The dark side of Bement

"The Bement Story" isn't just a pleasant history lesson. It also chronicles events most village residents would like to put behind them.

A roving gang of enforcers. A string of murders. And an interesting discovery at a local newspaper office.

According to the book, workers were replacing the dirt floor in the basement of the Bement Register building during the village's early years, although the date isn't given.

"During the digging to level the floor for the concrete pour, a pair of corroded engraved printing plates were unearthed," it says. "They were engravings of U.S. currency! They were immediately destroyed. One might suspect that at some time during the history of the Register, not all its income came from advertising and subscriptions."

Bement was a rough-and-tumble place in the early years. About the time the village was founded, a gang of people who called themselves the Callithumpians roamed around Piatt County administering frontier justice – tarring, feathering and running people out of town.

Other blots on the village's reputation include:

– The arrest in 1868 of George Harper and his son for cattle wrestling.

– The robbery and murder of Miles Conway in 1959.

– The poisoning of Sylvester Buckley in his own hotel, the Sherman House, in 1971.

The Wildman murders created quite a stir in 1886. According to the history, Henry Wildman had an altercation with his wife and he subsequently slit her throat – and then his own. She died, but he recovered and was jailed. But an enraged mob stormed the jail and lynched him. No one was charged with the murder.

Moving ahead to 1977, strange doings in the village continued when Police Chief Howard Wienke was charged with solicitation to commit arson and obstruction of justice in connection with gasoline fires July 23 that year at Nichols Trading Post and Sept. 10 at the Bement firehouse.

He was sentenced in 1978 to serve 3 1/2 years in prison.