Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1886-09-30
THE DAYTON GYPsIEs LOSE
THEIR FARMS.
Their Summer Tents Will No Longer
be Pitched in the Miami Valley,

Their Summer Tents Will No Longer
be Pitched in the Miami Valley.
| DAYTON, o., Sept. 15.-The gypsies
who have for so many years been a ro-
mantle summer feature of Dayton, have
sold out their real estate in this part of
the country. They have driven their
populous and grotesque wagons out of
the valley, and will probably never re-
turn. Since the death of their queen
two years ago they have lost money by
mismanagement, have sold most OF
their farms about four miles out of the
city, and have mortgaged the rest for all
they are worth, and when the different
4 families left this fall on their customary
southern trip, it was with the inten-
ton ofnever again returning to make a
permanent stay.
Every summer heretofore you could
see them camped out by the roadside
under some trees in front of their
farms, ,lOunging in the shade, while their
tenants lived in the farm-houses and
titled the land.
A few years ago one of the families
had chance to buy house in town
cheap and bought it. They fitted it up
and furnished the parlor with especially
fine stuffed furniture. Then they
wouldn't live in it. The saying was
common among them that they
wouldn't sleep in that house for fifty
dollars" The family regularly camped
in the side yard all that season and af-
terward sold the house as a useless piece
of furniture.
Missouri, one of the daughters of old
King Levi, used to say, 81 wouldn't
give my wagon for the finest par!or in
Dayton"
They came to Dayton in 1854 (eleven
families, in old wagons drawn by ram
shackly horses. They came from the
Eastern States. Land around DAYTON
was cheap then, and the country people
credulous. So these gypsies prospered,
and put their surplus money into farms,
which they Immediately rented to in
dustrious tenants, mostly on "sheers."
When harvest time they were usually
back here to get their "sheern of the
"projuce," which they promptly hauled
to town and sold.
Old Levi Stanley was the King, or
Patriarch, and his wife the Queen. The
other ten families were those of sons,
sons-in-law, or more distant relatives,
Ofthe sons and daughters, those which
acquired property hereabouts, and are
therefore best known, are young Levi
generally known as "Sugar"l, Paul,
Adam, Mike, Sally, Harriet and Mis-
souri,. Henry Jeff. one of their promi-
nent men, married one of old Lewis
daughters.
Two years ago the Queen, old Lewis
wife, died, and he spent much of his
possessions in doing suitable honor to |
her memory. She seems to have been |
the chief adviser of the tribe, and after |
her death matters went, financially, to
pieces. One after another the ties of |
habitation were uprooted by the mort
gaging and final selling of the farms,
until now, except Small piece of land
in Missouri's name, and another in the
name of Sugar" the old possessions
are all gone,
Old Levi was around only few DAYS
last spring, probably for the last time,
and then went off in his wagon, no.
body knows where. Henry Jeff was in
the neighborhood for a few days, and
then he too disappeared. "Sugar" is
the only one of the family in the old
neighborhood, and he is preparing to
move South on the annual trip.
"Why do want to farm?' he says.
~ can buy up drove of horses for
$19 apiece, and take 'em down South
and make more money off of 'em in
ten weeks than could in a year on a
farm"
Years from now some gypsy tent
will be pitched in the outskirts of Day.
ton, and as the swarthy family gather
in the evening about the campfire the
father will tell the wondering children,
in their old Romani speech, the legend
that somewhere about here our tribes
used to own Vitality farms, that would
make us all rich if we had them now."
And then he will add, with stole phil
osophy: "Ah, well; the worlds before
us. And what have roamers like us to
do with any possessions we can't load ,
into wagon?'
A romatic incident of the Big Mama
Valley has, unobserved, removed its
Gypsy tent from the adjacent plain of
events to pitch it on
the distant hills of History. The Gyp-
sizes of Dayton are gohe.
THEo. KAIANDRI.