Thursday, March 7, 1918
The law firm of Price & McNeel has been dissolved. Andrew Price will continue the business, and T. S. McNeel will move to the Levels, to the home of his uncle, M. J. McNeel, where he will look after his extensive farming interests
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The engineer had been good and drunk, conferring with Old Man Grog;
When he took out his train, he was felling punk,
and he reached for the hair of the dog;
Then he tried a curve with an open throttle,
and the dead strewed the right of way,
and the suits that sprang from a whiskey bottle,
Pended for many a day.
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We have tried to get word to lawyers who live in wet states as to the effect that Prohibition will have upon their occupation if it prevails with them. When West Virginia went dry it was not even hinted that a very respectable profession would be greatly injured. But during the years that beastly stuff has been stamped out in West Virginia, the consciousness has gradually come that it only takes about half as many lawyers in a dry state as it does in a wet country…
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The proceeding to incorporate the town was forced upon the people and once started it was unanimously approved. We remember something about handling the drunks on the first day that the town government began to function. The writer had been elected mayor. We got an able sergeant and some policemen, and one Monday we were ready for business. Nobody will ever know with what dread we all undertook to discipline the disorderly element.
We all held a little caucus at the courthouse and decided on a plan. As we walked down the street we saw a bunch of tramp-like men, perhaps a dozen, passing a bottle under an apple tree that stood where the First National Bank building now stands. It was a nice summer day. It was decided that a policeman would go to that band and pick out one of the most harmless looking wrecks and bring him up and go back for the others. This was done, and when he went back for another captive, they were all gone and they have never been back.
We had never tried a man, but we tackled the job and there was no defense. The finding of the court was that he pay a five dollar fine. He said that he did not have a cent, and he looked the part. The court further decided that he would have to work out the fine on the streets, and he agreed to be introduced to work, evidently a stranger to him.
So the court and the police took him across the river to the extreme end of the corporate limits, and found him a pick and a shovel and set him to work in the side ditch. We gave him strict instructions to work until dinner time, at which time he was to come to the jail for his dinner, rest an hour, and then resume work until six o’clock, and then come to the jail for the night…
We left him digging in the ditch, and that is the last time any of us have seen that man…
WEATHER
Local Observer S. L. Brown makes the following weather report for the month of February: Warmest, 68 degrees on the 28th; coldest 10 below on the 5th; average for the month, 29. Rainfall, 2.98 inches; snow, 5 inches; rain on 12 days; thunderstorm on the 26th . Fog, 3 days; clear days, 5; 12 partly cloudy, 11 cloudy.
DURBIN
Sugar making is in full blast and pots of maple syrup is on the market.
J. B. Nottingham was in town on business Saturday.
One man has already started to plow. We look for lots of farming this year.
Hay is on a premium now if any one has any to sell.
Some war flour is appearing. We can gladly eat the bread – win the war is next.
The Western Maryland mail train arrived here at 9:30 o’clock as there was mud and rock on the track near Bemis. Mr. McAdoo had the mud taken off the track and we have all going o.k. again.
DUNMORE
We notice that some of the farmers have begun their spring plowing.
Mrs. Elva Wilson of Doe Hill, Va., who has been visiting her sisters, Mrs. H. M. Moore here and Mrs. Elmer Moore of Minnehaha, was called home by sickness in her home.
Miss Margaret Pritchard, a student of the Hillsboro High, is spending the week with relatives.
Misses Merle and Helen Moore, Winfred McElwee and Ernest Campbell attended the play at Greenbank Saturday evening.
Several sugar camps have been opened in this section. Several gallons of molasses and sugar have been made.
J. Woods Price
Lieut. Josiah Woods Price, one of the oldest citizens of this county, died suddenly at his home in Marlinton, March 5, 1918, aged 82 years.
He was a son of the late James A. Price ad Margaret Price, and was born at the place at which he died. At the breaking out of the war, he was a student at Washington College, now Washington & Lee, a member of the graduating class, and winner of the Robinson medal. The commencement exercises were broken up by the war and, fifty years after, by the action of the board of visitors, he was awarded his degree and the medal that he had won.
He served all through the Civil War and was a commissioned officer in the service of the Confederacy. After the war he settled in Randolph county, where he married Miss Emma Crawford, of Beverly, who lived about one year after marriage.
He leaves surviving him, his nearest kin, Rev. Wm. T. Price, D. D., his brother, and Mrs. Mary McLaughlin, of Maxwelton, a sister.
He had been in failing health for some time, but seemed about as usual Tuesday morning. When two little grand-nieces took his dinner to him about the middle of the day, they found him lying across the bed, dead. The doctors diagnosed it as apoplexy.
He was buried beside his wife in the Price burying ground on Wednesday, dressed in his old Confederate uniform.