GHOST Story -3 - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

There were strange sounds from behind the drop curtain at Music Hall on Tuesday night sound resembling the buzzing of a million locusts. It was a wild jumble of discordant fiddle strings, the tuning of fiddles of all sizes, makes and all designs by the 35-year-old time yeomen of the rosin and the bow who were getting ready for the grand overture. When the curtain rolled up its painted expanse the great audience that packed the house saw seated on the stage a strange collection of fiddlers of all ages and all degrees of life’s hard and cruel fate.  All were fiddling away for dear life on the Arkansaw Traveller and the fiddles were not nearly all in tune, nor were the performers together as to time, but that made no difference because the thousand people in the audience united in a yell that drowned out every other sound and there was only an occasional shriek of fiddle-bow heard above the wild tumult.

Milton Stuckey of Quinine township, a 53-year-old fiddler with long red chin beard who sat well to the front, pulled his bow with muscular effect and was all smiles.  Beside him sat “Alcohol” Bill Hall distinguished appearing in a luxuriant crop of coal black whiskers. To his right were ranged some old time favorite like John LewAllen, the Bruner brothers and “Rocky Fox,” old man Foxworthy of Hillsboro so nearly blind that he had to be led to the stage; Harry Vance, dressed in a grimy suit of clothing worn by a shop hand some time at the Indiana Wire Fence Factory, a reminder of the days when this was a manufacturing town,  and thereby expected to win the prize for the dirtiest fiddler but failing in the laudable desire and there were fiddlers from all parts of the county and a half dozen from around the classic precincts of Jackville whom John A. Booe had not heard play since the days when he and Harris Reynolds and George Myers had hunted foxes in Fountain County and danced the happy hours away in old fashioned cotillions. There were prizes without end to be awarded and the duty fell to a committee composed of Lew Manheim, the clothier, Joe McAllister and Dr. Burris.  During the evening there were hornpipe dances by Sam Bruner and jigs by C Hardee and old Jake Ephart of Hillsboro all long past the prime of life. Then Mrs. Cal Bales, expected to dance a jog failed to show up on the stage and her brother, Sam Bruner flushed with the enthusiastic welcome with which his dance had been received hurried to the edge of the stage, over beyond the glare of the footlights and asked his sister to come to the stage and dance for the people. The people got on their feet and some stood on the seats and yelled as the woman was seen passing out of the auditorium and back to the stage.  Pandemonium broke loose again when she stepped out of the stage, and clad in a dark cloth suit and wearing a black hat with a sweeping ostrich feather, began to keep time to the music of fiddler Hansford who, next to Stuckey took the honors of the evening. She responded to an encore and the audience cheered till it was hoarse.  It was an entertainment that captivated the people and the drawing power of the show was something that amazed manager Townsley.  It seems that CH Ellis of Hillsboro who got up the entertainment is a veteran fiddler and has a personal acquaintance with all the old-time fiddlers hence had no difficulty in securing talent. There was dancing by small boys during the evening that received warm encores.  Half the small lads in town will now begin to study the steps of jig and hornpipes. Dancing is contagious in its effects.  

Lafayette Daily Courier, Sat, Dec 14, 1889 ·Page 4

While out hunting rabbits with a party of friends, near Crawfordsville, Charles Ellis was accidentally shot by John Stull, and died Thursday night from the injuries received. Both Ellis and Stull are young men, and neither is married.   ---kbz