1916 Elgin Courier CD available

Well, here I sit on Super Bowl Sunday. The game is about to begin and I am not expecting too many museum visitors.

So I'll spend the time reading the 1916 Elgin Courier. As many Dustpan readers know, our project to photograph every page of our weekly newspaper, has been going for some months now. Lucille takes the pictures and others (the factotum, Barbara and soon we hope, Judy) work them up into readable .pdf files. The 1916 edition has just been published on CD and is available for purchase in the museum for a measly 10 bucks (+$2 to mail it to you.)

As usual the 1916 newspaper is filled with news of Elgin doings as well as those in surrounding rural communities: Siloam, McDade, the Knobbs, Manor, Kimbro, New Sweden, Lawhon, Fair Oaks, Pee Le and other places. 1916 was the year compulsory education was instituted in Texas and the details are all in the Courier (May 6 p4). Every child between 8 and 14 was required to attend school. Exceptions included those who lived more than 2.5 miles from a school for children of the same race and color. That little phrase says a lot. In that same issue an announcement was made that J O Smith, the Courier editor, was putting his name forward for a position in the Texas Legislature. It was a national election year too and the Courier reports the national results in November. Captain F S Wade celebrated his 80th birthday on November 5.

Not much else for today. How are the Seahawks doing, I wonder?