Happenings in the last few days of February …
1906 – While looking for junk on the late John Short place, near Butler, Walton C. and Edgar H. find an old tin can with $280 in gold coins in it.
1884 – The Rich Hill Post Office is broken into and safe is blown open. $800 missing.
1926 – Bates Co Sheriff Bert Bradley and deputies Oberweather & Crutsinger, accompanied by Butler ministers D. A. Dicke and T. C. Brammer, capture 5 bootleggers and large quantities of moonshine, near Rockville.
1946 – Jay Gordinier, a barber in the Southside Barber Shop beginning in 1882, dies.
1906 – Butler citizens are complaining the City owned light plant won’t turn on the lights until an hour after dark.
1916 – This issue of the Rich Hill Mining Review newspaper relates a story of a Negro ventriloquist who broke up a large Negro funeral, in a nearby town, by throwing his voice, and the pallbearers and mourners heard, “Let me down easy, boys!” He was arrested & fined $100.
1890 – Mr. Beck’s team of horses break loose and while racing on Maple St. snap off a telephone pole and a fire hydrant, as if they’re straw. Rich Hill.
1881 – Rich Hill becomes a city, Fourth Class, and T. L. Hewitt is elected Mayor, succeeding Dr. William H. Allen, who was appointed in 1880.
1914 – Many Bates Co roads are still impassable due to the blizzard which began 3 days ago.
1925 – Since last August, approximately twelve thousand tons of limestone have been crushed in Bates County, or shipped in, for use on sour land.
1881 – It is noted by Thomas Irish, publisher of the Rich Hill Mining Review newspaper that Bates County’s larger waterways are spanned by 8 iron bridges and 2 more are being erected.
1879 – Bob, the driver for the Appleton City Stagecoach line, makes the Appleton City to Butler run in 3 hours, a record time.
1881 – O. D. Austin, editor of the Bates Co. Record newspaper, leaves Butler to attend the inauguration of Garfield in Washington City.
1916 – Dale J., Bates Co.’s ‘automobile kleptomaniac’ is sentenced to 2 years in the Missouri State Pen.
1892 – The Bates Co National Bank is installing an impervious Burton-Harris Automatic Bolt safe to keep currency, silver, and gold safe. Butler.
Courtesy of Mid America Live
