The Lambertville Record

A CHASE FOR A CHILD

Little Maggie Pickett Taken by Abductors Over a Thousand Miles From Home.

About ten days since the Associated Press told of the kidnapping of a four-year old child named Maggie Pickett from her home at Latrobe, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, by a man and woman supposed to be John Barnes and wife. Last evening the child was at the union depot in this city, in charge of her uncles, John and Enoch Davis and the story of her recovery reads like romance, the two young men having followed her over 1,500 miles, and at a point only a few miles from the Indian Territory line was overtaken and released from the clutches of her kidnappers. The child, who is a beautiful little girl not quite four years of age, was born and raised at Latrobe, her parents being well-to-do people of the middle class, and her beauty was known from one end of the town to the other, being of that order which made people stop in the streets and ask who she was. It is supposed that this was the cause of her abduction her kidnappers hoping that a large reward would be offered for her return, not, however, by her parents, who were poor, but by the city or State.

The child was stolen on the afternoon of Friday, December 9, by a man thought to be John Barnes, a coal miner, and his credited wife. Barnes made his way to this city and last Friday took the train for Wichita. The following night found the two uncles bound for the same point, only thirty-six hours behind the stolen child, and the chase became most exciting. At Wichita it was found that the parties had gone to Arkansas City, and when the pursuers reached that point on Sunday last the discovery was made that Barnes had hired a pair of horses, with a driver and was making for Indian Territory. The Davis boys did the same thing, and after a hard drive the first carriage was overtaken and the child taken from her abductors. The little one, when she saw her uncles, held out her hands and begged to be taken from "this bad, nasty woman" and cried for her mamma. As the rescuers were unarmed the abductors escaped.—Kansas City Times,