VOL. XXII.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., SATURDAY, NOV. 26, 1887.
NO. 48
%ixw Qcpiivtmcnt
BY VINSON CARTER, ESQ.., THIS CITY.
Is a township trustee a party to a ditch
that crosses a country road? M. A.
No.
Please inform me whose duty it is to
put up stock running at large on free
gravel roads? Is it the supervisor, or the
road superintendent? J. G.
Macedonia.
The supervisor.
A married woman has 160 acres in her
own name with the personal property
thereto. Her husband dies and she sells
the personal property and marries again.
She dies. What interest has the second
husband in the real estate, also in the personal property, she having made her will
while her first husband was living, giving
the whole to her two boys. H. A. C.
The second husband is entitled to one-
third of the land.
B divides his land between his children,
giving his sons 80 acres each, and his
daughters 50 acres each. Five years afterward B dies leaving notes and property to
the amount of a f$w thousand dollars.
Can the daughters demand and receive
enough of the property to make them
even on the land, and then divide the remainder equally, there being no will?
Noblesville. H. A.
No. The money must be divided equally.
Being a reader of the Parmer I want to
ask a question or two. A bought a farm
of B and B had some hay stacked on the
farm on rails worth 15 cents. There was
nothing said about the rails under the hay,
when the trade was made. Whom do the
rails under the hay belong to, A or B?
Also, where can the law be found, governing such cases? Please answer the above
in the next week's issue and oblige,
A Subscriber.
Medaryville.
The rails go with the farm and so belong
to A. Any rabbit or other wild beast
under the stack will also belong to A,after
he catches them.
—Our correspondent should remember
that a legal opinion on such a weighty
matter as this is valuable and he ought to
send our legal adviser a liberal fee.—Eds.
A Natural Gas Company is doing business under the laws of our State, furnish
ing gas for public and private use for
which they charge and collect certain stipulated amounts of money but before they
will turn the gas on, you are compelled
to sign a contract gotten up by them
selves, in which they say that they are
not liable for any damages that may occur
from the use of natural gas, whether from
their carelessness or otherwise? Will
such a contract hold good under our law?
C. E. P.
Spieeland.
Such a contract would be valid so as to
relieve the gas company from any liabil
ity for damages occurring by accident, ordinary negligence or carelessness; but it
would not relieve the gas company from
liability for damage caused by gross-carelessness or wilful neglect;andby gross-carelessness or wilful neglect, we mean such
carelessness and neglect as would evince
a willingness to have   the injury happen.
Some four years ago there was run
partition or public ditches through this
township. After they were completed
and accepted the farmers built fences
within two or three feet of them on one
side only. Now the suveyor has ordered
the same cleaned and let the contract.
Query: Can the contractor tear down said
fences? in some cases almost destroying
them, in all cases damaging them.
1. Is he liable for trespass and damage
when he was forbidden to tear them
down?
2. Will the law compel him to rebuild
fence as good as it was or pay damage?
3. How close can a man fenco to the
ditch. I. B. H.
1. The contractor has the right to move
fences only where it is actually necessary
to do so in repairing the ditch. And if he
destroys or injures the fence ulinecessarily
he is liable for damages.
2. He is liable for any unnecessary
damage.
3. The law does not fix any distance a
fence must be from a ditch,  but it ought
to be far enough away so that the ditch
will not be obstructed thereby, and so
there will be room to repair the ditch
without injury to the fence.
Written for the Indiana Farmer.
Old Times in Indiana.
BY MRS. F. M.  COOPER.
Your "Notes from Memory" has recalled my attempts to preserve some of
the manners and customs of my ancestors. I have often wondered at the carelessness of our fore-parents in keeping
trace of ancestry. Some of the old pioneers do not even know their ages. Lack
of facilities for early education accounts
for this, in the first place, and later, the
hard work necessary to make a living left
but little time for anything else. People
used to hinder the education of girls, saying that a woman had no business to
know anything but reading and spelling;
but if they had been better educated perhaps they would have done much good in
keeping accounts and dates.
On last Easter Sunday my grandmother,
Ruth Bowen, died. In one more month
she would have been 88 years of age, having been born in Pennsylvania in 1799.
