10 Years Ago
Week of March 12, 2015
Warner Youngster Goes Viral
Ten-year-old Christopher Warner was the toast of the town last week in the Baltimore-DC metro area when he met his heroes, the popular band Maroon Five.
Christopher knows Maroon Five’s music and the lyrics to their songs.
SUGAR GROVE
Thirteen-Year-Olds Should Engage In Life Skills
It is fun discovering why one uses colorful phrases in the everyday language. Some of those things mark one as an individual, using inherited words and phrases in a unique fashion.
Many familiar expressions are based upon actions of the past and could be used as a conversation starter. Though Americans have picked up phrases from all shores, those coming from the island kingdom have been most abundant.
To engage the 13-year-olds to high school in life skills jobs, they can do the following:
•Wash windows;
•Paint;
•Clean the oven;
•Wash walls;
•Trim hedges;
•Tutor younger siblings;
•Defrost the freezer;
•Wash and wax the floors; and
•Run errands.
By the time these youngsters graduate, they will be able to live independently since parents have taken on the responsibility of teaching them to live this way.
SUGAR GROVE
First Methodist Sermon In Pendleton Was on Davis Farm
The first Methodist sermon in this county is said to have been delivered by the Reverend Ferdinand Lair on the L. C. Davis farm near Brandywine. He rested his Bible on the limb of a sycamore tree as he preached in the open air. This spot is about a mile from the town of Brandywine on the right hand side of the road leading to Oak Flat. One of the unhappy results of the dispute over slavery was the rending of the Methodist as well as other Protestant churches. However, the churches in Pendleton County remained united. In 1860, there were 15 church buildings in the county. Of these, four were United Brethren, and one was Presbyterian. The other four were Union churches.
40 Years Ago
Week of March 7, 1985
HOPEWELL
Pioneer Wagon Trains Paved Way to Harrisonburg For Us
In pioneer days there was a wagon trail beginning at Circleville and going through the rugged mountain terrain to Harrisonburg. The men who made the journey were our forefathers who paved the way for the generation of today. These wagon trains were put together by six or eight men with two horses pulling each wagon. They would go for their winter supplies such as flour, sugar, coffee and cornmeal. They camped at night as it took three to four days to make the journey. One night, John W. Warner was riding along on his horse when a panther jumped from a tree on to the back of his horse. With his lantern and whip, he scared the panther away. Panthers roamed the mountains in pioneer days. As you drive on Route 33 in winter, you can see some of the wagon trails.
Microwave Course Offered
Making instant coffee, baking potatoes, heating soup, and warming leftovers! If this is the extent of your microwave cooking skill, you may be interested in the home study course on “Understanding and Using Your Microwave Oven” available from the Cooperative Extension Service in Pendleton County.
A microwave oven correspondence course is available through the Pendleton County Extension Office. This course is designed for the novice microwave cook who wants to be able to take greater advantage of the microwave oven.
Week of March 14, 1985
Work Set on Non-Game Wildlife Sanctuary Here
Work is scheduled to begin soon on a non-game wildlife sanctuary for the Town of Franklin. Although sponsored by the Town, the sanctuary will be located on Pendleton County land just east of the Franklin Town Park and on the west side of the South Branch of the Potomac River.
Funds for development of the sanctuary will come primarily from the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources through the Nongame Wildlife Fund.
The small area will be called “Pendleton Park” and will consist of plants and trees specifically selected for their benefit to wildlife and for their beauty. A small pond will be set in the park for fish, amphibians, turtles and for small animals to drink from. The park is intended to provide food-bearing plants, flowers for hummingbirds, cover, nesting sites, and windbreaks in a safe environment, and thus serve the purpose of species protection. Special birdhouses will provide nesting sites for bluebirds and martins. A gravel path will be laid to lead the public through the park.
The park will be located in an area behind and to the right of the Health Department along the river. The area is cleared and fenced on three sides.
60 Years Ago
Week of March 11, 1965
2500 Receive Sabin Vaccine Here
Approximately 2500 persons, a third of the population of Pendleton County, turned out Sunday to receive Sabin oral polio vaccine, Type I.
The three area clinics in the county operated constantly between 2 and 4 p.m. with about fifty volunteers at work in the program.
Type III vaccine will be administered on Sunday, April 11 and Type II on Sunday, May 16 to complete the series.
Recipients of doses ranged in age from infants to oldsters.
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.
Sherman Leads Army In North Carolina
General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Federal army of 60,000—the men who had scorched the earth of Georgia and South Carolina in three months of almost steady marching—came swinging into North Carolina 100 years ago this week.
And when they did, only two states remained unconquered in the Confederacy. Before they would leave the state, the Confederacy would be no more.
Perhaps it was this knowledge of certain victory that caused Sherman’s veterans to calm down once they had crossed from South Carolina into North Carolina. For once in the Tar Heel state, the wrath and destruction they had vented farther South lessened, and North Carolina was spared of much of the ravage that her sister states had experienced.
