1946 County Town Basketball League

The county American Legion Posts organized an eight-team town basketball league in November 1946. This article appeared in The Clay County Sun (Clay Center) on November 7, 1946.

 

Sutton Entertainment 1921 at the Opera House

What passed for entertainment in Sutton 100 years ago?

The Sutton Opera House offered this play, vaudeville acts, an orchestra, a dance, on a Tuesday, for 55 cents. 

What was going on in town last Tuesday? 

Maybe they were the Good Old Days.

Just sayin'. 

New Sutton Hotel - 1907

This announcement in The Sutton News on April 12, 1907 told of the pending construction of a new hotel in Sutton. This would become the Carson Hotel located on the site of today's CPI store.

 

The Sutton News 1903-1936 is now on newspapers.com

The website newspapers.com recently added images of all pages of the Sutton newspaper "The Sutton News" to their inventory covering the lifespan of that paper from 1903 through 1936.

newspapers.com is a subscription based repository for more than 600 million pages from almost 22,000 newspapers dating from the 1700's. The site has had several papers from Clay Center, Edgar, and Fairfield for a few years. The Harvard Courier was added several months ago and The Sutton News appeared very recently. There are several issues of smaller local newspapers including from Ong, Deweese, Glenvil, and Grafton.

These two announcements announced the new, renamed paper in the March 13, 1903 issue and the sale of The Sutton News to The Sutton Register newspaper on February 28, 1936.

And on February 28, 1936

A subscription to newspapers .com will enable a DIY History experience for the story of Clay County as well as well beyond the county lines - how about Philadelphia newspapers from 1789 or daily accounts from the Civil War in The New York Times? There are lots of possibilities with 21,700 papers represented.

A subscription is a bit more than $100/yr. It is invaluable for my weekly newspaper column about Clay County's past. The downside? It is addictive. 

Did Sutton Have a Radio Station?

 WHAT IS THIS?

This image appeared at the top of a page in issues of The Sutton News during 1927; this image was on Page 8 of the News on Friday, May 27, 1927. 

This image appears to be an ad for a local radio station claiming coverage in the local four-county area. The accompanying cartoons certainly imply a radio station is the topic. Calling this "Carney's Broadcasting" is clearly talking about that radio station. "Carney" definitely refers to Sam Carney.

Samuel Carney, Sr. (1850-1920) was an early Sutton merchant with a hardware store. He was gone by '27. Samuel Gray Carney II (1883-1851) who took over his dad's Store and seems to have operated this radio station. (The Gray middle name comes from Col. Hosea Wilson Gray, his maternal grandfather and a Sutton pioneer.) At some point, Sam Carney II hired a young fellow named Les Bauer to work in the store. He stuck around a while. 

The radio station call sign warrants discussion and explanation. Commercial radio broadcast began in late 1920 with station "KDKA" in Pittsburgh. Amateur radio and commercial radio expanded during the 1920's. 

National and international efforts to standardize radio call signs began as early as 1921. The U.S. was assigned the letters "K" "W" and "N" in international agreements. Most of "C" including "CH" went to Canada (others to Chile). U.S. call signs were separated at the Mississippi River, "K" west of the river and "W" to the east. ("N" was only used in amateur call signs.) Early Call signs were "grandfathered" such that KDKA was preserved in the east while "WOW" and "WIBW" still exist in Omaha and Topeka. There were a few others. 

Carney's Broadcasting's use of the call sign "CHYF" in 1927 seems late for a licensed radio station in the U.S. There was an element of chaos in regulating radio in the early days, or maybe Sutton's early radio station was an early case of a "pirate" station, an unlicensed station.

Just wondering, and looking, and soliciting any additional information about this apparent early Sutton radio station.

1921 - One-Time Fairfield Man at Center of Sordid Affair.

We included a summary of this story in the newspaper column and promised to post the full article here. Sort it out if you can.

 

1946 Edgar Girls Softball Team Roster

Our weekly newspaper column covers the county. We recently found the roster of the Edgar girls' softball team in 1946. Enjoy.

This item appeared in  The Edgar Sun newspaper on October 10, 1946, page 2.