Thursday, December 23, 1921
On Saturday night a hard rain and a high wind to melt the snow caused high water in all the streams on Sunday. There was about twenty inches of snow in the mountains.
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To all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. To those in authority over us. To all of our friends and neighbors. To the stranger that is within out gates. To all the prisoners in our jails and penitentiaries. To the sick, the halt, the lame and the blind. For while there is life there is hope, and while there is hope there are gleams of happiness in life.
It has come to us after many years of tribulation that happiness is a state of mind capable of being super induced in another by a casual word or a pleasant look. And that sorrow can be promulgated by a grouch.
A school of philosophers has arisen the last few months who reason that before language was invented that man was comparatively happy, and that bad news did not travel. That it was impossible to worry over what the world thought of you for there were no tale bearers. Dreadful things might happen but when they were over that was the last of the damage that was done, and the mind of man was not harrowed by the details for they could not be communicated. Disasters did not disturb society in epidemic form.
And so by evil stages, language was introduced in the world and unhappiness could be communicated…
But here is one gracious and hallowed season of the year when grouching is not permitted and that is the Christmas season, and no matter how bad a person feels, he must keep his troubles to himself…
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“Let’s go a visiting back to Griggsby’s Station –
Back where the latch string hangs outside the door,
And every neighbor round the place
Is dear as a relation – back where we used to be so happy and so pore.”
– James Whitcomb Riley
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O little town of Bethlehem!
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.
Yet, in the dark street shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years,
Are met in thee tonight. – Phillips Brooks
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At Christmas-tide, the open hand
Scatters its bounty o’er sea and land,
And none are left to grieve alone,
For Love is heaven and claims its own. – Margaret E. Sangster
BIG FIRE AT HUNTERSVILLE
On Monday, the store of W. J. Barlow, at Huntersville, was destroyed by fire. The fire was discovered about one o’clock in the day by smoke pouring from the attic. There was no water under pressure by which the fire could be fought and it was soon seen that the building would be a total loss, and the neighbors present engaged in salvaging the goods and contents. It was so well managed that a greater part of the goods was saved.
From this store building, the fire spread to the post office which was in the rear of the burning store and which was kept in the building occupied by L. M. McClintic in the days when the courthouse was at Huntersville. This building was also burned but all the contents saved.
The Barlow store was one of the best known stands in the county. It was located at the forks of the road and it is the building in which Amos Barlow kept store for so many years, the business being continued by his son, the present owner, W. J. Barlow, the president of the County Court of this county.
In 1852, a big part of the town of Huntersville was burned down, the fire burning that portion of the town where the late fire raged.
DURBIN
We have had nearly a foot of snow but it is about all gone now.
Peter Usay is repairing his property on Main Street, known as the Bird property.
We understand there will soon be two butcher shops in our town. We can get the meat if we can get the money.
Our town has had a good year as to improvements. A fine school building, new sidewalks, and good streets to the important parts of the town as far as the money would go. We hope the coming years will be as good. We do not expect to get as many fines if our officer continues to clean out the moonshiners as they are coming one by one.
We noticed in The Pocahontas Times last week where the headlines recited: “Dress or Undress.” Look it up. Are we living in pre-historic times? I guess in a way we are. If it should be a shortage in cloth we are very sorry. If this winter should be very cold, some of the people could not come out of the house without fishing boots.
DIED
Ethel Wooddell, aged 14 years, and Clarissa Wooddell, aged eight years, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wooddell, of Stony Creek, died at their home on Sunday afternoon, December 18, 1921, within a half an hour. The cause was diphtheria following scarlet fever. The whole family, father, mother and eight children were all down with the same disease. Burial at the Edray graveyard on Tuesday afternoon.
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Allen Reese Kinnison was the son of Jacob Kinnison and his wife, Catherine Clendenin Kinnison and was born on the old homestead above Mill Point May 2, 1842. He fell asleep December 5, 1921. He had therefore attained, under the blessing of God, the ripe age of seventy nine years, seven months and three days.
When the Civil War began, Mr. Kinnison espoused the cause of the South and early enlisted as a soldier of the Confederacy. He often recalled the fact that when he rode away from home to try the hazard of a soldier’s life, his mother bade him goodbye, and remarked that if they never met again on earth, he must endeavor to meet her in heaven. This injunction of a fond mother was the more deeply impressed by the fact that when the young soldier returned home from the war, his mother was awaiting him, not in the old homestead, but in the other world.
On October 29, 1867, Mr. Kinnison married Miss Rebecca Perkins, settled on the Greenbrier river and followed the life of a farmer and fruit grower. To this union there were born seven children. One died in infancy and a daughter after reaching young womanhood. One daughter, Mrs. A. E. Irvine, lives on part of the old home place; a son, Plummer lives in the old home; DeKalb lives near Buckeye; Richard is an energetic and prosperous businessman of Raleigh, N. C. and Rev. J. Summers Kinnison is a prominent minister of the Presbyterian church…
Mr. Kinnison was for many years an elder in Oak Grove church…
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The remains of Paul B. Dupuy, killed in battle, October 6, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, were buried with military honors in Leesburg, Florida, October 27, 1921. He was the seventh generation from his progenitor Bartholomew Dupuy, who fought fourteen pitched battles in defense of France before emigrating to America in 1700, and on the same ground where this great-great-great-great-great- grandson fell, defending now both his ancestral and his own beloved country. He was a son of Rev. B. J. Dupuy. – Christian Observer.
At the time of the selective draft, young Dupuy was a resident of Durbin, and registered in the Pocahontas County draft. He volunteered and was inducted into service February 1, 1918.