A Glance Back in Time

By Eve­lyn Long, from the pages of the Mor­row County Independent..

100 years ago, Jan­u­ary 30, 1913:

“Miss Josephine Brundige last week found a stone along the creek bank in the rear of her build­ing which gives every appear­ance of being a pet­ri­fied mit­ten of fancy design.”

“The Cardington-Quakerdom pike has been ordered closed by the com­mis­sion­ers but Con­trac­tor Stone informs the Inde­pen­dent that he will leave it open to travel so long as the road is not abused and used for heavy haul­ing. When­ever heavy loads are used on it he will close the road accord­ing to orders.”

The life­less body of Leslie Prim­mer was found along the road­side near G. C. Willits woods two miles west of Card­ing­ton about 8 o’clock Mon­day morn­ing. Mr and Mrs Prim­mer and two daugh­ters, Mary Louise and Thelma, aged eight and two years, respec­tively, had come from their home just north of West­field and spent Sun­day with their for­mer neigh­bors, Mr. And Mrs. Frank Fursten­berger, a mile west of Card­ing­ton. They left the Fursten­berger home about 5 o’clock, Mrs. Prim­mer and two chil­dren going in the buggy and Mr. Prim­mer leav­ing shortly after on foot on account of heavy con­di­tions of the roads.

On leav­ing home, Mr. Prim­mer had locked the door and was sup­pose to have the key in his pocket so that when he did not arrive home in the course of a cou­ple of hours, Mrs. Prim­mer, who had waited for him in the buggy, drove to the home of a neigh­bor where she remained all night. In the morn­ing, she again went home and found the door locked with the key in it, but cor­rectly sur­mised that Mr. Prim­mer had for­got­ten to take the key along and was still not home. Mr. Fursten­berger was called and imme­di­ately started on a search, find­ing Mr. Primmer’s body just a mile west of the Fursten­berger home. There were no evi­dences of any strug­gle and death is sup­posed to have been sud­den. He was 31 years old.”

“If you failed to pay your taxes you can now pay the penalty.”

“Sta­tis­tics in Ohio show that one per­son out of every seven who died dur­ing 1912 was a vic­tim of tuberculosis.”

“H. S. Singer is bet­ter off than other ice men over the coun­try and dur­ing one of the short cold spells got up about 10,000 cakes, enough to half fill his icy house.”

90 years ago, Jan­u­ary 25, 1923:

“H. E. Grif­fith, edi­tor of the Sen­tinel at Mt Gilead, is to give a paper at the com­ing ses­sion of the Buck­eye Press Asso­ci­a­tion at Colum­bus on adver­tis­ing con­tracts with local merchants.”

A dou­ble header bas­ket­ball game was played at Shaw’s Mis­sion last Fri­day night, the boys’ and girls’ bas­ket­ball teams of the local high school com­pet­ing with those of Mt Gilead.

There was a ban­ner crowd present. In fact, quite a few were turned away from the lack of room. As it was, the place was crowded as badly that the audi­ence in some places, inter­fered with the play­ers. The boys’ game was won by Card­ing­ton 16–11.

“It is whis­pered there is to be shortly started an old woman’s home in Mt Gilead. Why not?”

“Wednes­day morn­ing Lester Robin­son wait­ing with oth­ers for the train No 44 which car­ries peo­ple north and east, enter­tained with his harp the assem­bled com­pany. This musi­cal instru­ment seems a whole orches­tra in itself. The agent and oth­ers joined in the cho­rus. It was a fine impromptu entertainment.”

“Mt Gilead came to Card­ing­ton Fri­day night and dis­ported with beauty and chivalry and is one of the ways we mean Mt Gilead young ladies and gen­tle­men met Cardington’s young ladies and gen­tle­men. It was not an Olympian game, it was basketball.

Card­ing­ton brawn pre­vailed in the gentlemen’s con­test and was it Mt Gilead’s ladies wit or strength that pre­vailed over Cardington’s mod­est exemplification?”

The annual meet­ing of the Library Asso­ci­a­tion was held and the fol­low­ing offi­cers elected: Mrs. Fred Chase, pres­i­dent; Mrs. W. W. Vaughan, vice pres­i­dent; Mrs. Elmer Conaway, sec­re­tary; Gertrude Mack, trea­surer; Mrs. George Snider, librar­ian; Miss Frances Smith, assistant.

