AN AMERICAN ORTON.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 183, 9 January 1875, Page 3

AN AMERICAN ORTON.

>& * .-•';' '[Jiroiri tM Chicago 'tfimes.] ''A'/* claimant "has convulsed the quiet neighborhood*of Freeport, HI., by a personation'as objectless as it was impudent. No vast estates nor hereditary titles were to be gained. A pig and a cow, a temporary "marriage relation and a three years' residence in the Penitentiary were the fruits of the claimant's audacity. His name is John Travers, and 1 his opportunity was the wickednew of one Alvah Gaylord. Alvah was a gay deceiver, If e married a highly respect able young woman of Stephenson county, and when the second babe was born he took to eVil ways, and' left his wife a widow and •his children orphans. 1 Ten years later Travers appeared, with a bag full of counterfeit greenbacks and bonds in immoderate profusion. He argued with the Widow Gayford, showed marks upon his person to identify him, arid to her satisfaction, at any rate, he proved that he was her missing but repentant husband. The orphans clasped his knees and called him father, and their long widowed mother rejoiced over the return of the prodigal. Unfortunately there was a sceptic in the Gayford family, a brother of the absentee. He was convinced of the imposture, and, after manyanadmirable artifice, succeeded in bringing the matter before the Grand Jury, and finally before a petit jury, with r the result above mentioned. It was while enjoying the love of the widow and orphans that he converted the family pig and COW into greenbacks, and this transmutation was of nolittle weight before the jury. He was a bad man, and, moreover, sinned for a preposterously small sum of money.