Plum Grove Items

Note: The Peabody Gazette gives us some real insight into life in Plum Grove in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In this weekly newspaper, we find columns entitled “Plum Grove Items.” These columns were submitted mainly by two authors. The first contributor signs his name “A Star Cus,” It is easy to deduce from the style the columns are written and the similarity of the character that this is Starchus M. Spencer. The other contributor signs his name “Num Skull.” Unfortunately, we are never given a clue as to the identity of Num Skull. In these bi-monthly columns, both authors garner a lot of information about the people, the area, and the climate of Plum Grove and its vicinity

PLUM GROVE ITEMS.

17 NOV. 1881, Fri

Plum Grove and Vicinity.

The election is over, and we Greenbackers are getting ready for another trip up “Salt-river,” as usual, but then we are so used to our annual trip that it doesn’t make us feel bad.
The farmers in this vicinity are hauling their winter supply of coal from Andover, on Gould road. We get it from Fort Scott for 83.60 per ton. Is that not why the farmers should organize to protect themselves from railroad extortion? Can they not carry coal from Osage to Peabody as cheaply as from Fort Scott to Andover? And if they can, should they not be compelled to do so?
And, while we are on the farmers’ question, would it not be well if Peabody would put up a “city scales” and have a city weigh-master? It would be more satisfactory to the clod-hoppers in general. Moreover, it would do away with such disgraceful scenes as transpired on the streets of Peabody a few days ago when a bunch of hogs was weighed three different times before satisfaction was reached and another compromised on the weights of the former.
At last, we are to have a bridge across the Whitewater at the Wentworth ford on the mail route between Newton and Eldorado. Also, another three miles north. T. L. Ferrier donates $50 toward the last mentioned one.

NUM SKULL.