Shelby  County  Indiana
Newspaper  Articles

Gadd

The  Denver  Post
June 9, 1912
Page 10   column 1
----------
FOUR  MEN  EARN  LIVING
IN  DARKNESS  ON  DOWN
TOWN  CORNERS.
----------

          Four blind men earn a meager living by selling papers on downtown corners in Denver.  They have much to say that woudmake the normal mortal stand still, and wonder, that such fortitude, such manhood, could be displayed in their circumstances.
          These men are nt living in the lap of luxury.  What they live on they earn by labor which is doubly hard by reason of their infirmity, and yet their complaints are few.

BLIND  MEN  SMILE  IN
SPITE  OF  AFFLICTION.

          An article ina magazine recently spoke of the "philosophy of a smile."  It surely was exemplified in these men when they cheerfully told an inquirer of themselves and their experiences.
          John H. Gadd,  who has his station at Sixteenth and Welton streets, was born in Shelby county Indiana, 60 years ago.  He seems quite proud of being a Hoosier.  He lived on the farm until he had passed his twenty-first birthday.  Then he married a pretty girl on a neighboring farm.
          Later the two moved to Eureka, Kan., and opened a grocery store.  After living together for twenty-three years, the wife left him with three children torear as best he could.
          Later he came to Denverand remarried, but as his eyesight commenced to fail him in 1900, his second wife didn't care to be responsible for the care of a blind man, and she, too, left him.
          Gadd's eyesight was lost by paralysis of the optic nerve.  His smile is cheerful, and his countenance lighted up as he talked.
          "So few talk to me," said he,  "and I hunger for conversation, but I expect to stay here until the end.  What else is there to do?  Sixty years, and not much longer now wait.  While not perfectly happy, I'll do the best I can."
          He considers life still worth living -- and living right.  Peopel are kind to him, all are humane, but few have time to tarry.  He lives at 1630-1/2 Tremont street, and finds his way around alone.  He has been in total darkness during the past eleven years.
Contributed by John Addison Ballard

The  National  Volunteer
Shelbyville, Indiana
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
August 4, 1853
-----

          Guardians Sale --- On the premises in Hanover Township, twenty acres belonging to the heirs of  Lydia Ann Ingham, decd., lying immediately on the Brooksville state road, one fourth of a mile due west of the Depot on the Knightstown R.R. at Morristown.  Known as part of the tract of  land once owned by Thomas Gadd, decd.  Wareham W. Woodyard, Guardian.
Copied by Sherry Badgley Ryan from Maurice Holmes' book, Shelbyville, Indiana, Newspaper Excerpts 1853 - 1859, self-published, 1141 N. 450 W., Shelbyville, Indiana 46176.

Newspaper Index       Main Page

For current email addresses of researchers listed above, use the Surname Index