60 years ago, Jan­u­ary 29, 1953:

“Vic­tory at Sea,” a reg­u­lar Sun­day fea­ture over TV Sta­tion WLW-C, with pic­tures just released by the U S Navy, showed pho­tos and car­ried a descrip­tion of the sea bat­tle in which Lacey Head­ing­ton, for­mer Card­ing­ton baker, is pre­sumed to have lost his life on July 6, 1942. Pic­tures and nar­ra­tive accom­pa­ny­ing the TV pro­gram were pro­vided his daugh­ter, Mrs. Lloyd Williams of Card­ing­ton, con­sid­er­able infor­ma­tion which she had pre­vi­ously been unable to learn regard­ing the bat­tle in which her father met his death.

Mr. Head­ing­ton was a stew­ard on one of the 42 ships in the con­voy, 40 of which were sunk by Ger­man air­planes, bat­tle­ships and sub­marines. The con­voy was enroute from Ire­land to Mur­manek, Rus­sia. Mr. Head­ing­ton was a mem­ber of the Mer­chant Marine and had been with the Pan-Atlantic line for six years prior to his death hav­ing shipped from Mobile, Ala.

David Burggraf, Card­ing­ton High School junior, won the FFA dis­trict extem­po­ra­ne­ous speak­ing con­test held at Cale­do­nia High School.

Phillip Conaway, 13, son of Mr. And Mrs. Ward Conaway, wrote an eye wit­ness account of his atten­dance at the 1953 inau­gu­ra­tion of Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­hower. “It was a warm, spring­like day Jan­u­ary 20, 1953. There were many things that made this day dif­fer­ent from all oth­ers. It was the day the 34th pres­i­dent of the U. S. was inau­gu­rated and the first time peo­ple every­where could watch it on TV. But why this day was dif­fer­ent from any other day to me was that I WAS THERE.”

Phil explained that he and Bob Akron had arrived at the Union Sta­tion in Wash­ing­ton, DC early in the morn­ing and were met by a friend of Bob’s, F. W. Radue, who took them on a whirl­wind tour of Washington.

“It was a thrill to be there and hear the voices of Chief Jus­tice Vin­cent and of ‘Ike,” the man whom I and sev­eral oth­ers have called

‘The Man of the Hour.’ His voice was very solemn and seri­ous. The peo­ple there gave him a big ova­tion. I guess oth­ers like us were glad the Repub­li­cans were in power again after 20 long years.”

He then listed some of the things that he remem­bered best from his reserved seat in the stands on Con­sti­tu­tion Avenue: “Major Mur­ray, the chief of police and the police V motor­cade for­ma­tion, the Honor Color Guard, our new pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­hower and his Mamie in a beau­ti­ful white car sur­rounded by giant secret ser­vice men– and they were big!

Our new vice pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, mem­bers of the cab­i­net, Humphrey, Dulles, Durkin, Wil­son, Ben­son, Weeks, Brown– ell, Sum­mer­field and the one lady of the cab­i­net, Oveta Culp Hobby; Henry Cabot lodge, Jr., for­mer pres­i­dent Her­bert Hoover, all cadets from West Point, the midship-men from Annapo­lis, Kent Curl (from Card­ing­ton) at the head of his bat­tal­ion, the Marines, the vet­er­ans from Korea and the 62 bands.”

30 years ago, Jan­u­ary 27, 1983:

A new group of pub­lic offi­cials was orga­nized to oppose con­struc­tion of a haz­ardous waste land­fill in Mor­row County. The char­ter mem­bers are the vil­lages of Lex­ing­ton and Bel­lville and pos­si­bly the Mor­row County Commissioners.

Mr. And Mrs. Randy Kem­mer of Fred­er­ick­town were par­ents of a son, the first baby born in Mor­row County Hos­pi­tal in 1983. Mr. And Mrs. Dou­glas Sipe of Mount Gilead were par­ents of the sec­ond baby born in MCH in 1983, a daughter.

Mrs. Hazel Miller, fourth grade teacher, was Cardington-LIncoln teacher of the week.

Three Mor­row County youths com­pleted train­ing at U S Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Par­ris Island, S. C. They were Marine PFC Myron Hart­man and Pri­vate Randy Cole, Edi­son and Pri­vate Brian Yake, Cardington.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.