20 Years Ago
Week of May 13, 2004
PCHS Class of ‘02
Best in West Virginia
More college-going graduates from the Pendleton County High School class of 2002 returned to college in 2003 than any other graduating class in the State of West Virginia.
The 2002 high school graduates from PCHS had a freshman to sophomore collegiate retention rate of 92 percent, according to statistics released on April 22 by this state’s Higher Education Policy Commission.
Pendleton County was followed by Lewis (89 percent), Wetzel (89 percent), Tyler (88 percent), Putnam (88 percent), Gilmer (88 percent), Grant (86 percent), Hampshire (86 percent), Boone (86 percent), Roane (86 percent) and Jackson (86 percent).
Retention rate reflects the number of West Virginia students entering public colleges as freshmen in the fall of 2002 who returned as sophomores for the 2003 fall semester.
For the entire state, the 2003 college retention rate for 2002 high school graduates was 81 percent.
The impressive retention rate for this county’s class of 2002 was discussed at the Pendleton County Board of Education’s regular meeting at the high school on the evening of May 3.
Board members noted that the PCHS class of 2002 was an academically exceptional one which had produced one of the highest percentages of PROMISE scholarship winners of any graduating class in the state.
- Michael Mullen, the chancellor of the commission, noted the impact of the PROMISE scholarship on college retention rates.
“Of the 7,191 first-time, full-time college freshmen in 2002, almost 50 percent were recipients of the PROMISE scholarship. It is clear that PROMISE is raising the performance levels of our students and sending students who are better prepared to handle the rigors of a college curriculum.”
Week of May 20, 2004
SUGAR GROVE
Lower Prices
In Days of Yore
Documented
With the gas prices being an economical issue these days, the writer thought it would be interesting to take a look at entertainment prices within the county from 1746-1824. Since the county court fixed the prices, it was a breach of the law to charge more than the authorized price.
- 1746–hot diet, 12.5¢; cold diet, 8¢; bed w/clean sheets, 4¢; feather bed and clean sheets, $6.00; stabling and fodder, 8¢; rum per gallon, $1.50; corn or oats per gallon, $6.00; stabling and hay per night, $5.00; and whiskey per gallon, $1.00; and 1824–breakfast or supper, 25¢; dinner, 37.5¢; and liquor per half pint, 25¢.
There were also other matters to embrace the daily life of Pendletonians. For the time period of 1788–1803, the lowest levy was $141 with the highest being $572; with the rate per capita varying from 37¢ to $1.33. In 1852, the levy was $498.72 and in 1864, it was $5,203.50.
The year of 1801 brought about fines. Killing a deer between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1 was $5.00, seining fish between May 15 and Aug. 15 was $10.00 and setting the woods on fire was $30.00. A sheep-killing dog was cured of his bad habits by treating him the same as he did the sheep.
A constable was allowed 4¢ a mile for taking a non-resident out of the county (to become a public charge).
An 1820 Franklin merchant charged for the following:
- Blue cups and saucers per set, 75¢; Dutch oven, $2.25; milk crocks, 16-2/3¢; snuffers, 37.5¢; a pair of wool stockings, 85¢; a pair of cotton stockings, 75¢; suspenders, 37.5¢; large shoes, $1.50; small shoes, 56¢; dozen shirt buttons, 75¢; yard calico, 9.5¢; yard flannel, 37.5¢; slate pencil, 2¢; German hymn book, $1.25; pocket knife, 33¢; window glass pane, 14.5¢; tin pan, 37.5¢; handsaw, $2.00; razor strap, 58¢; woman’s saddle, $13.25; a set of teaspoons, 25¢; one pound pepper, 50¢; one pound ginger, $1.00; one pound tobacco, 13¢; indigo per ounce, 12.5¢; turkey red per ounce, 15¢; sugar per pound, 6¢; Imperial tea per pound, $5.00; salt per bushel, $2.00; and butter per pound, 3¢.
In 1799, a witness fee was 53¢, and the mileage allowance was 3¢.
Wood Line Moves
To Old Hanover Building
Two weeks ago, The Wood Line, Inc., completed its move from a shell industrial building at Pendleton Industrial Park in Upper Tract to the Pendleton Business Center (formerly the Hanover Shoe Building) south of Franklin on Rt. 220.
Wood Line now occupies 57,000 square feet of industrial space where there was once a thriving shoe manufacturing plant and, later, where Softrac America’s busy work was conducted.
The 57,000-square-foot space is divided equally between the assembly line production of furniture and other wooden craft products and the warehouse storage of those products for wholesalers, notably for the A. C. Moore company, which owns numerous wood products stores in the eastern U.S.
At any given time, said Al Gorman, Wood Line’s CEO, there will be approximately $150,000 worth of Wood Line products in storage waiting to be shipped to customers from the company’s production/storage facility in the Pendleton Business Center.
30 Years Ago
Week of May 26, 1994
91 to Graduate from Two Pendleton High Schools
A total of 91 students will graduate from Pendleton County’s two high schools this weekend. Fifty-six will graduate from Franklin High School, and 35 will receive their diplomas at Circleville High School.
