125 Years Ago: 1901
The south part of Nodaway County faced a severe electrical storm for two and a half hours this week, and considerable damage was done. Lightning struck a large barn and destroyed the building and contents. In Barnard a bolt struck a hardware store. The lightning tore a hole in the roof of the store and set fire to some mattresses, but was extinguished before any considerable damage was done. The electrical storm did not reach Maryville, although there was considerable thunder and lightning seen to the south for several hours.
Harry Wray of Maryville came back from a two-week trip to Oklahoma where he bought land near Hennessy. The place had a house, barn, stone cave, stone icehouse, and granary accommodations for wheat and oats. He paid $4,200 for it. Wray was one of the most successful farmers in Nodaway County and was said to be a man who had what might be termed a scientific knowledge of farming and stock raising.
Charles Anderson and his family recently moved to Maryville from Lenox, Iowa. He ran a new shoe business on South Main Street. His family lived in a tenement house on East Fourth Street while they were getting settled.
The jury in the Blackhurst-Williams will case returned a verdict this week. The case involved $80,000 ($2.5 million today!), and the jury upheld the will, saying that the bulk of this money would go to E.J. Williams of Maryville as executor for his son, Eddie Williams, who was still a minor.
75 Years Ago: 1951
Hildegarde Dreps won a contest to have her mystery story read over the radio on the program “Mystery File.” Another part of her prize was a three-year subscription to Omni book. Mrs. Dreps was an enthusiastic writer and previously had won two poetry cash prizes in national contests.
This week the Daily Forum newspaper featured the farm belonging to Dale Owens. He was the father of five children. They attend the country school of Unity and the high school in Hopkins. He first bought 160 acres three and half miles east of Hopkins in 1941 and later bought an adjoining 80 acres, making a total farm size of 240 acres. He had various livestock on his farm but focused on raising hogs.
The Northwest Missouri Dairy Association held a meeting that included two motion pictures, a report by Roy Bartles of the artificial insemination service, and a discussion on the Bangs disease situation and pending legislation.
Pickering was isolated by a storm this week. Residents had no communication systems with any towns outside their own except by long distance and telegraph. Many rural lines out of town were broken, and ice on them made repairs difficult. Some people even had to go to Maryville for food or go to neighbors for heat and meals if they had electric furnaces. Luckily, the schoolhouse was able to get electricity back quickly, so the school did not have to be closed.
50 Years Ago: 1976
The sale of Phares Oil Company to Consumers Oil of Maryville was announced by William Phares Jr., the owner of Phares Oil, and Jim Hayes, the general manager of Consumers Oil. Both Phares and Hayes said there would not be a change in the service, just a change in ownership. In fact, Phares was going to work for Consumers Oil and would provide the same service he did when he owned the place.
Six Northwest Missouri State University students who were enrolled in the nursing program began their seven-week experience in four locations across northwestern Missouri. An important part of the curriculum in the University’s new degree program in nursing was this Community Health Nursing segment of the training. The experience was offered to students during the second semester of their enrollment and followed a similar fall semester period spent in area hospitals under a course called Senior Nursing Leadership.
Local Nodaway Countian Gerald Henggeler was named a student representative of the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri in Columbia. The student representative program was formed in 1969 to help high school juniors and seniors in Missouri meet students from UMC’s College of Agriculture. In this position, Henggeler was available to meet with high school students in his hometown area to discuss agriculture courses, the two-year program, student activities on campus, and enrollment procedures.