Mexico weekly ledger., 1886-02-11
AN ILLINOIS MYSTERY.


VI tHe DORIS VI y MIN SUP
posed to Have Been Murdered
Long Ago.
In a recent conversation with Mr.
Hezekiah Blanton, a farmer who live
four miles northwest OF town, tina
gentleman told a LEDGER reporter Of
an unsolved mystery that dates bach
to directly after the close of the
'.open air meeting between the
North and the South. The occur.
renee, with its subsequent Develop.
ments, is located near Winchester,
Scott county, ILL.,, and Mr.. Blanton
says it has never been off his mind,
so deeply is he impressed with the
fact that a foul wrong has been done
one of his family. In 1864, OF
thereahouts, his daughter, Alkaline
Matilda, then Is years old, married
a nan from Jasper county, this state,
named Thos. Griffiths. At the time
Of the marriage both we're IN the
employ of Robert Pollock, a large
distillery owner and a justice of the
peace. A few months later Grit1iths
purchased a small tract of land in
the vicinity of Winchester from a
man named Chas. Frost and began to
improve the same preparatory to
locating upon it. After a pleasant
welded life Of two years.. during
which time two children were born to
Mr.. and Mrs. Grlffiths, the husband
suddenly disappeared and was never
afterwards heard of. From all ac-
counts the last seen of Griffiths was
on a bright Monday morning in the
spring of the year, when he had har-
messed his team and gone, as his wife
supposed, to a neighbours to borrow
a roller with which to prepare a field
for planting purposes. Day after
day and week after week his return
vas looked for by his anxious wife.
until weeks merged into months and
months into years. Search was IN
stituted IN every direction; Grifiths
could not be found nor q trace of
him discovered. His faithful, half
crazed wife was 10th to admit that
she and her little ones had been de-
serted by a husband who had always
been staunch and true. She would
not then believe it, and does not to
this day.
During the recent holidays Mr..
Blanton visited the scenes of his old
illinois home and while there the
matter of his son-in-law's unacc0unt-
editor disappearance came up for
discussion at the house of his younger
daughter, Mrs. NJ. J. Hamilton,
where Mr.. Blanton vas visiting. The
daughter then told her father that a
man named Jim Watt had lately
stated publicly in the neighborhood
that some ten or twelve years ago, as
he was travelling through an almost
un;nhabited portion of the country,
lie came upon the skeleton of a male
human being, answering every de-
scription of the lost nan, even to
scme peculiar Disagreement, hidden
in a dark ravlne, and Watt said he
believed it to be that of Grifiths.
Watt told how he scraped the bones
together and buried them as best he
could; but, strange to say, he did
not at the time, nor for eight or ten
years afterwards, disclose the secret
of his CHASTITY find in the obscure
ravine.
MI. Blanton says it is all very
strange to him, and next to the mys-
terry surrounding the disappearance
of Grlfiths is the finding of the skel-
eton and the concealment of the fact
SO long by Watt, and the purpose Of
the latter in keeping the matter /:
secret.
Mrs. Grifiths, after a reasonable
length of time, became Mrs. join
Richards, and now resides al Rood
house, I'll.