Grandfather died twelve years ago. He
was a Virginian by birth, but his ancestors were English and Welsh, but I ean
get hold of but little of their history. It
would be interesting to trace it back for
several generations and know how they
lived across the ocean that long ago; but
there is nothing but verbal transmission,
and much of that is soon forgotten.
Grandfather and grandmother were
married in Ohio, where they had been
taken by their parents in youth. I have
heard grandmother say that she walked
from Pennsylvania, a distance of 500 miles
Of course she was not alone but with the
teams. Why she walked I do not know;
perhaps because wagons were loaded, perhaps because she wanted to. There was
nothing too hard for her to do in her
younger days. Grandfather came to Indiana between 1820 and 1822, and I have
heard him say that when he came there
was but one log cabin where Indianapolis
now is. All was dense forest. He located
10 miles north.of Indianapolis, "entering"
land. They put up a tent until they could
build a log hut out of native forest trees,
but before they got that done the horses
strayed away, and one day grandfather
started to find them, and grandmother
did not see him again for six weeks. Of
course she imagined every horrible thing
to have happened him, for there were
wolves and bears in the woods then, but
there was no help for it; there were no
modes of communication. But he came
back all right and brought the horses with
him. He could hear of them along the
route once in a while, and kept following
up the trail until he found them back at
the old home in Ohio.
The one-room log house was succeeded
by another of more pretensions: that is
the logs were hewed and there were two
rooms, with a large "entry" between, and
a porch on the westside the entire length,
making it 50 or 60 feet long. The entry
was used for a granary, and when cooking stoves came into use one end of the
porch was boarded up and used for a kitchen. Before that, cooking was done in
the fire place of one room. There was a
fire place in each room. The clothing was
all manufactured at home. At first it was
all made of flax which was grown on the
place, gathered at the proper time. It
had to lie on the ground a certain length
of time to "rot," as they called it. Then
it was brought in and "broke" ready for
the hackle. The old flax "brefck" stood
for many years, and tho grand*ehildren
used to play it was a "horse,".long after
it was out of use. The flax waslhackled
and spun on a "little wheel," which th
operator turned with one foot while sitting in a chair, and then was woven into
"linen" which was used for towels, tablecloths, sheets, shirts, pantaloons, and in
fact almost every article of wearing apparel. As soon as enough sheep could be
raised, linsey, flannel and jeans took the
place of linen for winter apparel. The
woolen goods were also manufactured at
home. The wool was carded on hand
cards, spun on the "big wheel" and woven
in a loom. In those times there were
men who made a business of making
"wheels," looms, chairs, etc. In winter
the loom generally occupied the living
room, but when tho weather was warm
another room, the porch or some out-
buildingaccommodated it. After the material was woven, those who had large
families sometimes employed a tailor to
go to the house and make the mens' and
boys' clothing. One by the name of Anderson, I think, was once employed by
grandfather, and ho did his work in the
room in which the "boys" slept. One day
one of the smaller ones went to his mother
with a mysterious tale that Anderson had
all the doors and windows fastened and
blinded and was initiating the oldest boy
into Masonry. Grandmother was very
much prejudiced against that organization—as were many others at that time—
and the way she went at the door and ordered proceedings stopped was not slow.
Anderson had to be more careful of his
conduct after that. The last I knew of
Anderson he was living near Castleton.
Grandmother was the last survivor of
the pioneer settlers of that part of Marion
county. Of three families who were neighbors, the women lived longer than their
husbands. The last to die before grandmother was "Aunt Susie" Whitinger, who
had survived her husband many years
and was the mother of 17 children. Previous to her, Nancy Ray died at an advanced ago.
Grandfather gave each of his boys 40
acres of land, or its equivalent in money,
and kept 80 acres for himself. He put out
fruit trees early in his farming life and
always had plenty of apples. About 20
acres are in sugar trees, and many a good
time has the writer enjoyed there in the
sugar making season. He made a will
before his death securing the place to
grandmother for her lifetime. He had
seen many old people put out of a house,
and he said that he had given his children
all a start and at the death of himself and
his wife they could have the home   place.
