PULASKI COUNTY NEWS ARTICLES

ARKANSAS GENEALOGY TRAILS

VISIT IN ILLINOIS, August 6, 1880

COLONEL ELLIS MURDERED, August 16, 1882

"IN LITTLE ROCK," April 5, 1926

MARRIED, Sept. 28, 1931

BREAKDOWN, January 30, 1933


VISIT IN ILLINOIS

Rushville, Illinois--August 6, 1880, Oliver MILLER of Little Rock, Arkansas, an engineer on the Iron Mountain R. R. is visiting his brother, Ezra Miller.  (Transcribed and contributed by Sara Hemp, from Rushville Illinois Times newspaper.)

COLONEL ELLIS MURDERED

Little Rock, August 15, 1882--Colonel Ellis, a prominent planter, was murdered by John Martin, his foreman, on Saturday, on the border of the Indian Nation. The murderer fled into the Nation, and has not been caught.  
(Las Vegas Daily Gazette New Mexico 1882-08-16, contributed by Barb Ziegenmeyer.)

IN LITTLE ROCK

Source: Time Magazine, April 5, 1926

A stair creaked...The sound rang through the empty house like a shout. On the dim stairway a shoe was hastily withdrawn from the articulate board; a girl crouched against the balusters listening. The noise had been her own fault, but she was too bundled up to move altogether without clumsiness; she had on two dresses, one under the other; there was a package under her arm. No echo answered her mistep. She could smell the chlorides from the bathroom under the staircase; she could hear far away, the day's first milk-train chuff and clank on its siding. Stealthily, with infinite precaution, she put out her foot and took another step...
Thus Mary Lewis, an orphan, ran away from her adopted parents--the Rev. and Mrs. William Fitch of Little Rock, Ark.--to become a chorus girl. The stair that creaked in that breathless dawn seven years ago still creaks, loudly and efficiently, as people pass up and down on household business. But last week, Mary Lewis, current sensation of the Metropolitan Opera company and supreme example of What May Happen to a Chorus Girl, went back to Little Rock.
Governor Terral of Arkansas and Mayor Charles F. Moyer in high hats met her at the Capitol and handed her the keys of the city while a fine crowd applauded. She held an informal reception for her girlhood friends in the Governor's reception room; then she went to luncheon with Mrs. Alice C. Henniger, local music teacher (who discovered her voice). At five o'clock she was guest of honor at a high green tea of the Henniger School of Music; next day she gave a concert at the Little Rock High School (which she used to attend when she could steal a morning from the Pastor's housework); she shook hands with everybody at a reception given in her honor at the finest hotel in Little Rock. Governor Terral said: "It is with the greatest feeling of pride.. that I welcome you to the city to which you have brought...so much fame... and I only wish it were possible for you... to stay with us always..." Mary Lewis smiled. She was a woman of the world now. And yet--when Mary Lewis had tried to render "Home Sweet Home" at her concert, some of the song seemed to cause her throat a strange contraction. Maybe it was the air, maybe it was the thought that she lived in Little Rock no longer,but right in the middle of that most optimistic of songs Mary Lewis broke down, wept.


MARRIED

TIME Magazine, June 15, 1931

Married. Mary Sybil Lewis, Arkansas-born Metropolitan opera singer and cinema star; and Robert L. Hague, vice president of Standard Shipping Co., one time Shepherd of the Lambs Club; secretly; in Manhattan. The bride was once married to Basso Michael Franz Bohnen of the Metropolitan, the groom to Mme Edith Bobe, dressmaker.



BREAKDOWN

Near Little Rock, Ark. last fortnight was found a school teacher who had taken to 'legging. Graduate of the University of Arkansas, she gave her name as "Maureen." Said she: "I was paid in county warrants but I could not get them cashed. . I have a drawer full of them. ... A destitute farmer near the school makes and furnishes the whiskey. I retail it for him. . . . Bootlegging isn't as profitable as one would think. But I make a few dollars. H..., I have to live!"
More than 300 rural schools in Arkansas have been closed. Elementary school teachers have taken pay cuts averaging 22%, high-school teachers 19%. Most teachers are now paid in tax warrants.
Arkansas was not alone in its educational troubles. School systems in many another States have either broken down or are perilously close to collapse.  –Source: Time Magazine, Posted Monday, Jan. 30, 1933.


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