Tramps Occupy Cottages

Tramps Occupy Cottages At Lake Maxinkuckee

Resorters Learn They Have Been Entertaining Unbidden Guest For Many Weeks

(Special to the Indianapols News)

Logansport, Ind. March 19 - Emil Keller, proprietor of the Barnett Hotel in this city, went to Lake Maxinkuckee yesterday and found that tramps had been occuping his cottage.

Just how long they were there is not positively known, but from the appearance of the house they must of taken possession late last fall.

The tramps had eaten and slept inthe building and were as free and easy in their mode of living as if the cottage was their own.

A wood stove had been used for cooking, and not stified with common dishes the intruders had brought out some china and cut glass, which Keller had locked in a strong cuppboard in one room was a pile of tin cans, numbering prehaps 100 in all.

They evidently feared to throw them outside believng that the newly-opened cans might attracr attention and cause of investigation.

Everything in the house was topsy turvy, and the number of empty whiskey bottles scattered about was evidence that the last occupants of the house were not members of the Prohibtion party.

Investigation made by Keller revealed that the tramps had temporiarily occupied cottages owened by Claude O. Wise and Mrs. W. H. Snyder.

It was also found that almost every cottage at this summer resort had been broken into and the different b uildings ransacked from one end to the other.

Very few cottges escaped.

Indianapolis people who had cottages there suffered.

The total amount of loss is not known and will not be untill the different cottagers return in the summer and make inventory of their effects.

The strange dact about the affair not suspected is that the presence of the tramps was not suspected until a few days ago. Farmers discovered the tramps and put them to flight. - Indianapolis News Mar 19, 1908

Several On East Side of the Lake are Entered

But Nothing of Value is Missing.

Something like a wholesale raid on the East side cottages was discovered by Patrolman Cape Wiseman of the Maxinkuckee association two weeks ago Saturday when a broken padlock on the Ogle cottage attracted his attention. Pursuing his investigations he found that the padlocks of at least five other cottages had been tampered with and the doors of several others forced. The work had been done with enough skill to defy ordinary scrutiny, and it was evident that some one with mechanical cunning or familiar with housebreaking methods was the perpetrator.

Among the cottages entered were those belonging to Adams, Glosbrunner, Schroyer, Suider, Ketcham and Keller.

In one of the cottages the bed had been slept in, and a couple of cans of meat had been opened, bread crumbs scattered about, and a fire built in the stove.

While all the cottages enumerated presented evidence of having been ransacked it is not known that anything of value was taken.

Silverware, table linen, bedding, clothing and fishing tackle were left though in a disturbed condition. In only one case is it known that anything was stolen and that was a blue silk shirt, but in its place a black sateen shirt had been left.

The owners of the cottages were notified, and several of them have been here to take stock of their property.

The work looks like that of hoboes who were more solicitous for shelter than plunder, though no explanation seems to account for their breaking into so many cottages.

If any persons living in the neighborhood of the lake did the work it is fair to assume that they would have carried off articles which are useful and not easily identified; but as no one around here is suspected the charge is more readily laid against the knights of the road.

Moreover, the lake dwellings have not been molested since the big raid of ten or twelve years ago when several wagon loads of stuff were hauled away.

An exaggerated account of the recent raid appeared in an Indianapolis paper in which it was stated that nearly a hundred empty cans and a score of whiskey bottles were left by the marauders and that the cottages showed signs of having been occupied since last fall.

The facts, however, are as stated by the Citizen - Mar 26, 1908 - Culver Citizen