25-50-100 Years Ago -- Aug. 17
Aug. 17—100 Years Ago
Aug. 17, 1923
In a bare whitewashed room, in Montevue Hospital, the county's poorhouse, with windows looking out on the vivid sunshine of a Frederick County fall day, and the mountains of historic Catoctin showing blue in the West, sits a man, once the entertainer of America's youth and author of the books that will never die in the literary history of the country. He is Thomas C. Harbaugh, 70 years old, writer of dime and five-cent novels of adventure, intrigue, the Wild West, frontier days and hair raisers. This idol of boyhood of the days of 1880 has returned to his beloved Frederick county to spend his last days in the poorhouse.
"Not guilty." Those words pronounced by Chief Judge Hammond Urner, acquitted B. Evard Kepner of the charge of murdering his wife, Grace Simmons Kepner, found dead by Kepner in the home of her father, Ezra Houck Sr., near Frederick, June 18. A quarter of an hour later Kepner, around whom centered the most notable criminal trial in the history of Frederick, walked from the courtroom a free man.
"The best ride I ever had in my life," said Daniel Isaac Eyler, after taking Thursday his first ride in an automobile. Mr. Eyler, whose exact age seems a doubt, but is said to be more than 100 years old, was taken on his first auto trip Thursday morning by W.V. Wolfe, proprietor of the Washington-Frederick bus line. Mr. Eyler was driven several miles down the Baltimore pike. He is in good health and has a clear memory of happenings of events many decades ago. He delights to refer to the time he sold butter and eggs to Barbara Fritchie.
50 Years Ago
Aug. 17, 1973
Schools open Tuesday, Sept. 4, the day after the Labor Day holiday, and included as a special back-to-school supplement of the Post today are the pupil assignments, school calendar for the year and school needs. The names and teacher room assignments of upward of 20,000 elementary pupils and secondary students of the record nearly 22,000 school children appear today. assignments have not been received from some schools but will be published upon receipt.
In the lush agricultural Middletown Valley — faced with the threat of a burgeoning development — the phenomenon of ground water may hold the key to the valley's future. Upward of 260 members of the Catoctin Soil Conservation District — farmers, landowners, their families and guests — learned last night at their annual dinner at Jefferson Ruritan Pavilion about "something" under the ground they live on — "ground water."
25 Years Ago
Aug. 17, 1998
WASHINGTON — The first president ever to face a criminal grand jury, President Clinton prepared Sunday to finally disclose his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. After seven months of standing by his blunt denial of a sexual relationship with the former White House intern, the president was prepared to acknowledge today an "inappropriate relationship" with Ms. Lewinsky, signaling some form of sexual contact between them, advisers said. "If the president goes before the grand jury and lies, then I think there'll be a real call for his impeachment," said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Fifty years ago, on Aug. 18, 1948, the eyes of the nation and the world were on Frederick County where a battle was about to take place. The site of this battle was a 174-acre dairy farm located near Jefferson, at the southern end of the historic Middletown Valley. It was owned by a 53-year-old widow, Mrs. Nellie V. Thrasher, who operated the farm with the help of her 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. Years of straight-row cultivation had wasted precious rainfall through uncontrolled runoff and was resulting in sedimentation of streams and rivers. Beginning at 9 a.m. an army of 500 volunteer workers was at work in almost every corner of the rolling farm. By milking time, they had succeeded in changing over the entire property from its traditional and wasteful straight-row methods of cultivation into modern practices of soil, water, forestry and wildlife conservation.
(Editor's Note: The News-Post does not have access to archives from 20 years ago for April 16 through December 2003. The "20 Years Ago" summary will return Jan. 1, 2024.)
