Time Machine Trip to April 1889

Hello Fellow Time Travelers,

Well it’s time to fire up the old “Time Machine Chair” and travel back in time to April 1889.

For today’s trip Evelyn Schoen Morser will be sitting in the front seat operating the Time Machine. The big wheel is spinning; the years are clicking back and in no time, we are back on East Second Street on Kaukauna’s Southside.

Charlie has left the papers on the chair out front of the Times building. Let’s see what’s in the news this month.

PS: Gone are the days when girls used to cook like their mothers. Now they drink like their fathers. 

Your old newsman – Lyle Hansen 

April 5, 1889

A delegation of Messer’s, H. J. Mulholland, Peter Reuter, G. H. Dawson, Fred Mundinger, L. Lindauer, A. W.  Priest and John Schulthies took the train this afternoon for Madison, where they will look after a bill that is now before the Senate, authorizing the city of Kaukauna to issue bonds for the building of a bridge over the Fox River. The bill has passed assembly, but Senator Kennedy was instructed to withhold the same from the Senate until the delegation from here arrived.

The International Sulphite Fiber & Paper Co. has settled with W. Thilmany in a manner satisfactory to both parties, says a dispatch from Appleton. By this settlement, Mr. Thilmany received the exclusive right to the patent to manufacture sulphite fiber under the Mitcherlich process in a mill of twenty tons daily capacity, for the entire Fox River Valley and the State of Wisconsin. He will commence operation at once, with a paid-up capital of $300,000, in which some of the members of the International Fiber and Paper Co., as well as Detroit capitalists, will be largely interested.

Large quantities of pickerel are being taken from the river here. Fishing has not been better for several years.

The City of Kaukauna recently voted in a new mayor for that city. Michael Sullivan will serve as the new mayor.

April 12, 1889

Thomas Egan, Sr., of the town of Kaukauna was arrested Wednesday by U.S. Marshal Marshall, charged with selling liquors to the Oneida Indians. It seems that last winter Egan would purchase the article by the bottle in the city and then dispose of it to the Indians at his place of residence. He was taken to Milwaukee on the afternoon train where the case will be tried.

The steamer Hutchinson made her first trip down the river this week.

Corrinna de Vivaldi Coaracy has begun an action in the United States Circuit at Milwaukee, against two Kaukauna paper mills to recover fifteen acres of land on which they are located. The values of the improvements are over $350,000. The plaintiff is the daughter of Mary Meade and the granddaughter of George Lawe. The claims are under the title of Paul Ducharme to Augustin Grignon in 1834 and there is a conflict between the confirmations at that time.

April 19, 1889

There is a large gang of tramps working the towns south of here and are headed this way. They will probably strike Kaukauna in the course of a few weeks. Would it not be a good idea for our city fathers to lay out a certain point near the quarry where these harem scarems could be put to work breaking stone? Tramps that infest this city are treated with too much civility, getting off with a night's lodging, a good warm meal and no work whatever.

By order of the mayor all of the telegraph, telephone and electric light poles in the city of New York are being cut down. For two years, the city has been dickering with the companies to have the wires removed from the poles and placed underground. The streets of that city Tuesday night were in darkness as all the electric lights had been cut off. 

The most persistent people in the country are the Oklahoma boomers. There will be opened up to them by the president’s proclamation, 1,800,000 acres of land in the hearth of Indian Territory. The land that is opened is not richer than many other government lands, though the soil is fertile. It is simply that it has been for many years forbidden ground that makes it so dear to the boomers.

A New Orleans judge has decided that when a jury, with a quart of whisky, a pack of cards and a handful of beans, played poker from midnight till 4 am, the prisoner is entitled to a new trial.

April 26, 1889

Mrs. Josie Guriey, on trial for kidnapping little Annie Redmond, was found guilty at Chicago. She was given five years in the penitentiary. The child stolen by her was kept in hiding for years. The poverty of the Redmond’s precludes any idea that a ransom was expected.

Jersey City, NJ., A hero, clad in the brown, greasy overalls, and the cap of a switchman, lost his life in the railroad yard, while saving the life of 10-year-old child. He was Patrick McAtamny is 42 years old and, leaves a wife and seven children. Patrick was waiting for a single car to be backed by an engine. Just as the car arrived, a boy who was picking up coal, stepped on the track in front of the car. McAtamny jumped to the track and pushed the boy out of the way. A mass of bloody shreds and a headless body marked the remains of the switchman. 

  

A man named Wm. McDonald struck town last Friday and proceeded to fill up on "bug juice." About noon he began to get weary and made up his mind to take a nap in the hallway leading to The Times office. Officer Rivers was sent for and took him over to sleep on one of the iron mattresses at the Hotel de Cooler. Six dollars is all Justice Mulholland taxed him for his behavior.

Fort Smith, Ark., has been receiving approximately $500.000 a year for salaries and fees for lawyers. Almost everyone who knows anything about Fort Smith thinks of it as the place where they “hang so many people” and until recently this was its main distinction. Now however it is enjoying a business boom and the population which was 3600 in 1880 is now set at 14,000 and still rising. 1500 criminals a year are tried before Judge Parker and in the past 15 years he has disposed of 247 murder cases and sentenced 163 persons to death; 47 are now on waiting trial for murder. The gallows are fixed for 11 men at a time but no more than eight have been executed in one drop. George Maledon, who has served as hangman for many years, is proud of the fact that he has never had an accident and all his subjects go bravely to their deaths. He has put the rope around the necks of 71 murderers and in every case the neck has been broken by the drop.