More traction reaction

 Connersville News-Examiner 1903

TRACTION BELT LINE

OUT OF CONNERSVILLE

D.W. Andre Proposes the Building of a Road

Route to Extend Down the Whitewater Valley

to Brookville Thence to Fairfield and Back to This City

In connection with a column of traction news, the Laurel Review in its issue this week has the following:

David Andre of Connersville is read to give substantial aid to an electric line of his own planning and he says that Richmond capitalists think well of the scheme.

His plan is to build what he calls a circuit line, running from Connersville to Laurel, Metamora and Brookville, thence up the East Fork to Fairfield.

From there his plan is to find an easy route northwest, probably through Alquina and back to Connersville.

It is a fact that a line could be built all the way from Connersville to Fairfield without encountering a single difficult grade and that it would encounter, in the short distance traversed, probably more population and possibly patronage than any other line yet contemplated heretofore.

Note: This doesn't seem like much of a creative plan, and building such a railroad from Fairfield to Alquina would simply have followed the river to Quakertown, then west. Obviously never built, the "capitalists" of the day were making these grand plans virtually every 3 months. The population to be affected was in the hundreds. Lyons Station is (was) about 3 miles west of Brownsville. 

Cholera -- a Cincinnati tradition

Democrat, Brookville May 1833

CHOLERA

The disease is said to have made its appearance again in Cincinnati. Our information is so authentic that we have no room for doubts on the subject.

We have also received accounts by a gentleman from Lawrenceburg that the disease is now present in the vicinity of that place. Our information states that it has assumed a serious type -- that 11 out of 18 cases had proved fatal. Death has generally ensued an attack in the brief space of a few hours.

We have not made this statement with a view to terrify our citizens -- nor do we consider it a just cause for alarm.

We would remark fear is said to be a great inciting cause of an attack, and we do not question the fact -- therefore, let those exposed to it watch the system, and at first symptom apply the antidote.

The patient should in such case immediately take from 20 to 25 grams of Calomel with 1 grain of opium and keep dry and warm during its operation, and no danger need be apprehended. Exposure to night air is pernicious. We would suggest to families the propriety of procuring for each member a dose of Calomel as above, lest an attack be made when medical aid cannot be procured in season.

An opinion has been prevalent that the disease was not contagious -- this is not the fact. We hesitate to say that it is contagious; thought this should not deter us from attending upon those who are its subjects.

1918 -- wartime news that wasn't about the war

Democrat, June 1918

Benefit Dance

The Improved Order of Red Men will give a dance at Fairfield Red Men's Hall, Saturday night, July 6. Proceeds will go to the Ambulance Fund. Special music from Connersville.

Everybody invited!

Sauerkraut Approved as Patriotic

On account of its supposedly German name, sauerkraut seems to be losing popularity as an American dish. It is said, however, to be of Dutch rather than of German origin.

But in any event, sauerkraut is a valuable food and adds to the variety of ways in which cabbage may be prepared.

Ach du Lieber!

Lutherans Discontinue Use of German Language

The St. Thomas Lutheran people (Brookville) voted Sunday on the further use of the German language in the hour of divine service, and it was decided by more than two-thirds majority to drop it.

Speak English!

Baptist church -- a grain bin in the '60s

Centennial Meeting

A centennial meeting will be held at the Baptist Church west of Fairfield next Sunday, June 30.

Elder R.W. Thompson of Greenfield, and Elder E. Harlan of Connersville will be in attendance.

You are invited to come and bring your dinner and spend the day in celebrating the centennial of this old historic church.

Hallelujah!

Glaring Headlights

The non-observance of the automobile headlight dimmer law, passed by the 1917 General Assembly, has caused the Hoosier State Automobile Association to get behind a statewide effort to enforce the law, for the safeguarding of the motorist and the public.

Many accidents have been caused by glaring headlights that might have been avoided had the dimmer law been observed. City, town and township officials have been instructed to be on the lookout for motorists who disregard the law.

Dimmit, dammit.

Alvie Kunkel -- my uncle

Newspaper pictures, around 1900

 The artist who was able to line-draw was most valuable in the days before newspapers and magazines had the tools to produce actual photo reproductions. These were wood cuts, quite intricate and reserved only for people who were important -- such as the woman who used liver oil to control her bodily fluids.

