WAY BACK WHEN

(The Spirit is pleased to share with our readers vignettes of life in the 19th century as originally reported in past issues of the newspapers. These reproduced stories include their original headlines.)

April 24, 1895 A Modern Giant

Col. Cooper, the giant of all giants of the world, at one time one of the principal attractions of Barnum’s show, but who has for several years been living in Atlanta, Georgia, stopped here on Monday while on his way to Eleanora where his people live. The Colonel is a powerful raw-boned giant of extraordinary height, standing seven feet, seven inches in his stocking feet. He is a regular Brobdingnagian, and his dimensions are so abnormal that some who saw him would not have been surprised had they been informed that he was a recent arrival from the planet Mars, having overcome the laws of nature and found his way to earth. But such was not the case. He proved to be quite a curiosity, however, and his presence soon caused a large crowd to gather about the station where he was waiting for the noon train for Big Run.

May 1, 1895 Will Pay Every Dollar

James H. Long, president of the defunct DuBois bank, has returned from his European excursion. He received the news of the bank failure while in Paris. In an interview Mr. Long said: “The assets of the bank, I am told, will come within $40,000 of paying everything. But whatever they lack will be paid, if I have to pay every cent of it myself. If the sum needed is all I have and my wife has to sell all her personal effects and jewelry, no man will suffer. On the marble shaft above my father is the legend: ‘Here lies an honest man.’ I am old and broken in health, but I will begin anew, without a cent, if necessary, to square off the accounts, and without staining that name.”

May 1, 1895 Jefferson County Wildcat

A dispatch from Ridgway to the Pittsburg Times, dated on Friday, April 28, says: The wildcat on the Lathrop run in Jefferson County, drilled in by the Oil City Fuel Company, is putting about eight barrels in the tank every day. It opens a new pool, probably like the little pools of elk county, but hardly of any magnitude, as the sand is thin, and the field defined in one direction by the gas wells that have been drilled. Another well is in progress, which will tell what to expect. The small pools of this kind are good for several five or ten barrel wells, and they are common a few miles to the north and northeast in Elk county.