Barbarous Outrage

A few weeks since an individual in Ghent, Carroll county , Ky., purchased three negroes - a mother and her two children - one of the latter, a girl some eight or nine years of age, being an idiot. In consideration of his taking the idiot child off the hands of the former owner, he got the mother and the other child at a very low price.

The child was given up into the hands of an old negro woman, in a cabin some distance from the owner's residence, to be taken care of . Having occasion, however, for the service of the woman about his premises, the idiot was left in the cabin. Finding it a great burden, he offered to give any one who would take it a hundred dollars.

This offer was promptly accepted by a man who was standing by, who, in turn offered fifty dollars to any one who would take it from him. The offer was acceded to by a third person, who immediately offered twenty-five dollars to any one to take it on the conditions on which he had done. A customer was not long wanting - the bargain was struck, and the twenty-five dollars paid.

The fellow into whose hands the idiot last fell, in company with another, proceeded to the cabin, some two miles distant, on a cold frosty morning, took the child out almost naked and barefooted, and drove it before them almost the whole distance - her feet having been cut by the hard, frosty ground.

The monsters took the child to a salt or store boat, lying up there, and for a while amused themselves by placing her on a hot stove, with her bare feet, burning them most horribly, and applying them to different parts of her body. The owner of the boat coming, in, ordered the fellows to leave his premises, which they did.

One of the rascals then procured a skiff, put the child into it and proceeded down the river. He shortly after returned without the child; and upon being asked what he had done with it, refused to give any satisfaction. A flat boat coming along in the course of a few hours, he jumped into it, and has not since been heard of. The child was doubtless drowned, or left upon the bank of the river to die.

The affair has created considerable feeling among the community in which it took place, and the individual who purchased the family is greatly distressed. He doubtless offered and paid the $100 in good faith, believing it would be amply sufficient compensation for the trouble of taking care of the idiot. He has offered a reward for the recovery of the child. It is to be hoped that the villains concerned in torturing and making away with the idiot will be arrested and severely punished.

P.S. - Since writing the above, we find a paragraph in the Madison Banner, in which it is said that a fellow named Ross, Alias Crawford, has been arrested in Madison, supposed to be the scoundrel who took the skiff. He is now in jail in that city. - New Albany (Ind.) Ledger, Jan. 30.

 

The North Star, March 20, 1851