Boyhood Chum of Andy Carnegie Passes Away

1915

"Thirty" Comes to "Dode" Moreland, Veteran Telegrapher, Once Captured by Mosby.

PITTSBURGH, Pa., Dec. 16. — Theodore ("Dode") Moreland, aged 72, a patriarch among telegraphers here, and a boyhood friend and fellow-worker of Andrew Carnegie, the multi-millionaire, died in a hospital here as the result of an accident which occurred several weeks ago.

Mr. Moreland, like Carnegie, became an operator for the Western Union Telegraph Company and it was while following this work that the two renewed their boyhood friendship. Later they served as members of the Signal Corps during the Civil War.

At one time during the hostilities Mr. Moreland was captured by Mosby, the famous Confederate guerrilla leader. Mr. Moreland's mount was a better horse than that of Mosby, but the telegrapher was surrounded by rebels. Mosby, after detaining Mr. Moreland for some time, contented himself by "swapping" horses with the Northerner and then permitted him to ride his inferior mount back to the Federal lines.

After the war, Mr. Moreland and Mr. Carnegie drifted apart, Mr. Moreland continuing to make dots and dashes, while Mr. Carnegie made millions.

Several years ago, however, when Mr. Carnegie chanced to hear again of his erstwhile fellow-worker, he ordered that a pension of $50 a month be paid him. This was done for some time, tho the pension for some unknown reason ceased two years ago.

Mr. Moreland continued his work at the key until he had reached the maximum age of 70 years, when pensioned by the Western Union Company, being one of the first operators in Pittsburgh to be retired.

Advances In Science of Farming

1899

The wonderful advance made in the science of farming during the last few years is one of the best examples of American progressiveness. A little incident recounted by the Ashtabula (Ohio) Sentinel is characteristic.

One evening, a short time ago, a society in Jefferson needed a gallon of cream. The committee called up by telephone the proprietors of a milk farm two miles north of the town, and asked if they could furnish it. The reply was that they could as soon as milking was done. In thirty minutes from the time the call was made the cream was delivered.

The milk had been drawn from the cow, put into a separator, the cream extracted and sent to town by a man on a bicycle.

A few years ago the committee would have had to send a boy in the afternoon, "yesterday's milk" would have had to be skimmed, and if the boy had not treed too many chipmunks on the way, he might have got back in time for the festival.


When It Paid

It was at the village sewing circle, and the unprofitable question of the failure or success of marriage was under discussion. Beulah Blank, a war widow, thrifty to the last degree of New England thriftiness, kept silent until some one said:
"What do you think about it, Beulah?"
"Well, I must say that it depends," said Beulah. "Now when a woman gits married, an' her husband gits drafted into the army, and he gits killed, and she gits a pension of twelve dollars a month as long as she lives, it pays to git married. That's what I think."


Safe Stock

When news came to Boxby that the squire's son "down below" had made a large sum of money in stocks, some of the wiseacres shook their heads.
Not so old lady Sprowlet with whom the young man had always been a prime favorite.
"I don't see what the minister meant, saying he didn't favor Bob's having dealings in the stock market," she said, indignantly, to one of her neighbors. "I can't see why money made in trading cattle, if it's done fair and square, isn't just as good as money made any other way!"

Flagrant Pension Fraud: She Married A Corpse

1895

One of the Most Flagrant Pension Frauds Ever Perpetrated

Fraudulent pension claimants receive a considerable share of the money obtained from the government in a dishonest manner. The pension office to protect itself employs men as examiners who ferret out these evildoers, find the weak spots in their claims and finally bring the offenders before the law.

"One of the strangest cases I ever handled," said an ex-examiner, "was that of a woman who married a corpse.

"It was while I was engaged in another matter that I got wind of this case, and it was sometime before it was concluded, but the story, as finally revealed was this:

"An old soldier, drawing a pension, lived in Maine, at the home of a gentleman who was a magistrate. One winter the old soldier fell ill and became so weak that the magistrate and his wife concluded that he must soon die. The thought of his death did not distress them, but they could not think of the loss of his pension with equanimity. They received his bounty as payment for board, and of course would lose it at his death. To obviate this they conspired with a young woman, a relative of the wife, to marry the old soldier. This was made possible by the fact that the veteran was not only debilitated physically, but mentally weak and completely under their control.

The programme then was for the soldier to die, his widow to draw his pension and, incidentally, divide it with the magistrate and wife. After some correspondence the bride-elect, who lived in a neighboring city, started to the magistrate's home. There was a heavy snowstorm and owing to this she was late in arriving, so late, in fact, that the intended groom had departed this life a short time before. They did not allow so small a matter to stand in the way, however, and the magistrate, by virtue of his office, performed the ceremony at the bedside of the corpse, and afterward swore that he had made them man and wife."

Another instance in which a dead man figured as performing the actions of a living one occurred in Kansas. It was about twenty years ago when the Pottawatomie Indians had been given lands in severalty, with the privilege of selling them. There was a class of white men then, as there always has been on the frontier, who took every advantage of the red man, often going so far as downright robbery.

One of these gentry appeared at St. Mary's one day with a deed to a parcel of land, formerly the property of White Horse. It was regularly drawn up and signed with White Horse's mark. As the Indian had been missing for some time, its authenticity was doubted, but as the document was regularly witnessed it seemed as if the deed would stand. But a traveler came to town the next morning, who said he had seen White Horse's body frozen in the river, with one hand protruding through the ice. It bore a scar which fully identified the body as that of the Indian. As the river had been frozen two weeks previous to the date of the deed, it proved that document fraudulent. But the white men said that what they swore to was literally true, and it was. The document read:

I hereunto, with my hand, place my mark,

his
WHITE X HORSE
mark

They had placed the pen in the frozen fingers and guided it in making the mark. — Washington Post.