GROVER, Leonidas - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

A Covington, Ind., special dispatch to the Indianapolis Journal, dated the 15th, gives the following account of a most extraordinary occurrence. On Tuesday night last, Leonidas Grover, who resided in the vicinity of Newtown, Fountain county, met his death in a way that is probably without a parallel in this or any other country. Mr. Grover was a widower, living on a farm with a married daughter and her husband. On the evening referred to the married couple had been absent on a visit to some neighbors, and upon returning at a late hour, entered the house, finding everything, to all appearance, in usual order, and supposing that Mr. Grover had already retired, went to bed themselves. Next morning the daughter arose, and having prepared breakfast, went to the adjoining room to call her father, and was horrified to find him lying upon his shattered bed, a mutilated corpse. Her screams brought the husband quickly to the bedroom, and an inspection disclosed a ragged opening in the roof, directly over the breast of the unfortunate man, which was torn through as if by a canon shot, and extending downward through the bedding and floor; other holes showed the direction taken by the deadly missile. Subsequent search revealed the fact that the awful calamity was caused by the fall of a meteoric stone. The stone itself, pyramidal in shape, and weighing twenty pounds and a few ounces, avoirdupois, and stained with blood, was unearthed from a depth of nearly five feet, thus showing the fearful impetus with which it struck the dwelling. The position of the corpse, with other surroundings, when found, showed that the victim was asleep when stricken, and that death, to him, was painless.

... Harding's great forte was as a paragrapher in which he had much of the quality of Goerge D. Prentice. In personal onslaughts he was persistent and merciless and the public really enjoyed seeing a victim squirm when he gigged him - he did it so artistically. ... perhaps the most attractive quality of Harding's writing was its originality. He was always doing something novel .... But there was very general satisfaction a little later when Harding himself was taken in by "the meteor hoax" which was the most successful thing of the kind ever worked in Indianapolis. On January 16, 1879, the Journal published what purported to be a special from Crawfordsville giving an account of the remarkable death of LEONIDAS GROVER, a Fountain County farmer who while asleep in his bed was killed by a 20# aerolite that came through the roof, passed through his body and on to the cellar where it buried itself 5' in the ground. There was no one else in the house at the time, and the family, who returned later, did not discover the casualty till the next morning. The story was as complete a hoax on the Journal as on outsiders. It was found on the telegraph editor's desk with other matter, in the usual form but it did not come over the wires. THe author was never discovered. I was charged with it at the time, and numerous deluded people still hold me guilty, but I never saw it until I read it in the News that afternoon...the learned were caught also. Professor Cox, the State Geologist, hastily sent Major Palmer to the scene to get scientific details and secure the aerolite. He soon discovered the lack of facts, but decided "to keep up the joke." He secured a cobblestone of appropriate size and colored it with black and red ink; also a rustic photograph which served for a portrait of the mythical Grover; and prepared plans of the non existent house showing the course of the imaginary aerolite, all of which he put on exhibition in Joe Perry's Drugstore than at the NW corner of PA & Washington Streets where they were viewed by wondering hundreds... the story appealed to Harding and he wrote a feeling article on the strange way in which death had come to this man, sleeping in supposed security. It was published on the 18th after the hoax had been exposed but it had been put on the inside and the inside was printed so it had to go. The next Sat the Herald resumed the subject: "We take it back in its totality. The death was not a phenomenal one. The aerolite did not come hurtling from the depths of space. It did not tear a ragged opening through the roof of Mr. Grover's house nor did it crash through his breast and then pass through the bed, the floor and so on into the earth, 5'. Mr. Grover's daughter and her husband were not away from home at the time of the accident and they didn't fail to discover his death unti lthe next morning. HE DIDN"T DIE. He didn't get hurt. He didn't even get frightened. He wasn't there. He isn't anywhere now. Durn him. If Mr. Leonidas Grover ever should come into existence and get killed by an aerolite, he will have to get someone else to write his obituary. It is a nice enough thing to moralize over and it furnishes great scope for the play of sentimental fancy but we despise the subject and we have precious little faith in thunder-stones, anyhow. The The audacious villain who invented the canard is an unmeasured fraud and an infinite liar. Hell gapes for him. The devil beckons to him with his hands and horns and tails. Eternal cremation with a brimstone accompaniment is his doom." (World Life p 14)