Pickings from Pike’s Past: 150 YEARS AGO: PITTSFIELD SCHOOLS CLOSED DUE TO MEASLES
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150 Years Ago
April 15, 1875
The measles and diseases of a similar character are so prevalent that the Pittsfield school directors have ordered the school discontinued for the remainder of the term, being about four weeks. Out of 543 scholars enrolled only 170 were in attendance Monday.
The wheat is very badly hurt in Derry Township, especially on all northern slopes. We will plow up considerable of our wheat for other crops. Spring work moves slowly with our farmers; few have sown their oats yet.
125 Years Ago
April 18, 1900
Much rain since our last paper has revived the earth and dwellers thereon greatly. Easter services were duly observed in the various churches in much the usual form, but the attendance was curtailed by the disagreeable weather.
Pittsfield High School field day will be Friday. Admission 10 cents.
From the returns from Tuesday’s election in the various towns it would seem that for the next year the entire county will be dry.
We recommend that when the citizens of Time are house cleaning and cleaning your yards that you just pile up your old papers and burn them instead of throwing them out into the streets. It will add to the appearance of the town, as well as to the safety of the people who drive teams that are easily frightened.
100 Years Ago
April 15, 1925
The $33,000 bond issue to finance a new school building at Barry was approved 503-155.
Twenty-five students from the Western Illinois area who are attending the University of Illinois, had a trip home for Easter vacation in a palatial motor bus. In the Pittsfield group were Mary Margaret McGuire and Virg Binns, and from Griggsville, Benjamin Carey, Jr. and Dudley Butterfield.
Mrs. Sarah E. Howland, who was the first white child born in Pittsfield, was 90 years old April 21, 1835. She was born in a log cabin when Pittsfield was less than two years from the raw prairie. She remembers playing hide and seek with other children in the thickets along East Washington Street, and could also remember the old printing house on the east side of the square where John G. Nicolay edited and published the Whig Free Press. Mrs. Howland lives with her daughter in Pittsfield and enjoys listening to music, lectures and sermons on the radio, which she thinks is the most wonderful invention in her time.
Frank E. Penstone expert orchard man who lives in the Pleasant Grove vicinity, has finished setting out 20 acres of young trees, most of which are apples, making more than 100 acres of orchard for him.
After Tuesday’s election, the new County Board will seat 17 Democrats and 7 Republicans.
75 Years Ago
April 11, 1950
The A & P Store in Pittsfield closed April 7. Mr. and Mrs. Frank X. Ducey had worked for 24 years in the store on the northwest corner of the square. The store was closed in line with a nation-wide policy forced by the government anti-trust suit against A & P.
Griggsville basketball coach Eddie Willard was awarded the trophy presented by the Pike County Republican to Griggsville High School who won the Pike County Conference this year. Willard thinks it is the first time Griggsville has won the conference since 1928. He is pictured with the “most valuable players” Carl Bartlett and Virgil Goewey.
Harry Foote, Nebo restaurant man and Pittsfield real estate man, plans five more houses on the west side of North Dutton Street. He already has a block of five buildings on West Fayette Street.
April 12, 1950
It is a well-known fact that since 1932 the majority of the daily newspapers have been against the Democratic President. Newspapers have shifted to the right since the days of Warren Harding.
April 13, 1950
At yesterday’s organizational meeting of the Pike County Board Democrat Don Irving was elected chairman for the 12th time, 10th time consecutively. This breaks all records in the board’s century-old history. Republican supervisor Fred Kiser nominated Irving as he spoke his valedictory, indicating he will not be running for supervisor again. He was on the board when Irving was first elected to it.
Lottie Holman O’Neill, of Downers Grove, a Barry native, and veteran Illinois State Representative, easily won the Republican nomination for state senate in her district. [Her statue is now in the rotunda of the Illinois state capitol.]
Ray Lyman led the vote for sheriff in the Republican primary by 317 votes.
50 Years Ago
April 16, 1975
The winners in the Pittsfield city elections were J. N. Bonnett, Don Foreman, Harold Scott and George McGann. Griggsville winners were Harry Clough, George Vinyard and Wendell Eveland. Elected in Barry were Kenneth A. Kendall, John Shover and Ronald K. Oitker.
In Perry’s village election, Mayor Clifford Bergman was re-elected to his sixth term, keeping pace with Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley. Bergman received 165 votes to 70 for his opponent, Richard Thiele. Trustees elected were Billy Thiele, H. B. Whittaker, Fred Witham and Roy Olson.
Dog Warden Gene Crowder has corralled 277 stray dogs since he assumed office March 10 and has disposed of 173 of them. Another 48 have been reclaimed by their owners and 12 have been placed in homes. A total of 33 are confined now in the new dog pound, and 11 inmates escaped and are at large after somebody cut through the two thicknesses of fence at the dog pound. Mayor Dudley Williams said he has received numerous compliments from other mayors of the county on Crowder’s work and not a single complaint.
The Nebo Baptist Church was the setting for the March 28 wedding of Miss Rhonda Kay Elledge and Richard Lee Houchins, both of Pittsfield. Brother Gale Spillman officiated at the double-ring ceremony. Mrs. Joan Smith, pianist, accompanied the vocalists, Mrs. Mary Kattelman and Scott Smith. The couple’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Garold Elledge of Nebo and Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Houchins of Pittsfield.
25 Years Ago
April 12, 2000
Callendar Construction workers began this week preparing the ground for the new Skinner-Airsman-Hires Funeral Home in Griggsville. The state-of-the-art facility will be built facing Highway 107 on the north edge of Griggsville. Hires hopes to have the building completed by the end of July.
Effective July 1, the Pikeland Unit 10 school district will assume control of the pre-kindergarten program previously administered by the federal agency PACT.
At the annual Pike Press All-County Scholars banquet West Pike teacher and coach Larry Mosley was named the 2000 Pike Press Teacher of the Year and Cole Bradburn of Pittsfield won the draw for the $500 scholarship to help fund his education at the University of Missouri, where he intends to study pre-medicine.
10 Years Ago
April 15, 2015
Western Illinois Enterprise Zone will have a public hearing regarding the possibility of expanding to include the medicinal marijuana facility currently under construction in Barry, according to Barry Mayor Shawn Rennecker.
There were two ties after last week’s local elections. In El Dara, Rebecca Master and Wayne Channell both received 13 votes and tied for the third position on the village board. In Nebo, Sheldon Howland and Kenny Hubbard both received 28 votes and tied for the third position on the village board.
County Clerk Donnie Apps says, “I will ask them if they want to flip a coin or draw straws.”
Compiled by Michael Boren
