546	HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

revealed nor intimated to no one, suddenly disappeared, from whom
nothing has been heardby his family and friends. No cause nor sufficient
reason, neither fancied nor real, for his leaving has yet been made known.
The talk was current at the time that before going he had borrowed small
sums of money from a number of his friends, as his business standing
and credit were good. The report was circulated some years afterward
that he had gone out to the frontier, in the Black Hills country, where
he took a government contract to carry the mail, thereby exposing himself
to the treachery of the Indians lurking thereabout, who decoyed and
scalped him, but the relatives have no verification of the rumor.
	In the year 1867 George P. Stone came to Clay county from the
state of Kentucky and located at Brazil in the practice of the law, form-
ing a partnership with George A. Knight, under the firm name of Knight
& Stone. In the fall of 1870 he was elected trustee of Brazil township,
and re-elected two years later, serving until the fall of 1874. While at
Brazil he married Miss Lucy Larr. In 1875 he quit Brazil and located
at Bowling Green. In 1876 he left Bowling Green and located at Middle-
bury. Two years later he went to Worthington, and still later to Bloom-
field, where he engaged actively in the practice of his profession. In the
fall of 1884, because of complications in business affairs, as supposed,
he quit Bloomfield, leaving his family (wife and two children), who have
had no knowledge of him at any time nor place since. Of his leaving
Bloomfield, the Weekly Democrat of that place said, in the fore part of
September, 1884: “George P. Stone, a well known attorney of this place,
hired a horse and buggy and drove over to Switz City, Friday a week ago.
He left the team there and has not been heard of since.” By the assistance
of friends of the family efforts were made to locate him, both in this
country and in Europe, but without success.
	Very recently, however, it is current with Brazil people that Stone
has been located in a soldiers’ home in the state. of Iowa, where he is
known as Reed. Furthermore, that as a soldier in the Civil war he was
commissioned as Captain Reed, and that Stone was an assumed name.
	George Ritchie, a man of middle age and of family, residing at the
time on a farm in the southeast part of Jackson township, in the year
1874, or thereabout, gave out that he had rented a house at Brazil and
would move to that place, to engage in teaming. Accompanied by a neigh-
bor, they hauled the household goods to Brazil, when, as represented by
Ritchie, the retiring tenant had not yet vacated the house he had rented
and that he could not get possession for several days. Failing to find any
private apartment for storing away his household goods, he obtained per-
mission, as he claimed, to place them in a vacant corner of the railroad
freight depot for the time, where they were unloaded. The neighbor
who accompanied him (to whom he was indebted) drove back home.
Ritchie then ordered his goods shipped, he and the family going out
of town with the horses and wagon. From that time he and his family
were completely lost to Jackson township and Clay county people, no one
having subsequently seen nor heard from any of them.
In the Eleventh Moon of a Leap Year.
	The Archives, published at Bowling Green, in the issue of November
14, 1872, made the following report of marriage licenses issued:
	Branson H. Bowling=Martha J. Davis.
	George W. Hamilton=~Sarah E. Parson.
	John B. Reffett==Emeline Moore.