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. | 15 DEC. 1881, Thurs. |
Plum Grove and Vicinity.
Editor Gazette :
Hurrah for I. A. Shriver. His head is level if it is a mutton head. Whoop up the “city scales.” We will freely pay for weighing and thereby build-up your city. You won’t hear us grumble. You know the adage, “Give a dog a bad name and then kill him.” As long as a man thinks he is cheated, it is all the same as if he is. I. A. Shriver finds fault with us for standing around in the way while they are weighing. That is all well enough with public scales, but so long as each man does his own weighing, it is our right and, in justice to ourselves, our duty to see the weighing done. “An honest man doesn’t care if he is watched; a thief needs it.”
The Plum Grove store has changed clerks again and, this time, proprietors also. John A. Jones, the son-in-law of H. H. Wilcox, is the purchaser. Mrs. J. will be found behind the counter for the present, as the proprietor is teaching at the Grove.
Lum Hor lets his team run away about twice a week.
Robert White has sold his farm and will go to Iowa. We predict he will want to be back in about two months. Asa White left here last summer, and he writes from Story county, Iowa: “I did not leave Kansas to stay; I am coming back next fall.”
We will soon have a railroad on every section line in Butler county-
Then come and see us.
NUM SKULL.
𝚨nything for A Quiet LifeΩ 