The Brownstown Banner - Brownstown, Indiana
Wednesday May 25, 1904 - Vol. XXXVI - No. 9
Freetown Facts and Fancies
(Salt Creek Township)
Many friends of this place attended the funeral of Martin WEEKLY at
Spraytown and interrment at Taylor's Chapel Sunday.
Tom MARTIN and Miss Myrtle CALLAHAN were quietly married at the home of the
groom's mother at this place last Tuesday. Elder Jas. WHEELER officiating.
While David WEEKLY was splitting wood the other morning, he made a mislick
with the as, splitting the thick part of his hand so badly that it required
ten stitches to draw it together and is very painful.
A good, warm rain would be a welcome visitor here, as it remains so dry and
cool that everything is beginning to suffer.
Our items this week seems to be like everything else at this place - dead,
as there is not going, no coming, no stir of any kind going on since the
so-called smallpox scare.
Our farmers are busy getting their corn planted. Most of them will get
through this week.
Great injustice has been done this place by the reports sent out, since the
appearance of an eruptive contagious disease in this vicinity, pronounced by
some as smallpox and by others as something else. The reports have been
greatly exaggerated. One report was that the town had been quarantined and
that ropes were stretched across all the roads leading into town, in which
there is not a word of truth. Such reports are causing people to stay away
and business of all kinds seems to be at a standstill. While there are a few
cases of some kind of contagious disease here, they are in a light form, and
but few here believe them to be smallpox, and we have heard of no one but
who are able to eat and sleep well.