1910 Manure Spreader Ad

A valuable farm implement, this. It was refreshing to get out in the field, going upwind after being cooped up in the barn throwing product out the door into the machine.

Or did you have the misfortune of missing this experience.

Or, as my Pappy used to say, "This is the one product that neither the manufacturer nor the distributor will stand behind."

1973 Sutton North Side Entertainment

These ads catch the North Side entertainment scene in Sutton in early 1973.

The Internet Comes to Sutton Schools

In September 1995 Sutton Schools told the patrons of the school that the internet was on the way. 

1895 Household Hints from The Harvard Courier newspaper

Early newspapers borrowed liberally from other papers and from subscription news services. They may not have  been overly discriminatory about what they used to fill space in their own weeklies. 

These household hints made it into The Harvard Courier one week in 1895.

 

Threat of Tuberculosis in Nebraska in 1970

This item from The Clay County News in December 1970 reminded folks that there still was a threat from TB. 

Roy King's 1970 Arkansawyer story & Brown's new sink

 Roy King, and to a greater extent, his father H. C. (Howard) King sometimes lightened up the news for their readers. This item comes from the December 3, 1970 issue of The Clay County News.

The 7 Railroads of Clay County in 1895

This story of the tax receipts from seven railroads in 1895 gives us a picture of the railroad scene in the county.

The B & M was the Burlington and Missouri Rail Road

The K. C. & O. R. R may have been a typo or some variation of the early predecessor/branch of the Kansas City Southern Railroad (research continues.)

The S. J. & G. I. R. R. was the St. Joe & Grand Island Rail Road

The Neb. & Colo. R. R. was, I guess, The Nebraska & Colorado Railroad though I haven't found its story (research continues). There is a current company called the Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado Railroad with 509 miles of track and headquartered in Grant, Nebraska.

The F. E. & M. V. R. R. was the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Rail Road.

The Republican Valley Rail Road was also called the Omaha and Republican Valley Railroad and was a branch of the Union Pacific.

The Pacific Railroad was a predecessor of the Missouri Pacific and of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway.

Railroads were the go-go business prospects of the nineteenth century - kind of the dot com of that era, or perhaps more accurately, the dot com era was a copycat of the early American Railroad industry. Massive fortunes were made and lost in near equal numbers during the frenzy. 

And it is really not over. This contemporary story traces recent history of OmniTRAX - the current owner/operator of Nebraska, Kansas & Colorado Railroad - likely completely unrelated to the rail listed in the 1895 clipping. Research continues. 

The clipping is found at https://omnitrax.com/our-company/history/ :

• 

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF EVENTS THAT HAVE SHAPED OMNITRAX

• 1986 – Three investors collaborated on a real estate opportunity that lead to the purchase of the Great Western Railway from Great Western Sugar
• 1991 – Six short line railroads purchased – CWPS, MJ, NSR, CRL, KSW, WICT, and GWRC
• 1991 – WICT sold
• 1991 – CWP&S and CRL merged into one railroad, CRL
• 1993 – PNR purchased from BNSF
• 1994 – Fort Collins line added to the Great Western Railway
• 1994 – Quality Terminal Services enters into switching service with operations in California and Texas
• 1995 – NOW leased from CSXT
• 1996 – Greeley, Colorado added to the GWR
• 1997 – HBRY, CTRW, the Port of Churchill and Churchill Marine Tank Farm purchased
• 2004 – KFR purchased
• 2004 – ATN and FCR leased from CSXT
• 2005 – GFRR, IR and NKCR acquired North American RailNet
• 2011 –  Stockton Terminal & Eastern Railroad (STE) acquired
• 2014 – Sand Springs Railway Company (SS) in Tulsa, OK purchased
• 2014 – OmniTRAX enters into agreement to operate Brownsville & Rio Grande International Railway (BRG)
• 2016 – Heart of Texas Railroad purchased and renamed Central Texas & Colorado River Railway (CTXR)
• 2016 – Partnership with Topflight Grain to operate railroad under the new name of Decatur Central Railroad
• 2016 – OmniTRAX affiliate acquired Terracor Group assets that included sand terminals in Montana and Texas, OmniTRAX Energy Solutions is formed.
• 2019 – Entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cleveland Commercial Railroad (CCRL) and its wholly owned subsidiary, Cleveland Harbor Belt Railroad (CHB).  CCRL will is renamed Cleveland & Cuyahoga Railway, LLC and the CHB is renamed Cleveland Port Railway, LLC.
• 2019 – OmniTRAX completes the acquisition of the 101 year-old Winchester & Western Railroad (WW) from Covia Holdings.

 

1995 All-Conference Athletes

 

The Clay County News issue of November 23, 1995 listed these All-Conference athletes from the county.

1995 All-County Athletes

 

The 30 November 1995 issue of the Clay County News listed these All-County athletes.

Township Officers - 1895

Townships once had formal and robust political leadership. This is the list of Clay County township political officers from the 1895 elections.

The excerpt is from The Clay County Patriot newspaper from 22 Nov 1895 (erroneously catalogued under "The Clay County Republican" at newspapers.com

In days of yore, the township was a real thing a formal administrative and functioning staff elected on the ballots for school, city, county, state, and federal positions.

This roster of Clay County township officers appeared in The Clay County Patriot newspaper in November 1895. Do you find your great, grandfather here?

Note that the dominate political parties at the time were the Populists and Republicans. Democrats had not yet recovered and rebooted from the days of the Confederacy. Also note that townships tended to be dominated by one or the other of those "p" and "r" labels.

1970 Draft Procedures

This November 1970 article describes recent changes in Selective Service procedures to determine the priority of draft-eligible young men.

The lottery system began in 1970. Prior to that, we were all No. 1 unless we could find a deferment to hide behind. 

Personally, I nursed my 2-S student deferment through a five-year college career until I screwed up and graduated in 1966. I was promised my draft notice would arrive one month and one day after graduation. I was in Air Force basic training 24 days after graduation.  

Terms of enlistment varied. Enlistment in the Air Force or Navy incurred a four-year active duty commitment. Enlisting the Army carried a three-year commitment. Draftees faced two years of compulsory service. 

The differences recognized that Army and Marines were likely to serve in the infantry or artillery or other combat positions. Air Force and Navy inductees were more likely headed for technical fields in support organizations. 

At the Omaha induction center I learned how Marines were selected. Men for all services went through the day of processing together. Late in the afternoon, the nine of us heading to San Antonio and the Air Force were sent to one side of the room. A larger contingent of Navy-bound men were in another cluster. Army and Marine enlistees were large groups also segregated. 

The men who had been drafted stood in lines in the middle of the room. They were directed to count off by fours. That is, in sequence they said, "1" "2" "3" "4" "1" "2" etc. When the last man had said a number, those who had said the number 1 were ordered to the front and were congratulated for being Marines. 

Each individual was given a packet containing their induction information and each group dispersed to transportation to their training facilities.

As the oldest of our group of nine, I was given custody of all of our packets, we went outside to a bus to Eppley and to a flight to the San Antonio airport where we met a bus about midnight for the ride to Lackland Air Force Base. Our Training Instrutors (TI) welcomed us, confiscated our Draft Cards if we still had them, assigned our bunks and allowed us one last sleep-in until 8:00 am when we were introduced to the chow hall - Day One of my 21-year Air Force career.