Toddler Eaten by Giant "Blacksnake" in Ohio
I recently discovered the fantastic online newspaper archive, The California Digital Newspaper Collection at UC Riverside, via a thread on Nextdoor about strange and paranormal events in my home town of El Cerrito. Someone dug up an old article about Ouija boards being banned in El Cerrito and pointed me to an old newspaper article describing the events that led up to the ban. There seems to have been some sort of widescale hysteria about Ouija boards back in the 1920s. In fact, reading more articles in the archive I discovered a bill was once introduced to ban Ouija boards statewide, although I don't know whatever became of it.
The newspaper archive is made up of 1.5 million scanned pages of old California newspapers, which have been processed through OCR (optical character recognition) to pull out the text into a usable format. It's amazing how accurate OCR is now, but I've been contributing to the archive here and there by editing and fixing OCR misses in the text of certain articles that I find especially interesting. Anyone can sign up to help correct mistakes made by the OCR. I think it's a pretty fair exchange to contribute a little something back to this fabulous public archive.
I tend to look for articles about strange or unusual historical events. While researching archaeological digs, somehow I stumbled upon this terrible story about a giant "blacksnake" eating a child in Ohio. I took an interest due to the strange nature of the story, but also because I grew up in Ohio. Supposedly, this event happened in West Union in Adams County, Ohio, which is down by the Kentucky boarder and the Shawnee State Forest. What this news story is doing in a California paper I don't know. My best guess is it is a syndicated article of some sort.
Please enjoy this terrible "blacksnake" story...
Ventura Signal, Volume X, Number 14, 17 July 1880
A MISSING CHILD.
Her Skeleton Found in the Den of an Enormous Blacksnake
WEST UNION (Adams County, Ohio), Jan 22.—Ginger a rugged, sterile upland, about six miles northwest from here, is much excited over the killing of an enormous blacksnake which for several years has played havoc with the farmers' flocks. Hogs, poultry, calves, sheep, etc., have mysteriously disappeared, always at night. Two years ago a band of gypsies were camped in the neighborhood, and they were accused of stealing the missing property. John Rainforth, a farmer, who greatly suffered from these depredations, swore out a warrant before Squire Peter Anns and had several of them arrested. They went away muttering threats of vengeance.
Mr. Rainforth had a golden haired little daughter four years old, whose beauty and sunny temper were the pride of her parents. On the day after the arrest of the gypsies little Nellie Rainforth was missed. She was last seen playing with a pet lamb on the edge of a rocky ridge, a short distance from the house. Search was made for her, but neither she nor the lamb was found. The whole neighborhood was aroused, and men scoured the fields and woods for miles around. Mr. Rainforth suspected the gypsies of abducting her, out of revenge for their arrest, and followed the party across the Ohio River into Lewis County, Kentucky. When he came up with them they indignantly denied all knowledge of the child's whereabouts, and a search of their camp failed to discover his little daughter. He returned to his home brokenhearted.
One day last week Mr. Rainforth was planting a field of about twenty-five acres, situated near his house. He had not been at work long when he discovered what at first seemed to be a fresh furrow across the middle of the field. He stopped work and followed the track to a fence which separated the field from a dense thicket of underbrush. On the fence he found blood and some sheep's wool, which at once convinced him that the body of a sheep had been dragged across the fence. He went to his pasture and found that a large Cotswold ram was missing. Accompanied by four or five neighbors, Mr. Rainforth made search for the missing sheep. The track through the brush was marked by drops of blood and tufts of wool. About sixty rods from the fence they came to a ledge of rocks forming one side of a steep hill. The track led directly to this ledge, in which was found an opening of sufficient size to admit the body of a large man. A large charge of giant powder was exploded in the opening, and the rocks were thrown asunder by the blast. When the smoke cleared away the farmers drew near and peered down the opening, and there, among at least a wagon load of bones, lay a huge blacksnake, quivering from his hurt.
I visited the spot to-day and saw the monster snake. While I was there men were clearing the den of the bones. In a corner one of them picked up a human skull. It was small, like a child's, and he brought it forward to the light. Mr. Rainforth was standing by my side when the man came toward us with the skull in his hand. He glanced at it and, staggering against a tree, buried his face in his hands and burst into tears.
“Poor little Nellie!’’ he cried through his sobs. “My God, it is horrible!”
After a time he controlled his feelings, and told me the story of his little daughter's mysterious disappearance, two years ago. The bones of the little one were gathered together and buried in the family plot in the cemetery at West Union.
The discovery was kept from Mrs. Rainforth, for the poor woman has never ceased ts mourn for her lost child, and her husband feared that this intelligence would seriously affect her, she being in delicate health. There can be no doubt as to the identity of the skeleton, for the gold chain which she wore around her neck was found among the bleaching bones.
Note: The text and image used in this posts are in the public domain. This story is courtesy The California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside. Snake image courtesy the Heritage Biodiversity Library and the Ventura Signal (back in the day).