WWII propaganda ads -- and PSAs

 

SEVERAL blog items from 2015

Cop learned his lesson

Indianapolis Star, Aug. 12, 1913

A TOWN MARSHAL'S BLUNDER

Caspar Schuck, who was assistant town marshal of Brookville until a day or so ago, has lost his job because of his mistaken notion that it was a part of his official duty to enforce the law. He conceived this idea, presumably, from the fact that his oath of office enjoined the aforesaid task upon him.

In pursuance of his theory, at all events, he proceeded to arrest Mr. Frank Moniger on a charge of keeping his saloon open after 11 o'clock. Here is where the deputy marshal was in error.

Mr. Moniger did not deny that he kept open after legal hours; on the contrary, he admitted that he did keep open all night. But he was deeply injured and righteously indignant because he had been singled out as the object of official attention, when Deputy Marshal Schuck must have known, as all citizens of Brookville knew, that all the saloons of the town ran open night and day.

The attorneys for Moniger scorned Schuck bitterly for his discrimination, and the jury was so influenced by the legal eloquence that it failed to agree on facts which were not denied and was dismissed. 

But the matter did not end there. As the story goes, so impressed were Brookville's citizens by the outrage upon Moniger that a group of them made complaint to the Town Board and at their suggestion, the deputy marshal was dismissed from office.

Whether the guileless man had acted upon the theory that if he could get one lawbreaker punished, the moral effect on the others would be good, or whether me meant to arrest the others in their turn is not known, but whatever the case, he will not now have an opportunity to proceed further.

It would be interesting to know what would have happened had all the saloon keepers been arrested at one time.

Would the citizens have arisen en masse and driven the deputy marshal out of town?

And is it henceforth to be the rule in Brookville that when a thief or other lawbreaker is arrested in that town, all other thieves shall be arrested simultaneously, lest the feelings of one be hurt? If not, why not?

Note: Most likely Schuck was a bit of a jerk, but the Star didn't know that. His replacement Adam Peters said he'd make sure all the saloons followed the law. Schuck was given the half-month's salary due him.

Board adjourned.

Demon rum

Indiana American, Aug. 1854

SAD AND MOURNFUL PROCESSION

A short time since, a touching spectacle was seen in the streets of our neighboring city, Richmond. An orphan boy who had stemmed the world's destructive tide without the counsel of a father or the prayers of a mother, murdered by rum and rum seller was conveyed to his last and resting place, a drunkard's grave, attended by one solitary mourner, an orphan sister.

His last hours were spent in the ravings of a soul-killing delirium, which haunted his dying couch with all the unearthly phantoms and bloody demons which that loathsome disease brings up to torment men before their time.

-- Ladies' Temperance Wreath

ANOTHER VICTIM

We are fully aware that our liquor sellers, their attorneys, candidates and organ, do not thank us for parading before the public their victims, but in truth, we do not want their thanks.

If we can place before the citizens of Indiana, such facts as will show that the liquor traffic is a work of death, and the slain are in our midst, we expect they will act promptly to remove the destroyer. The rummies and their allies so believe, also and hence they rage.

Let them rage. They hay even charge us with cruelty in alluding to the dead but such a charge comes with a poor grace from men that will take the last dime from a poor drunkard, regardless of wife's sufferings or feelings, or will take a fee against a poor woman, who sues for damages.

Last week, a man living on Blue Creek, once an affable citizen, a kind husband and affectionate father  -- but the liquor made him a demon and his wife applied for a divorce. The man has died, and present desolation of his once happy family is clearly attributable to the liquor traffic.

ANOTHER -- Mr. Cuppy, who ahs been confined in our jail for many months, was sent this week to the penitentiary for two years, ostensibly for passing counterfeit money, but really on account of drinking whisky.

The county has been taxed heavily in his imprisonment trial, and now he goes to spent two years laboring in solitary confinement for the state that has licensed men to make him what he is.

And yet the Democratic party says it would be worse to search doggeries, for mean whisky, than to send men to the penitentiary for drinking it. 

Note: T.A. Goodwin, the paper's editor, was a Methodist minister and strong prohibitionist. He never let up and was ruthless in his editorial comments. "Doggery" was another word for saloon or ginmill. Goodwin was a Republican (or, Whig in those years.)