Thursday,
March 25, 1915
The lumber is moving in this county in a satisfactory way and there are millions of dollars worth ready for shipment. The demand and the price offered are improving all the time.
Jack Richardson, aged 9, son of C. J. Richardson, was badly burned about the face and neck, Saturday afternoon. He and other boys were playing in a tent made of burlap sacks and the tent caught on fire. A burning sack fell over his head, and but for the timely assistance of his brother he would have been very seriously burned.
Burglars broke into the postoffice, several stores and the mill at Warm Springs Monday night, and got about $300 in money and goods.
NEW CHURCH
BUILDING
At a well attended congregational meeting of the Marlinton Presbyterian church Sunday morning, it was decided to take immediate steps toward a new church building. An attempt will be made to raise a fund of $10,000 for the purpose. A committee on finances composed of Rev. J. M. Walker, Dr. N. R. Price, J. A. Hoover and Allan P. Edgar was named and they will report to a meeting of the congregation, to be held on the first Sunday in April.
POTATOES
E. B. Smith and J. M Paris are making preparations to plant potatoes on an extensive scale this year. Last fall they plowed forty-six acres on Laurel Creek and have about ten acres more to break as soon as weather conditions permit. They also have plowed seventeen acres on the flat above the courthouse in Marlinton. These gentlemen are prompted in the enterprise by a two fold purpose – they believe that the venture will prove profitable and they want to know if we can produce potatoes at a profit in competition with the potato growers of the northern states. They have bought seven hundred bushels of feed and the crop will be handled by machinery from start to finish – cutting, planting, cultivating, spraying, digging and grading.
DUNMORE
We had an oxen storm.
James Galford came in from Seattle, Washington, to see his mother, who is quite ill.
Auctioneer Swecker sold a lot of Jersey cows at Cass Monday. The cheapest cow brought $76.00 and the highest, $129. And it snowed and was not a good day for selling cows.
ARBOVALE
The groundhog must have seen his shadow twice the way winter is holding out.
Feed is very scarce in this neighborhood.
There is some young stock being sold, but old cows are going slow.
F. Hamed returned last Friday from Wheeling and other cities where he had gone to buy his spring goods. Prof. Chalfant is teaching a writing school in the Arbovale school house. All who wish to learn to write should make use of this opportunity, for he surely knows how to use a pen.
HUNTERSVILLE
Gilbert Sharp, of Douthards Creek, was seen on the streets one day last week.
We are glad to see the noble stand taken by Commissioners McNeel and Arbogast as to the county road engineer. The office should not only be abolished but the very idea should be annihilated.
We are sorry to note that Grandma Bowers, of Browns Mountain, has been in bad health for some time.
William Kelley, of Browns Mountain, died last Sunday and was buried near his home on Tuesday. Mr. Kelley was a good citizen and lived to a ripe old age.
DIED
Mrs. Elizabeth Wade Sharp, died at her home at Frost, Monday, March 22, 1915, at the advanced age of 98 years. She was the widow of the late John Sharp. Of her large family of sons and daughters, but to survive. Her son, W. A. G. Sharp, died last fall. Mrs. Sharp was one of the last persons in Pocahontas to have had sons in the war between the states. She was a lifelong christian and a woman of great usefulness.
Wm. A. Kelley died at his home on Browns Mountain near Huntersville, Sunday, March 21, 1915, after an illness of many months, aged about 82 years. Mr. Kelley was a Union soldier during the war and a good citizen.
Mrs. Polly Hollandsworth died at her home on Droop Mountain, March 20, 1915, aged 86 years.
George Pryor, a much respected colored man, died at his home in the Levels, March 21, 1915, aged about 80 years.
HOSPITAL NOTES
Mrs. Kate Lightner is recovering from a large tumor operation and appendicitis – the most serious and complicated operation ever performed in this county.
E. O. Moore is in the hospital threatened with an attack of pneumonia.
Mrs. George McCauley, of Cloverlick, is at the hospital for medical treatment and to use the Carlsbad water.
Lily Rose is recovering from knife wounds of the face.
There are now eight nurses at the Hospital and the Hospital is crowded with patients. The building will be enlarged in the near future
Interesting piece from the October 3, 1901 edition
MAPLE SUGAR
Sugar Made in 1819 and Getting Better Each Year
Geo. W. Callison, of Academy, while in town this week showed me a bottle of maple sugar which is 82 years old. It was made in 1819 by James Morrison, and what remains of the stock of that year is the property of Mrs. Madison Woods, of the Levels istrict. The sugar is of a dark rich color and tastes sweet and good. We have a sample in this office.
Editorial continued from March 12, 1915
Oil is found in all formations, but the West Virginia “oil break” is generally from sand-stones that lie in the coal-measures, though there is a belief that it is generally found some miles from coal-beds. Thus nature may give one neighborhood coal, another oil, another gas and another salt-water. In West Virginia, too, the oil is found under the crowns of the anticlinals, and that is the reason that the oil dreamers like to see strata in the shape of a bow. Owing to the change of the face of nature in these mountains caused by erosion, it is hard to determine where the anticlinals as formed by the original folds are, and perhaps it depends more upon the regular folding of the strata than anything else. Where the rock is upended and broken there would be no container for the saturated sponge containing the oil, but in the rich mountains living in regularly greasy folds like the mountains of this county, there is every reason to hope that they hold the treasure.
It has always seemed to those who know the formation of this county and who have given the matter any thought, that the synclinal formed by the unbroken bedrock of the Greenbrier river from Droop mountain to the head of the river, eighty odd miles, indicates that it forms an effectual barrier to hold the oil in the folds west of the river, and that the sign of oil in the county is as good as any man would want, who would like to go into the wild-cat oil business. Every bass fisherman knows that in the Greenbrier river wherever the debris is pushed away that a smooth bed rock is exposed and forms the pools of the river, and that everyone of these pools is shallow.
The upper sands are exposed here but the lower sands will be more easily reached and if they have not been drained will be found to contain oil. Sands can be explored here at a reasonable depth which are buried too deep in the western part of the State to be reached.