504	HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

we call it jimson.” “Certainly not so, mother, this is salsify.” “Well,
William, you were raised among the jimsons; pinch off part of a leaf,
rub it between your fingers and smell it.” No further proof was neces-
sary. William had plucked up all the salsify, thinking it grass, and let
stand the larger, finer looking plants.
Dual Homicide at Middlebury.
	On Friday night, March 3d, 1876, •a double homicide, or murder,
was committed on the streets of Middlebury. The Watts brothers,
George and Thomas, were at that time in the general store business at
the former Buckallew stand, on East Jackson street. At about 9:30
p. in., just after the close of business for the day and after the retirement
of many of the resident families of the town, some one, in passing their
store, as afterward told by Thomas Watts, shot through the front door
and then passed on westward. Accepting this as a challenge, both
brothers rushed out onto the street and down to the crossing, where they
found Freeman Reed, a young man about twenty years of age, and a
resident of the town, standing on the hotel corner, whom they accosted.
An altercation immediately ensued, in which George Watts was shot in
the head, dying a few minutes later, and Reed stabbed in the back with
a long-bladed weapon, reaching the vital organs, from the effects of
which he died fifteen or twenty minutes afterward. The interval be-
tween their deaths was but momentary. Watts was picked up, carried
into the hotel office and laid on a table, where he expired, and was then
removed to the home of Daniel Molter, a brother-in-law, who lived on
the property now occupied by Mrs. Martha Jester. Reed ran to the
family home, the house now owned and occupied by Ira Long, going
by way of the livery stable on a back street, rushed frantically upstairs,
crouching, as though to conceal himself, in a small clothes-press, from
which he was taken by the family and placed on a bed, where he expired
almost instantly. Thomas Watts was taken temporarily into custody,
but within twenty-four hours eluded the officers and hurriedly made his
exit from the town. After an absence of several years, having mean-
while married, he returned and engaged in the store business at Clay
City. As there were no eyewitnesses to the double tragedy but Watts
himself and no affidavit was filed by anyone, there was no judicial inves-
tigation nor finding in the case. There was moonlight that night, and
the altercation on the street corner was viewed through an upstairs’
window by Wat C. Elkin, proprietor of the hotel, who did not decline
being interrogated about it and would talk freely up to the point of
being asked who did the killing, when he would uniformly say: “When
I’m called into court I’ll answer that question.” After having done busi-
ness at Clay City for some years, Watts was adjudged of unsound mind
and taken to the central asylum at Indianapolis, where he died in 1900.
The remains of Reed, buried in the Middlebury cemetery, were exhumed
and re-interred on the 28th of July, 1908, at the Greenwell cemetery, in
compliance with the instructions of his mother, Mrs. Harriet Reed, who
died and was buried there a few days previous to this date.
A Father-in-Law-Shot and Killed by His Son-in-Law in Open Court.
	Joseph Donham, a pioneer citizen of Perry township, was shot and
instantly killed by his son-in-law, Elijah Beatty, on the 9th day of
August, 1882. A disagreement had come up between the father-in-law
and son-in-law over a crop of wheat, which they agreed to arbitrate.
The court of arbitration, by agreement, met at the school-house, at Cory,