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San Jose Mercury Herald
Thursday Morning, April 28, 1921.

Hundred Go To Funeral of Murdered Tot

Little Girl was Pet of Countryside--Mother Weeps in Lima
Jail

Columbus Grove, May 27, -- Crying as if her heart would
break, Mrs. Blanche Clevenger, who shot and killed her
daughter, Earlene, nine years old, passed the time in
the Allen county jail Sunday afternoon, while funeral
services for the child were being held at the
Congregational Church in Vaughnsville, Putnam County.

To Chief of Police Roush of Lima, Mrs. Clevenger
manifested a desire to see the child in death. Sheriff
Sherman E. Eley refused to allow her to attend the
funeral. Chief Roush and the woman grew to man and
womanhood in the same community, just south of here.

The small church would not hold the people who wished to
see the body of this pretty little girl. While she and
her mother still lived in Vaughnsville, before the
divorce was granted, her father, Howard Clevenger, kept
the only grocery and general store in the town and
everybody for miles around knew Earlene. She was the pet
of the community. Her brown curls were in place and the
funeral director had successfully covered the marks made
on each temple by the entrance of the bullets. Her dolly
was by her side.

Long before time for the hour of the services, the
entire countryside gathered. Such a funeral has not been
held in the annals of Putnam county history. Three
hundred carriages followed to the Ottawa River Christian
church cemetery, where the body was laid to final rest.

----