Some enterprising publishing company
ought to secure as many accounts of early
home life in Indiana as possible before
it is too late, and put them in book form,
with pictures of the primitive tools used,
the old sickles, spinning wheels, etc.
Written tor the. Indiana Farmer.
What Kind to Plant.
BY N. J. SHEPHERD.
With the rfesults of the past season before
us it certainly seems evident that in many
respects it is! very desirable to plant corn
reasonably early, and to plant at least part
of the crop with some early variety. Upon
the same basis that it is not good policy to
risk the whole dependence of farm profits
upon one crop I consider that it is not the
best plan to place the whole dependence
for a good crop of corn upon either an
early or a late variety, or to depend upon
late or early planting. So far as my experience expends we can go to either extreme, either planting too early so that
the plants get stunted by cold wet weather,
or we may defer until the crop does not
secure a sufficient growth before hot dry
weather sets in, and too often cuts the
crop short.
If we had any means of  knowing what
the season; would be of course wo could be
able to plant with much more certainty,
t
As it is we must reduce the uncertainties as much as possible, and I think I can
do this by planting part of the corn crop
of an early variety and part with one that
is longer in maturing. I consider it best to
plant reasonably early, yet not until the
soil is sufficiently dried out to work readily into a good condition but is also sufficiently warmed up to secure a good
germination and start to grow.
I consider it important that the corn
should germinate in a short time after
planting, and then to have the soil in such
a condition that early cultivation can be
given and a steady growth be secured. If
part of the crop is one that matures early
and it is planted reasonably early and is
kept growing, it will mature before the hot
dry weather we so often have in August.
Or if the dry weather sets in too early for
this, as is sometimes the case, we can, by
giving shallow cultivation, keep the later
variety growing until the late rains come
on, when a fair crop of corn can be Secured.
I am aware that the majority ofthe earlier
varieties of corn are small eared and under
average conditions will not yield per acre
as the larger later varieties, yet I find that
an average yield of 30 bushels per acre
which is a fair yield of early corn is much
preferable to an almost entire failure that
is sometimes the case when we depend
entirely upon late maturing corn for our
crop. I do not advise, neither do I follow
the plan of planting all the crop with early
corn, but I do advise taking one year with
another the planting of a portion of the
acreage, say two-fifths, with early eorn and
the balance with later varieties, and also
to prepare ahead as thoroughly as possible, so that the seed can be planted at as
near the proper time as possible.
Experiments in Wheat.
Editors Indiana Farmer:
I have wheat sown for experimental purposes, on August 15th and 29th and September 12 and 26. The first sowing partially outgrew the ravages of the "Hessian
Fly;" the next two sowings have been and
are suffering considerably; while the last
has thus far almost escaped its attack.
The "Fly' appears to be prospering, regardless of the 28 frosts which this locality
has experienced. Wheat that is on soil
not underdrained, and that on rolling
lands, seems to be suffering most severely.
Wheat is backward, anyway, due to lack
of moisture, there having been but one
rain (November 9) of any consequence for
months.
Richmond. Walter S. Rati.iff.
List of Patents.
For inventions relating to agricultural
interests, bearing date of November 15, '87.
Reported expressly for this paper by Louis
Bagger <**. Co., mechanical experts and solictors of patents, Washington, D. C.
Cord tyer for grain binders—W. Butter-
tield, Auburn, N."Y.
Grain cleaning and separating mill—M.
Grolllinund, Fergus Falls, Minn.
Combined harrow and seeder—C. Svend-
son, t'hicago, 111.
Grain drying apparatus—P. Jopson,
Port Chester, N. Y.
Disc harrow—M. G. Elliott, Little Falls,
N. Y.
Self raking attachment for harvesters—
M. Dow, Cass City, Mich.
Twine holder alarm for harvesters—J.
Davaine, Dysart, Iowa.
Planter—J. H. Eloward, St. Paul, Minn.
Corn planter—A. S. Winnings, Lake
City, 111.
Anchor for check rower corn planters	
J. C. Barlow, Quincy, 111.
Attachment for corn planters—L. Pfis-
ter, Martinsville, Ohio.
Plow—G. W. Garr, New Brighton, N.
Y.
Plow—I. H. Donaldson, Gore, Ohio.