SUGAR GROVE
It’s Berry Picking Time
At Sugar Grove
It’s strawberry picking time. The fields stretch for acres across the side of the hill and down by the creek. Dotting the fields are the pickers—laughing and calling to one another as they work. Berry picking is hard work. Shoulders ache and arms get burned in the sun. Wearing wide brimmed hats seems to help that burned feeling. The sweet, sharp aroma reminds one of the jelly, pies and shortcakes that one would soon be fixing. While down on one’s knees, searching through the thick green leaves, it is wonderful to find a juicy, red strawberry to eagerly pop into the mouth. Piling the perfect, crimson-ripe beauties into the baskets stirs berry good picking days which lie ahead of us.
40 Years Ago
Week of May 24, 1984
114 Seniors to Graduate Sunday from Pendleton High Schools
Pendleton County’s two high schools will graduate 114 seniors Sunday at commencement exercises at Franklin and Circleville. Seventy-two seniors will receive diplomas at Franklin High School, and 42 will complete their high school careers at Circleville.
60 Years Ago
Week of May 21, 1964
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Grant, Lee Continue Fight in Spotsylvania
“We have now ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting… We have lost to this time eleven general officers killed, wounded or missing, and probably twenty thousand men…I am now sending back…all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition and propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
So wrote General Ulysses S. Grant 100 years ago this week in a report that carried the horror and the spirit of the war that he was fighting. He wrote it on the morning of May 11 near Spotsylvania Courthouse in east-central Virginia, and within hours after writing it, Grant could add still more thousands to his casualty list of 20,000.
Grant had moved his army to Spotsylvania on the 8th and 9th of May, immediately after fighting the bloody Battle of the Wilderness against Robert E. Lee. He had moved to Lee’s left, hoping to interpose his army between Lee and Richmond. But Lee had moved too, and the two armies had raced for Spotsylvania, 15 miles away. Lee arrived first, and again the two armies faced each other, ready to fight.
Lee took a V-shaped position with Spotsylvania Courthouse in the apex, and Grant’s army circled around the point of the V. May 9, Grant sent W. S. Hancock’s II Corps crashing into the west leg of the V, but that attack failed. “Good Uncle John” Sedgewick then started to attack the point of the V but was shot dead by a Confederate sharpshooter. Next day, another Grant attack broke the line but then was smothered, and nothing was gained.
It was then that Grant filed his famous dispatch promising to “fight it out . . . if it takes all summer.” The very next morning he resumed the job of attacking Lee.
Hancock again was picked to lead the charge, and his corps was up and moving early on the rainy morning of May 12. As day dawned, they moved, strangely silent, through the misty woods toward the point of Lee’s “V” formation. Suddenly, they were on top of Lee’s line, and they charged as the day exploded in violence. Quickly, they broke Lee’s line, and a full division of Lee’s army was captured, with two Confederate generals.
Lee, himself, wanted to lead the counter-charge, but his men would not let him. Instead, Jubal Early sent a division of men into the “bloody angle;” other Confederates rallied, and the two armies suddenly were on top of each other, shooting, screaming, stabbing, hitting with fists and rocks. Men shot at point blank range; bayonets were used extensively. At times, the fighting had to stop so the men could push away the dead. Lee, it is estimated, lost a fifth of his army that day, and Grant lost one-tenth of his.
Meantime, Grant had sent his cavalry, 10,000 horsemen under Phil Sheridan, in a bold raid toward Richmond. As the fighting at Spotsylvania progressed, Sheridan’s 13-mile-long-column moved behind Lee’s lines, tore up railroad tracks and telegraph wires. Lee responded by sending his cavalry under “Jeb” Stuart after Sheridan. The two cavalries met at Yellow Tavern, just north of Richmond, and Stuart was shot in the lung. Dashing “Jeb” Stuart, the “eyes of Lee’s army,” was dead.
70 Years Ago
Week of May 20, 1954
Fifty-Two Graduates
To Receive Diplomas
At F.H.S. Friday Night
Fifty-two seniors will graduate at Franklin High School’s forty-first annual commencement exercises tomorrow night in the high school gymnasium.
EDITORIAL
Opportunities Unlimited – – –
Eighty-six young men and women are graduating from Pendleton County’s two high schools tonight and tomorrow night, and thousands of other students throughout the country will be receiving their high school diplomas within the next few weeks.
High school graduation is an important time in the lives of American youth because it is a time of decision. Some graduates will decide to go into business, others will decide to continue their schooling, a few will begin their hitch with one of the branches of the armed services while still others will follow various other pursuits. Regardless what they may be, these decisions will have a lasting effect on the lives of the graduates of 1954.
Decisions will be made more difficult by the perennial prophets of gloom, who, in their pseudo wisdom proclaim: “What a sad time for American youth. The future holds nothing for them. Business is down and unemployment is up. If they are lucky enough to get a job, the government will take all they make in taxes. But it doesn’t matter anyway because war is liable to break out any time and then we’ll all be blown up by H-Bombs.” A dark picture indeed, but only the weak and the credulous will fall for such a distortion of the truth.
The bright students will see a future of unlimited opportunities. As we enter into a new age of atomic power, today’s graduates will see a need to master the mysteries of nuclear fission and to use this new power to make the world a better place in which to live. They will see a need for new drugs, better means of communications, more comfortable homes and more efficient methods of distributing the world’s goods.
But today’s opportunities are not limited to the technical and scientific fields. Scientific progress in recent years has far outrun social advancement, and the need for social and cultural progress is urgent. Today’s graduate must spearhead the drive to develop better understanding among mankind, and to establish a relationship among the peoples of the world that will make peace and security a reality.
The opportunities are there and may the graduates of 1954 make the most of them.
