ALLEGED ABDUCTION AND KIDNAPPING.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2450, 24 March 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALLEGED ABDUCTION AND KIDNAPPING.

Lkoal proceedings, which will be in a high degree sensational, are, says a Memphis despatch to the New York Times, about to be instituted against well-known parties residing in Illinois, by Moses Plummer, a colored'member of the police forc«. Alleged abdtictionanil kidnapping constitute tin; charges which will be preferred, the prosecutor being the victim, the mat tubas relation to occurrences long before the war. The story has all the elements of romance in it. Plummer was freeborn, and even his father before him, Henry Plummer, had never been a slave. His home was in Calhoun county, Illinois. In the family were three boys, one older and one younger than Moses. Some time in the forties the father left for California, intending to be absent a year or more. At the expiration of that time news came that he was dead, and no letter having been received the report was not doubted. The mother was induced to leave Calhoun county and go southward. Several white men, who, it is alleged, are criminally guilty, and who will be the defendants in the case, engineered her movements, and at agood opportunity kidnapped the boys, the oldest being less than ten years of age. Moses fell to Mr. Sledge of Memphis, who knew nothing of the crime. He was brought here, and disposed of to Mr. Needham Whitely, a gentleman now living in Hernando, Miss. After the results of the war had set the free-born slave free again, he, then a young man, was told parts of his history which came to the knowledge of Mr. Whitely. It was not until last August, however, that Plummer found out enough to take steps towards securing justice for the wrong done him. Ho has since been collecting all possible evidence. From parties at his birthplace with whom he put himself in correspondence he learned that his father, several years after the disappearance of him and his brothers, came back from California, and, not finding his family, came south and spent months and years in fruitless search. Plummer is about 40 years of age, and light-brown in colour. He is intelligent, and has the reputation of being a good officer.