125 Years Ago: 1901
The citizens of Maryville called a meeting in the courthouse to try to relocate railroad factories to Maryville. Mayor J. C. Donnell was elected chairman and headed to Kansas City with a committee of people to convince the general manager of the railroad company to move his factories and railroads to the town. Maryville needed to spend sixty thousand dollars to have this industry moved. The captain of the project, Paul Sisson, was paid $250 for his work.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of Missouri held its 83rd meeting in Maryville and released some statistics about the recent Missouri conference. The conference had a total of 25,320 members, which was a drop of 400 members from the last annual meeting, and the church’s self-evaluation put them at a value of $643,411.02.
Missouri was known for having a large population of livestock, and some of the recent numbers included: 522,000 horses, 219,000 mules, 2,180,000 cows, 567,000 sheep, 2,413,000 pigs. These animals were estimated to be worth about $10,440,000 for the horses, $4,600,000 for the mules, $23,892,000 for the cows, $6,237,000 for the sheep and $26,543,000 for the pigs.
Recently in Hopkins, a local branch of the Western Christian Women’s Temperance Union held a meeting, They made arrangements to donate books to the Hopkins school library. It was also announced that several boys had joined the organization, despite jeers from some of their schoolmates The youth, boys and girls, would continue to meet for the next month to prepare for their public presentation, “The Trial of Prince Nicotine.”
Maryville L.P. Gas Company provided hundreds of Hawaiian double orchid corsages, flown directly to Maryville from Hawaii, to celebrate the introduction of the 1951 Servel Motorless Refrigerators. The first 250 housewives that registered at the company would receive one of these corsages free.
75 Years Ago: 1951
The Maryville Power and Light Company built new power plants to keep up with the increasing demand for power from farmers around the area.
New laws in Missouri increased the standards of education for schools in Missouri. The laws required schools to teach a larger number of classes and to have more access to higher level classes for students who were interested in them. The changes were hotly contested by smaller schools in the Nodaway County area as it required them to hire more teachers and for these teachers to have much better qualifications to teach higher level classes. The impact of the laws was already seen in the community as a newspaper ad this week promoted the importance of becoming a teacher. The ad pointed out the increasing need for teachers and that becoming a teacher was better than a regular job, which would often have irregular employment.
Nodaway County called an initiative to the county court after an influx of complaints. It was primarily a rural county, and many of the roads were not paved or consisted of just dirt. Because of this, the truly rural areas of the county became stranded whenever it snowed. The court was going to vote on a new law that would add a 35-cent yearly tax to residents of the county. The money would be used to pave the roads, which would allow easier access across the county when it snowed.
Students in the industrial arts program built motors in their physics class at Northwest Missouri State University. The motors ranged in size all the way up to a 20-pound motor. The motors would be kept by the university and used in future experiments.
50 Years Ago: 1976
Northwest Missouri State University prepared to offer its first pass-fail classes in the next semester. The faculty senate and the registrar, Martha Cooper, chose to adopt the new system despite many people feeling that it was wrong to reward students who got an A and those who got a D with the same grade.
Also at the university, there was some concern about grade inflation because the average GPA increased but the students performed worse on standardized tests. Many ideas were discussed about how to stop this, and one suggestion was to grade students based on their natural ability and not on the quality of their work.
The university also discussed its budget for the upcoming school year. The Missouri Senate recommended an expenditure of $7,195,000 while the Missouri House recommended only $6.9 million. Governor Christopher Bond recommended the smallest budget of only $6.8 million.
In other school news, West Nodaway closed the Quitman elementary school building due to declining rates of enrollment. This action was taken by the school board that argued that it would save the small community $50,000 by consolidating the teachers and students into one building. The elementary students would all attend in Clearmont. Still, many residents were upset by the decision.
The communities of Elmo and Graham both attempted to put in sewer systems with different levels of success. Mayor Paul Wyman of Graham spent four years and made many trips to Kansas City to try to secure federal and state funding for the project. In Elmo, Mayor M.L. Ford was having a bit more trouble. He also traveled to Kansas City but had been rejected for federal funding, which left him with no current plan on how to fund the sewer systems for his town.