125 YEARS AGO
May 14, 1887
Mrs. Dora Slater was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas. She is the first lady to be elected to that position in the United States. She is a wife and mother and a lady of superior attainments.
There are only five regular prisoners confined in the county jail.
Miss Rose Bailey, 13, died of membranous diphtheria Tuesday morning. She was taken sick on Friday.
A Pennsylvania young lady is so full of electricity, when her hair is stroked in the dark it emits sparks and when she walks in a quiet room a crackling noise can be heard as if someone was crushing nutshells. It is said a young man recently put his arm around her waist and was knocked flat.
Sen. Stanford of California hopes to have seven of the buildings for his great university erected this year.
DeKalb County has several more patients than her quota in the state asylum already, and county officers have found it next to impossible to obtain the admission of more.
There was a foot race on State Street Saturday between Jack Allen and a stranger, who was rigged out in pink and sky-blue tights. The stranger won.
J.D. Morris will erect a $4,000 hotel in Kirkland this season.
100 YEARS AGO
May 11, 1912
Increased patronage of the Townsend Theatre in Sycamore seems likely to continue, and it warrants the erection of a new play house of modern design and complete equipment.
That noise like the shrieks of the damned in everlasting torment with bad cases of bronchitis, which made several hundred Sycamore people, their hair on end like the quills on a fretful porcupine, leap from their beds at 1:00 Thursday morning, was a fire alarm, the first blast of which broke the siren whistle. The noise of that broken whistle was worse than the fire.
Fred Raymond went to Detroit this week, where he expects to appear for a week in vaudeville.
William Allen, who has been living in Chicago for two months, returned on Wednesday. His wife was not glad to see him, and the officers told him he must not trouble her further.
Jacob Haish has purchased a 5-ton auto truck to run deliveries from DeKalb to the Sandwich Manufacturing Co. in Sandwich.
Frank Arbuckle’s horse, getting a little dissatisfied with city life Monday morning, made a run for home, but was captured on the road and brought back to wait until Frank was ready to go, too.
The demand for limestone for fertilizer and macadam roads has exceeded the output by the penitentiaries. The only solution seems to be the establishment of manufacturing plants by outside interests.
75 YEARS AGO
May 12, 1937
The city dads, all fed up with the pre-election period of penny-pinching, went on an old-fashioned, rip-roaring spending spree last night. They took the old rubber band off the city bank roll and shelled out the coin like nobody’s business.
The Fargo Theatre received word today news reels en route here for showing Sunday will show explosions which racked the huge dirigible Hindenburg and sent her crashing to the ground in Lakehurst, NJ, with a loss of 35 lives.
Ten head of livestock perished in a fire that burned to the ground a large barn on a farm occupied by Herbert Hoover.
Two apartment building projects for Sycamore were definitely announced today as the highlights in a wave of building and remodeling.
Smiles are wreathing faces of rural residents of DeKalb and adjoining counties. Smiles will continue to grow if the sun stays on the job. Fields that were soaked and flooded by the wettest winter and spring in many years are drying rapidly.
Due to the need to take advantage of every possible break in the rain, lights were installed on some tractors in DeKalb County to allow night work.
50 YEARS AGO
May 9, 1962
The doggone dog problem is getting a bit expensive, when violations of the doggone dog ordinance are uncovered by the dogged persistence of the dog catcher and police patrols.
The 750 employees of Leich Electric Company in Genoa walked out Thursday morning on strike. The walkout was not exactly a surprise; trouble had been brewing for two years.
Miss Frances Gilbert, a school teacher 50 years – 47 in Sycamore – was presented with a letter of commendation yesterday from President John F. Kennedy.
The Sycamore Woman’s Club voted to distribute $25,500 in charity to four institutions and an afflicted child.
James Jenkins of Missouri arrived Tuesday in DeKalb. By evening he had borrowed his brother’s car and wrangled himself a date, and everything was finishing off beautifully until a parked car, a tree and some pesky telephone poles got in the way. Within seconds he had damaged the parked car, bashed in both ends of his brother’s car and got himself arrested.
– Sycamore True Republican
25 YEARS AGO
May 13, 1987
Residents of the DeKalb School District and the city of Sycamore will bear the highest increase in taxes when tax bills come out this week.
The DeKalb Area Interfaith Network for Peace and Justice will stage a protest in downtown DeKalb Saturday in opposition to the contra spring offensive and U.S. war games in Central America and the Caribbean. The Network’s actions are planned to be completely legal and nonviolent.
– The MidWeek
