The following two articles from the Xenia Gazette are startling for different reasons. The first has some startling descriptive details, and the second is a startling case of déja vu on topics of immigants.
Xenia Gazette, March 11, 1920
The picture above is John Bauser, who met death Wednesday morning when the charge house of the Aetna Explosives Company at Goes, blew up. The large picture shows all that remains of the charge house, in which the two men met their death. Below is Thomas Mehaffey, of Railroad street, this city, the other victim of the explosion.
The charge house blew up at 8:47 and was followed a few minutes afterward by the wheel mill, in what is called a “green” explosion. There were 300 or 400 kegs of powder, which had accumulated there from the night work, in the charge house with Bauser and Mehaffey. Ollie and “Red” Woods, outside the charge house, saw a fire near the end of a truck they were repairing and shouted a warning. “Red” Woods jumped into the old race nearby while Ollie Woods ran and was blown several feet, but uninjured.
Bauser and Mehaffey were found 120 feet from the mill caught in a bush. Mehaffey had his right leg blown off below the knee and both died instantly. A horse that was standing near the building was blown 250 feet over the race. All four steel shoes and the harness were torn to bits.
Bauser is survived by his wife and two sons, Floyd and Edgar. His funeral services will be held at his home in Yellow Springs at one o’clock Friday afternoon. Mehaffey leaves his wive and four children. The children are, Daisy 19, Alice 13, and G[____] 9, and one son, whose whereabouts is unknown. The family has resided here two years. The funeral arrangements have not yet been made.
Xenia Gazette, September 13, 1920
JAPANESE QUESTION GROWING MORE SERIOUS DECLARES CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
“The Japanese question is California’s now, but it will be yours soon,” declared Governor William Stevens of California, speaking to an audience at the Presbyterian church in Yellow Springs Sunday night.
“With the Japanese coming into this country rapidly through Mexico, the situation is becoming serious,” the governor declared. “They are not assimilated into the life of this country. They have their own merchants, their own banks, they do not even use American money when they can avoid doing so,” the governor continued. “Farming, is the chief business of the Japanese in California, and in this work, the women do as much as the men, carrying their infants into the field with them, and allowing them to remain in their basket while the mother works. The Japanese woman’s housekeeping is so simple that she is able to do the outside work without interfering with household duties.
Women have made politics clean in California according to Governor Stevens. The state has had universal suffrage for ten years.
“My wife and I go to the polls together and cast our votes,” said the governor.
The beauties and excellence of California as a state were extolled by the governor, who said that long with an ideal climate, everything can be raised in the state that is produced in any other state in the union.
Governor Stevens was elected in 1917, and is serving his second term as governor. He spoke of the dynamiting of the governor’s mansion a few years ago, when he and his family narrowly escaped death. Ten thousand dollars was required to repair the damage caused by the bombs the governor said. The executive was introduced by Congressman S. D. Fess.
Governor Stevens is a native of Eaton and spent several days there visiting scenes of his boyhood. He will be at the home of his sister, Mrs. C. C. Stephenson in Yellow Springs for several days before returning west.
The book has three sections, with a few paragraphs of biography for each of the women included. This post focuses on the entries for Yellow Springs, but there are biographies of women of note for all of the communities of Greene County.
Maria Holland Wing was born on a farm near Wilberforce, OH. Her father had been brought to Ohio by his father, a Welsh slave owner from Charleston, SC. During that period, some slave owners settled their bi-racial children with their slave mothers near Wilberforce and manumitted (freed) them. After attending to the comfort of his family, Daniel Holland returned to South Carolina to oversee his estate and to head his family there. He made frequent trips to Ohio to visit his Greene County family and to enroll his sons in Wilberforce College. While Andrew Jackson Holland was a student at Wilberforce he met and married Sara Bell Griffin, one of the first Wilberforce graduates, who later taught in the Xenia school system. Following the Civil War his family moved from the Tarbox-Wilberforce area to a farm near Goes Station.. There, in what is now known as the Galloway Cabin, Wing’s mother educated her children prior to sending them to the school at Wilberforce.
The Kenneth Coffman family owns two Cessna airplanes, with Mr. Coffman and daughter, Carol, doing the flying as licensed pilots. Mrs., Coffman and daughter, Nancy, are student pilots. Marilyn, age 12, who is too young for lessons, will probably join the rest of the family as soon as she is old enough. A solo flight may not be taken before age 16, and a private pilot’s license can not be obtained before age 17. Standing in front of one of their planes are (left to right) Carol, Mrs. Coffman, Nancy, Marilyn and Mr. Coffman. The Coffmans think nothing of flying off to Mexico or Florida for vacations and recently flew to northern Canada. Today’s “flying families” have come a long way from the Sunday afternoon “rides in the country” in the old Model T.
If you lived across the road from the Miami Powder Co. at Goes, explosions, sometimes tragic, became a way of life.
Joe Sutton says this year has been the greatest county fair ever for him, because “all my friends are doing everything they can for me.”
[Excerpt]…Another centenarian is Joe Sutton, also a thankful man. He is thankful that at age 104 “I still have my mind.” He said he doesn’t even mind going blind, but that he’d rather be dead than lose my mind.”
A Greene County legend is dead. Joe Sutton, 103 years old, died at 11;45 p.m Tuesday at Greene Memorial Hospital.
