Thursday, October 8, 1897
Ed Jackson says, (in order to satisfy some people) he shot Harry Moore with a shotgun accidentally and not with a .44 Winchester.
H. M. Moore, who was shot some time ago, is doing very well, and thinks if he gets another load of shot or two in him, he will be ball bearing.
There is some talk of getting up a joint stock company at Dunmore for the purpose of building a first-class mill. Success to the enterprise.
The fall term of the Pocahontas County Musical Association will be held at Green Bank. Let all take a part and make it a grand success.
Mrs. Grant Dilley died at her home near Dunmore on the 30th of September. She leaves three small children. Her age was 21 years. Mrs. Dilley was an affectionate wife and loving mother. The bereaved family has the sympathy of the community.
5,000 PEOPLE
The Reunion – the biggest thing that ever happened in the county.
The success with which this great event passed off far exceeded the hopes of the most sanguine of its promoters. The people were there – they came in fine style – they were good humored, and they were well fed. When announcement was made in this paper that at least five thousand people were expected, many thought the statement was ridiculously high, and opinions were freely expressed it would be many hundreds instead. But the actual count showed that there were over 5,000 in the town of Marlinton that day…
A constant stream of buggies miles long came in on every road. A traveler who wished to cross the bridge was detained two hours before he could get a clear track.
As the parade passed up by the Marlin’s Mountain, the Chesapeake and Ohio engineers were surveying along the side of the road. One of them was brisk enough to say, “Look out for the locomotive.”
The night before, ice formed on vessels of water. There was a chill in the air. The town was crowded and people slept on floors in every room. At the Yeager Hotel, a party of young people from Lewisburg occupied the dining room…
Captain H. A. Yeager worked for weeks on this thing, and wound up by filing the town so full of people that he had no place to board.
The Beverly Band very kindly serenaded this office, and it is with feelings of regret we think of how our pup howled an accompaniment to the music.
THE PARADE
The parade was pronounced by Mr. Preston and others to be equal to the best they had ever seen on occasions of this kind. It was composed of the Marshal’s staff, 110 mounted veterans, 98 veterans on foot, three chapters of Daughters of the Confederacy and their escorts and a camp of Sons of the Confederacy, and the speaker’s carriages, followed by the unorganized masses of people on foot, in carriages and on horseback.
Colonel Gatewood, the field marshal, worked with his staff so expeditiously that the parade was on time, which was without precedent. It is said that the veterans were harder to form than the young people. On one side of the street the grassy avenue was ablaze with the color of the hope of the land, while on the other the veterans sat on their horses like statues, gray and grim…
THE GRUB
We had dinner to burn. A two-horse team could not have hauled away the lunch that was left. There were eight large boxes unopened; and there never was as large a crowd as well fed, considering that everything was done away from the haunts of men. Five thousand people in the woods on the shores of Knapps Creek. This situation in Bible times was appalling. Five thousand people who had each taken a hurried breakfast by candlelight on a frosty morning came on about nine hours afterward to be fed. An it was no soup house repast either. There was roast beef, hams cured to perfection, chicken, turkey, roast pig, roast pork, mutton, duck; the best butter in the world; the whitest bread; pickles galore; a spread of cakes without end. Four hundred feet of tablecloth was spread without making a serious reduction of the boxes in the commissary tent…
“…Oh, the music, oh, the speaking,
oh, the gorgeous pumpkin pies;
How the people feast upon them,
choked with dust up to the eyes!
And as the good things vanished
I could no more refute
“A good cook’s half the battle and
all the world to boot?”
“Twas over; that we’d reuned
there could not be a doubt,
For Johnny had the toothache,
ma said she was “all worn out,”
and the fever was giving “pa” a chase
for marching in the sun;
And everyone was nearly dead
before the day was done.
But the doctors they look chipper
As they gallop up and down.
And they say they love reunions –
yes, reunions in the town.”
Was it a Confederate Reunion?
Well, yes, but the “brave honored the brave” and those who had espoused the Union’s cause were there; did what we did, brought food, enjoyed what we enjoyed, and in every thing participated in a way that the committee appreciated more than they can express.
If anything had been needed to wipe out the bitterness that is said to have existed in this county during the war, this would have done it.