HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      401

vivor of those who responded to White’s call was Elias Cooprider, who
died November 6, 1901, having cast nineteen votes for president, an ex-
perience which comes to but one man in a million.

                    Twenty Years in Chains.
    There are yet living in the county a number of people who remember
Simeon Vest, the pauper maniac, who was a county charge for more than
twenty years. Vest was a native of Kentucky, coming to Clay county in
his boyhood days, the family locating on the old Bowling Green-Brazil
road, west side, on what was later and for many years known as the Mor-
gan Bryant place. In his youth and early manhood he was, to all appear-
ances, normally poised, giving out no indications of any mental derange-
ment. At the time of the building of the Terre Haute & Indianapolis
Railroad, in 1850-51, the two brothers, Simeon and George Vest, were
contractors on construction of a half-mile of grade on the Modesitt place,
where the town of Newburg was afterward platted and built. Soon there-
after both went back to Kentucky, where they were said to have engaged
jointly as contractors on both public and private works. Several years
later Simeon returned unaccompanied by his brother, so unbalanced men-
tally as not to be able to give an intelligent and satisfactory account of
him. A county asylum having meanwhile been established, he was com-
mitted to this institution about the year 1857, and soon thereafter, under
the administration of Adam B. Moon as keeper, became violent and dan-
gerous, assaulting Moon with a heavy garden hoe, when he was being, re-
strained by being shackled.
    When Moon retired from the keeping of the infirmary, to remove
Vest from contact with other inmates of the institution, a special contract
was made between the county board and the retiring superintendent of
the asylum for his keeping, when he was taken to Moon’s residence, on
the hill between the Thomas and the Crafton farms, on the Bowling
Green-Brazil road, a mile and a half out from the former place, where he
was lodged in a small house of one room on the south side of the road.
To confine him to his new quarters the chain clamped about his wrist
was securely attached to a staple in the floor. The chain was of sufficient
length to allow him to walk about the room and have access to his bed.
Physically, Vest was a powerful man, Mr. Moon keeping close watch
over him on going into the room to serve his meals or otherwise attend
his wants.
    As the road passing by his prison home was much traveled, many
passersby would stop at the door and talk to Vest. Unless agitated and
in very sullen mood, he was easily engaged in conversation and would
talk rationally for a moment or two. Frequently, he would call footmen
to the door who were going in the direction of Bowling Green and re-
quest them to bring him a plug of tobacco or a flask of whiskey. While
he seemed to recall former visits and recognize faces, he never attempted
to call names. In his hours of aberration and spasms of frenzy he would
throw to the floor his man of straw, whom he called Adam Moon, and
belabor him to his heart’s content, emphasizing his demonstrations with
curses of deep revenge. For more than twenty years he was in chains.
He died January 7, 1879, at the new county asylum, three miles southwest
of Bowling Green, to which he had been taken two years before, age un-
known. As his brother George did not return from Kentucky and was


                            vol. 1—26