Thursday, January 29, 1920
This part of the country was deprived of sunshine longer last week than at any period in the memory of man. The trees were coated with ice and hung that way day after day. We are surely men of the mist.
JOHN BARLEYCORN DEAD: MANY MOURNERS PRESENT
John Barleycorn, 1,000,000 years old, died last night at the residence of his daughter, Miss Hail Columbia, No. 1 Prohibition Way.
He had been complaining of constitutional troubles for some months and his demise followed an operation performed by Doctor U. S. Congress in an effort to reduce his temperature, and also a transfusion of modern ideas and grape juice was made, but the patient relapsed and died of acute amendmentitis.
John Barleycorn was born in the Garden of Eden, and became a citizen of the world long before he reached his majority. Since that time he has held every office present or past, to which he could be elected. The secret of his success was the devotion of his private friends, and though his enemies fought him bitterly at every step of the way, many of them, at the crucial moment, turned their influence to this strong spirit. With friendly words he won respect; with hands of iron he held it.
He was the only son of General I. B. Optimism, and the half-brother of R. E. Morse. This brother now resides on the Isle of Lost Ideals, where he is writing a Philosophy of Life which will appear under the title, “The Shattered Bottle.”
Tombstone Ready
A remarkable coincidence in the death of Mr. Barley- corn is that his tombstone was under construction months before he “schuffled off this mortal coil.”
The inscription reads:
“John Barleycorn
Born in the beginning
Lived until the last –
January 16, 1920
He the optimist incomparable, the pessimist supreme, the father of love, the parent of hate, the inspiration of romance, the artist of reality.
“In youth, he was the personification of pleasure, in manhood the architect of destiny, and now has passed to the realm of Broken Hearts, which he himself created.”
There is no metropolis or hamlet but which will feel the loss of this man. Long after his name has become a memory in the Good Fellows’ club, his spirit will still live in the mountains and in the sideboards and cellars of his most ardent supporters…
Great Lamentations
When it was announced that Mr. Barleycorn had crossed the bar, great lamentations rose in every part of the country. After the inevitable had come to pass, however, his friends and enemies joined hands and quietly paid tribute to his name over foaming steins of root beer.
He is survived by a wife, formerly Miss Jot Lit, a daughter of the distinguished lawmaker, I. Wilber Lit; two sisters, Mrs. Ima Keg and Mrs. Carrie-Mae B. Lit, and one son, Adieu Barleycorn.
Interment will be in the cemetery of Public Opinion. – Charlottesville Progress
WITHROW AT THE FAIR
Under the heading of “They Say,” Donald Angus writes up in the County Gentleman the International Stock Show at Chicago last November. He came by Withrow McClintic, who always attends the international, and he writes about him as follows:
The Missourian followed others into a vast oval amphitheater, with a high domed ceiling, brilliantly lighted, an arena in the center, and sloping upward from its rim on every side myriads of faces.
There was a narrow space close to a tall man wrapped in a fur coat, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, who stood leaning against a rail, watching the cattle in the tan-barked arena within.
Into that space he edged himself and began talking with the fur coated man, W. McClintic, who farms 3,000 acres of land in West Virginia.
“Yes, I’m quite a farmer. I mow 400 acres,” McClintic said, and he went on to tell that two years ago he paid $500 a piece for two purebred Shorthorn bulls and put them on his place, with his grade cows.
“It just means this much difference; that I sell one of those calves for a hundred dollars instead of fifty dollars,” he said. “There’s no comparison between a scrub steer and a cross from a purebred bull and a common cow…”
CLARKSBURG, Jan. 27 – Hugh Bragg, of Webster Springs will hang at the State penitentiary on April 2 for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Dennis John Martin, the death sentence being passed by Judge William S. O’Brien at 5 o’clock this evening, after the jury had returned a verdict of first degree murder at 4 o’clock. The jury took the case at 3:40 and returned the murder verdict without a recommendation at 4 p.m.
Sentencing of Bragg brings to a close a case that aroused interest throughout two counties. The jury returning the verdict was composed of mountaineers of the type that have inhabited the mountains and dense regions of Webster county for past generations. Young Bragg showed no change in countenance when his fate was pronounced by Judge O’Brien, but maintained the look of indifference that has characterized his actions since his shooting of Sheriff Morton on January 12 last. – Gazette
DEATHS
A. M. V. Arbogast died at his home at Thornwood on Saturday morning, January 24, 1920. He would have been 85 years of age had he lived until March. He had been in the best of health for a man so far advanced in years, and had been out in town on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he fell on the ice and never regained consciousness. On Monday, his body was laid beside the grave of his wife at the church at Thornwood.
A very large congregation was present to pay a tribute of respect to his memory. In his day, Mr. Arbogast was one of the best known men of Pocahontas County, and was universally liked and respected. He had been a great hunter, hundreds of deer falling to his rifle. At the outbreak of the war, he joined the Confederate army, serving in the 19th Virginia Cavalry. In religion, he was a Methodist and he lived a consistent Christian life. His home was known far and near for its unstinted hospitality.
Mr. Arbogast’s wife was a daughter of the late John Yeager, and a sister of B. M. Yeager, of Marlinton. She preceded her husband to the grave a number of years ago. There were no children, but they adopted a niece and a nephew, Mrs. Veva Bledso, of Thornwood, and Dr. C. Y. Beard, of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
– – –
Mrs. Nancy Ellen McCoy died at her home on Droop Mountain on Friday, January 23, 1920, in her 82nd year, having been born July 15, 1828. For some time her health had been failing, but her death came suddenly and unexpectedly. On Sunday, the funeral services were conducted at her late home and her body was buried on her farm, in accordance with her request…
Mrs. McCoy was a daughter of the late Isaac Bull, of Locust Creek. Her father was the first person to be buried at the Droop Church graveyard.
On October 8, 1956, she was married to Wm. O. McCoy. To this union were born nine children. The husband and four of the children, two in early childhood, and the late Mrs. L. S. Cochran and the late Andrew McCoy, preceded her to the grave. The surviving children are Mrs. Serene Smith, of Hillsboro, W. W., L. W., and Noah McCoy, Jr., of Droop Mountain; and Thomas McCoy, of Richwood…