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The Great American Eclipse of 1918
On August 21, 2017, millions of Americans will view the total solar eclipse as its shadow sweeps across the country at midday. It is predicted that as many as 100-million people will view the 2017 eclipse, setting an all-time record. Twelve million Americans live within the swath of “totality” which stretches in an arc across…
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Strand Theatre of Eskridge
The Strand Theatre, located at 115 South Main Street in Eskridge, Kansas, opened in the mid-1950s, providing a modern movie house for residents of the surrounding area. The theater was owned by Luke and Irma Johnson, owners of the Ford dealership in Eskridge, who partnered with Dean and Inez Dunn, owners of Dunn Home Supply,…
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The Door In The Wall
One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story. He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than…
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The Photography of Charles Herman
Charles L. Herman was born in 1922 in Alma, Kansas, the son of Alma shoemaker, Fred Herrmann and his wife Mary Schubert Herrmann. Charles graduated from Alma High School and was a longtime resident of Alma. Charles married Charlotte Finley in 1963, and the couple was married for thirty years before her passing in 1993.…
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Modern Woodmen of America Log Rolling, August 30, 1900
-by Greg Hoots- Modern Woodmen of America is a fraternal organization founded in 1883 in Lyons, Iowa by Joseph Cullen Root. Root was an esteemed businessman who had been very successful in a variety of enterprises ranging from operating a bookstore to the management of multiple flour mills and a grain elevator. Root later engaged…
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Herrmann’s Shoe and Harness Shops
-by Greg Hoots- Ferdinand and Christine Herrmann were a young German couple, married for five years when they immigrated to America in 1874, settling in Alma, Kansas, a rural Wabaunsee County town with a significant German immigrant community. Ferdinand was a cobbler by trade and opened a shoe shop and a harness shop in Alma shortly…
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Prohibition Blues: The Life and Times of Bill Page
-by Greg Hoots- When one hears about Prohibition, the image that comes to mind is the decade of the “roaring twenties”, complete with gangsters toting machine guns and wild nights in the “speakeasy”. The era of Prohibition was a period of American history between 1919 and 1933 in which alcohol manufacture, sale, and possession were…
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Cold Case: Murder on Eight-Mile Road
-by Greg Hoots- William Thomas Smale came to Kansas in 1869 as a 14-year old youth when his family immigrated to the United States from Canada. Smale’s father was a farmer, and the family settled on 160-acres of land located six-miles east of Eskridge, Kansas in rural Wabaunsee County. In the late 1870s William married…
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Memorial Day Salute: Bill Copeland II
William E. Copeland II, a 1964 graduate of Eskridge High School, was the first Wabaunsee County resident listed as Killed In Action in the Viet Nam War between 1961 and 1975. After graduation from high school, Bill joined the U. S. Marine Corps, and after training he was deployed overseas in Viet Nam. Bill was a…
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The Sweeney Bridge
-by Greg Hoots- This is a photograph of the Sweeney Bridge, an iron bridge under construction over the Kaw River in early 1911. The bridge was located in Kaw Township in Wabaunsee County and crossed the river into Pottawatomie County about three miles south of St. Marys, Kansas. There was an interesting history leading to…
