The sun., 1898-02-05
BIG REWARD FOR F|REBUGS
Who Fired a Barn Near Mount
Pleasant Last Friday.
INSURANCE COMPANY'S ACTION.
1t Has Suspicious and Hopes to Round
Up the Guilty Parties Posters
Announcing Reward Sent
all Over the State.
COMPANY'S ACTION.

Firbugs
| Last Friday big handsome barn OF
the estate of Thomas Clayton near Noun
Pleasant was reduced almost to ashes BY
flames. A mystery surrounded the start.
ing OF the fire and several persons were
suspected, though no proof tangible
enough to warrant their arrest de
vcloped.
The barn was insured.
The Cantwell Mutual Insurance Com
pany which was obliged to pay the loss
started an invest igation of suspicious o
incendiarism and in short time arrived
at the conclusion that they were well
founded and moreover that more thar
one person are implicated in the firing OF
he barn.
Tosupport its conclusion the Insurance
Company, through its agents, has issued
a big reward for the tilebugs. Posters
bearing the offer were distributed
throughout the State yesterday. The
posters read as follows:
The Cantwell Insurance Company
will pay one hundred dollars reward for
the arrest and conviction of the person
or persons. who set fire to the barn on
Thomas Payton's estate near Mount
Pleasant, Delaware, January 2S 1898.
BY order of the Directors, j ohm e. Brown
Secretary. Odessa, Delaware, February
2, 1898.
just what information the Insurance
Company has to strengthen the Original
suspicion Of incendiarism has not came
out. 1t is said, however, in the neighbor-
hoad where the fire occurred, that the
Insurance Company's claim of incendir-
ism is well founded, and that the offer
ing of the reward may bring about the
arrest of those suspected of the crime.
1t is gossip among the people in the
vicinity of the scene Of the fire that the
burning of the barn was part Of a scheme
to wreak out revenge, though everyone
is loath to offer any suggestions as to the
guilty parties. News OF the offer of the
reward spread like wildte over lower
New Castle county Yesterday, and the
People OF that section are greatly agitated
over it.
Several mysterious barn burnings h ave
occurred in lower New Castle county and
upper Kent county in the past three or
four months and it is understood that the
Insurance Company offering the reward
has suspicion that the persons sus-
pected OF being intimately concerned in
these fires were concerned in the
burning of the Clayton barn. 1t is also
said that the suspicious OF the Insurance
Company as well as the suspicious OF
the people Of the neighborhood point to
white people rs the perpetrators.
However true all this gossip and talk
is, the Insurance Company proposes to
prosecute the case to Il remote degree,
and its offer, which is II fairly large one,
for barn burning case, is strong evil
dencc of its determination to ferret out
the culprits.
The police department Of this city has
received Il copy Of the poster Offering the
reward, and State Detectives McVey and
WitseI are already acquainted with the
case.
A resident Of the vicinity of Mount
who was in Wilmington yester-
day, said that if the Insurance Company
succeeded in its efforts to roundup the
fire bugs, case not unlike in
some respects to the DUPONT barn hurn-
no case of 1890 mivLt rrOp ont