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Excerpts from the Interior Journal

Pulaski County Department

Will C. Curd

Somerset, Kentucky

February 9, 1874

Horse and Jack bills nearly printed at the Journal office.



The Pulaski Circuit Court will convene the fourth Monday in next month.



'Sdeath to the man that caricatures us with a comic valentine on the 14th.



Next Monday will be County Court day, and we anticipate a good crowd in town. 

 We would be delighted to receive a few names for the Journal, and would not 

object to a little "back pay" on subscriptions.



Extensive preparations are being made by the lovers of the merry dance for 

the grand social cotillion party at the Courthouse Hall on the 23d.  The 

handsome invitations printed by the Journal reflect credit upon the Book and 

Job department of that institution.



Inquest of Lunacy.



One Riley Tartar, residing about three miles north of Somerset, while in town 

on Thursday last, was arrested upon a warrant for disturbing religious 

worship and taken before his honor, Judge Dehoff, who from information 

received deemed it proper to impanel a jury to inquire into the state of mind 

& c., of the defendant, however the facts elicited at the trial were not 

sufficient to enable the jury to recommend him to the asylum.



Mr. Tartar is a very strange and peculiar individual and his mind is 

certainly impaired to a great extent, while he is fast verging in on that 

unhappy and melancholy state of lunacy.  He has the name of being a sober, 

hard-working, industrious citizen, and is a member of the church, the same 

that he is charged with disturbing.  He is now subject to what he terms 

sleepy spells in which he goes off into a trance, after which he contends 

that he has been visited by Angels and has received revelations and 

forewarnings from God Himself, that he was forewarned twelve months since 

that an attempt would be made to imprison him, which has proved too true.  He 

was raised in illiteracy and could not read until since the visitation of 

these "sleepy spells" and from the first attack he has gradually learned to 

read, and can now quote with great accuracy most any passage of the Bible.



We don't believe that Mr. T. intended to disturb religious worship or went to 

the church for that purpose, and that when so guilty, he was laboring under 

his wild hallucinations and was in a state of unaccountability, and we are 

further convinced that his friends and family should keep him away from all 

religious excitement, because his mind cannot bear it, while it seems 

impossible for him to remain silent; and perhaps having imbibed a few 

erroneous doctrines he will take issue in a church or out of a church with 

any man who utters views contrary to his own.



He has our sympathy and we trust that his friends will keep him away from 

other religious assemblies until his mind shall have become restored.

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