In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
On September 27, 1889, General Bonham came to the Panola Academy to do his inspection of Clarendon's cavalry, consisting of the Hampton Light Dragoons commanded by Captain D.W. Brailsford and the Connor Mounted Rifles led by Captain A.L. Lesesne. By 11 o'clock in the morning, the decorated Panola Academy building was filled with lovely maidens and friends of the company who had come to watch...
Packing their bats, balls and bags, a group of courageous men set out upon a journey of unprecedented nature and purpose. The year was 1888, and Albert G. Spalding had organized a group of all-star baseball players for the purpose of taking the game of baseball on a tour around the world. A former baseball player himself, Spalding saw this tour as an opportunity to spread the national pastime over...
Harpers Weekly devoted a large part of its August 17, 1889 issue to the upcoming Detroit International Exposition Fair, which would open exactly one month later on September 17, 1889. Included in their spread was an engraving by Francis Schell and Thomas Hogan, bearing the caption, “General View of the Buildings and Grounds of the Detroit International Fair and Exposition.” ...
It was just another days' work for two employees of the Alabama Great Southern train company. On the evening of August 27, 1889, the trainmen pulled into the Birmingham station and prepared to disembark. Upon exiting the train, the workers spotted two black men swinging from trees in the near distance. According to sources at The Washington Post, the lynched men were the incendiary...
Despite President Charles E. Taylor's plea, the students of Wake Forest University would not silence their political opinions.On the night of October 26, 1889, a Republican stump-speaking, literally delivering a speech from atop a freshly cut tree stump, occurred half-a-mile from campus. Fifty of Taylor's students attended the stump-speaking, led by Wake County native John Nichols, who was...
In one fell swoop, Democrats in Southampton and Nansemond counties erased over 1,000 black names from the voter registration books, hoping to secure Democratic majorities in previously Republican dominated counties. Looking at Virginia's entire 2 district (heavily African American), which included these Tidewater counties, Democrats appeared to have netted about 4,000 votes, greatly slimming...
According to the Boston Daily Globe of August 18, 1889, "Too Good to Lose Are Boston's Surplus Women." This article pertains to a matter of utmost importance, the eligible bachelors of the Wild West heroically discovering a solution for the "marriageable femininity" and the "confoundly delicate matter" of the over 80,000 surplus of women in Massachusetts. Belle Eyre even reports that these men...
In January of 1876, Hester Tomlin was a troubled woman. Hester discovered that her husband, Harry Tomlin, Jr. had written a letter to Dr. Cary C. Cocke of Fluvanna County, Virginia in December of the previous year in which he asked to rent a tract of land on Cocke's plantation. Hester felt impelled to interfere. A month after Harry wrote the aforementioned letter, Hester wrote an additional...
There was little that stood out in the reporting of the October 1889 elections in the young town of Winter Park. Of the 103 registered voters, 85 casted votes with the almost unanimous re-election of the officials.[1] Upon further examination of later elections, a trend forms when it comes to voter turnout. In 1890, fifty-five people voted in the municipal elections, forty-three in 1891, and thirty-nine...