast of town on land which • from the direction of Waverly. Of .ncluded that now owned by H. B.this man’s personal appearance we Mendenhall.R the ject a k the noknow nothing: nor even his name.; After that, memories of the miss- ovc \Ne do know, however, as it rather \ jne man again slept—this time for , cj0, odillv happens, that he rode a big. ; thirty years—until in 1874 they were j povsway-backed, bay horse, and carried ; revived by a rumor that was said i tosaddlebags. It is likely, moreover, to have come from Iowa. According : ra„ that he rode slowly, for he must, even t0 it, both men had died: Cox sev- 1 lhathen, have felt the near approach of eraJ years before and the other man I lensickness. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with the miller, though we do not know that, and having crossed the ford, was soon lost to view in the heavily timbered bottom through which wound the rude road that at the end of another half mile would take him into Mooresville, the eastern boundary of which at that time was what is now Clay street.Mooresville. like - most pioneer towns, was disorderly. All three of the taverns sold whiskey, as did also, since such was the custom then, the four stores. Moreover. Harris Bray, who lived on what is now the T. E. Lawrence farm, had a distillery with a capacity of thirty gallons a day. So it is no wonder that the town, although its population was but three hundred, already had a substantial jail: and perhaps the same thing explains why the stranger rode past the Jackson and the Blankenship taverns. : and put up at Cox’s. Feeling himself is\ about to be overtaken by a dangerous ; illness, he wanted to get as far as possible from the center of town— is ! from the noisy talk and laughter, j. j and drunken shouts of those who, ^ especially at night, frequented the re t square. At any rate, Cox’s was his ,r ! choice, and the next morning he was reported to. have malarial fever.Chariey Rusie, the father of Will and Mike, was then eleven years old, and was staying at Cox’s as chore-prcgesstu*1woindbut lately. Evidently, Cox's had been the sterner nature, for he had died without a word, whereas his companion had confessed that they were equally implicated both in the act of murder and in the disposal of the body; the latter having been buried i ^‘o in the buttonwood swamp just north ; cor Today, the ooze, the t clumns of j a , grass, the stunted trees, and Dono- j [or van’s Pond that lay in the middle, I p0, where, seventy years ago, whenever I ter the surrounding swamp was frozen so that men could get to it, pike more than twenty inches long were often killed under the ice, are all gone; as are also the cranes, kingfishers, and sliitepokes that used to fly over it with discordant cries, the snakes that infested it in summer, and the muskrats of which it was full at all seasons. Anyone who wishes to see where it used to be, however, has only to walk out the North Road to Henry Conduitt’s house, and, turning his head to the left, look over W. F. Had- , ley’s cornfield. He will then notice ; * ' that the tavern and the west end of j E the swamp were opposite each other. |So the latter was not only a good | place for concealing the evidence of the crime, but lay at a distance of ‘ .l only a little more than two squares ). away. IaiBefore the brother's arrival, people had been willing to accept Cox’spa:meviemaup*rieaicoithimasclcalstory; afterwards, they had takeninineth.
Newspaper Details
Mooresville Monitor
Mooresville, Indiana, US
Thu, Jul 20, 1916
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Indiana S.
IN, USA 12 May 2017
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