Sherman crossed into North Carolina from Cheraw, S. C., where his army had helped itself to warehouses full of furniture, rugs and fine wines that the people of Charleston had stored for safe-keeping. They rode into North Carolina with saddle blankets made of those rugs and with wine bottles in their baggage.
They crossed the state line on March 7 and headed for Fayetteville. In four corps the army came, taking different roads, each unit followed by long lines of Negro slaves on mules, in wagons and on foot. Singing “John Brown’s Body,” the Northern soldiers came through dozens of little communities, meeting a minimum of resistance.
At Laurel Hill, N. C., Sherman sent two messengers off to Wilmington with messages for the Federal troops there, announcing that he would proceed to Goldsboro, N. C.
Wade Hampton’s Confederate cavalry made one attack on Sherman’s column at Fayetteville and captured about 200 prisoners, but that hardly delayed the advance. By March 11, Sherman was in Fayetteville, and his army recaptured the last Federal arsenal in the East that had fallen to the Confederacy at the outbreak of the war.
Sherman’s Federals destroyed all that could be of value to the Confederacy at Fayetteville and pushed on, slower now because of a growing Confederate army forming to the north under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.
At Bentonville, midway between Fayetteville and Goldsboro, Johnston, with 30,000 men, stood athwart the road before Sherman’s 60,000, and the two armies fought a two-day battle there before Johnston was forced to retreat. Having inflicted 2,700 casualties on Johnston’s army while suffering 1,600 themselves in the Battle of Bentonville, Sherman’s men pushed on to Goldsboro.
And there, they joined forces with Gen. George Schofield’s Federal army of 27,000 fresh troops who had come up from Wilmington.
With that juncture, North Carolina was effectively neutralized as a Confederate state. Sherman now had three times the manpower that Johnston could muster.
Next week: Lee Is Desperate.
70 Years Ago
Week of March 10, 1955
Community Garden Schools Next Week
Three community garden schools will be held in the county next week by local Extension workers. All scheduled for 7:30 p.m., they will be held at the Ft. Seybert Methodist church on Tuesday, Schmucker school at Kline on Wednesday, and at the Upper Tract school on Thursday.
Latest available information on home gardening will be presented and all interested persons are invited to attend. Other meetings will be held in the county and the schedule will be published.
Former Russian Dancer Teaches Ballet Classes
A onetime member of the old Russian Imperial Ballet school of Petrograd and her husband on March 1 conducted the first of a series ballet and dancing classes in the Franklin High auditorium.
Oldfield held the opening with classes totaling about thirty persons.
Tap and musical comedy classes, toe dancing and ballroom technique are included in the Oldfield’s repertoire. They have perfected a system for teaching a quick and easy mastery of the foxtrot, waltz, tango, rhumba, mambo and other dances. They learned the samba in the place of its origin—Brazil.
They are currently residing at Romney and are holding similar schools there and at Keyser.
80 Years Ago
Week of March 9, 1945
THE GOLD BADGE OF COURAGE
One of the stories which crop up most frequently these days in all sections of the country is that of the young man in civilian clothes who offers a woman his seat on a crowded bus. She rudely refuses to take his seat, saying he ought to be fighting with her sons in France. “When you write them, madam” he retorts, “ask them to look for the arm I left over there.” This tale typifies the embarrassment to which hundreds of our returning veterans are being subjected daily—and almost always unnecessarily.
For, upon receiving his final honorable discharge, every veteran is awarded the special gold lapel button. This badge of honor is recognized by all too few of us. One young veteran of 18 months of mud and blood in the European Theater continued to wear his uniform for two months after his discharge even though he knew it was illegal to do so. “I don’t want to be called a slacker just because people don’t know what a discharge button looks like,” he explained.
Since the beginning of the war, over 1,000,000 officers and enlisted men have been honorably discharged from the Army alone—and thousands more are returning to civilian life each month. These men deserve recognition for what they have done. It is not easy for them to readjust themselves to civilian life. We can help them by recognizing the Honorable Discharge Button when we see it. Remember—any man who wears it has offered his life for his country.
CONTROLS OVER OBJECTOR CAMPS TO BE TIGHTENED
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23—Selective Service said yesterday it plans to tighten controls over members of the conscientious objector camp at Germfask, Mich.
Controls will be tightened “as much as possible” under existent laws, selective service said and additional legislation may be asked to “strengthen the control of a small percentage of the conscientious objectors who have been difficult to discipline.”
An investigation disclosed, a statement said that of about 8,000 men in conscientious objector camps and the armed forces, fewer than 100 have been disciplinary problems.
REGULAR PRUNING OF SMALL FRUITS WILL INCREASE YIELDS
If small fruits are to yield well and be easily kept in bounds, all except the strawberry must be pruned regularly, says W. H. Childs, associate horticulturist at the Agricultural Experiment Station, West Virginia University.
