Almanac: This week in south Lake County history

• Reprints

100 years ago

January 26, 1912

Elmer Gard, living southwest of town, shot and killed a baldheaded eagle on Friday of last week, measuring from tip to tip seven feet and four inches, and weighed 10 pounds.

The break in the weather last Monday made it seem like life was worth living again. It thawed until the ice loosened on the walks, which was the first time it happened since the year began. It seemed a harbinger of spring.

The hog cholera has frightened Norman Underwood, who is about ready to go to farming, and he is likely to raise dogs instead. He never heard of a dog having hog cholera, and he will buy a half dozen to start with if he can get good ones, and he thinks they ought to be cheap, now that the extra tax has been put on in Crown Point.

Since so many have recently burned to death in this county by explosions of gasoline and kerosene, Newton Burge has drawn the line on using either, but at the same time he says it is due now for anything to blow up, and if there is no explosion one may get run over with an automobile. So much for progress.

75 years ago

January 29, 1937

Frank Borman, president of the Old Settler and Historical Association of Lake county, announces the first day’s program for the observance of the centennial of the organization of Lake county, the exact date of which is February 16. The association is sponsoring the celebration with complete co-operation of the county officials, who will take an active part in carrying out a program, largely devoted to the early recollections of the county since it was organized on February 16, 1836.

A large 36 x 70 basement barn on the Sam Thompson farm, west of Leroy, together with 18 head of cows and calves, were destroyed by fire last Saturday forenoon, the origin of which was presumably from a tank heater or faulty electric wiring. The fire had gained such headway before Thompson discovered it that he only had time to rescue five head of horses. The cows and calves quartered in other parts of the building fell easy pray to the flames. Some hay and grain were also consumed.

50 years ago

January 26, 1962

Crown Point postmaster Robert Diddie reports that the ice-and-snow conditions of the roads have made it virtually impossible for rural mail drivers to deliver the mail into the boxes. Diddie asks that rural patrons shovel snow away from their mail boxes so that the carriers can drive up to them as usual and so make delivery faster and easier.