The SNYDER COUNTY POST History Page

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125 Years Ago - 1885
    Do You Know Why? In 1680, a liar was legally punished by having a hole bored through his tongue. If this was the fashion now, we have in our mind's eye several individuals whose tongues would resemble sieves.
    The Troxelville Band attended the Granger's Picnic at Centre Hall last week and the people are all on tip-toe over the excellent music they produced.
    The band concert held at Adamsburg on Saturday was all that could be desired. It is estimated that about 1500 people were in attendance.

100 Years Ago - 1910
    R.P. Haines, Middleburg, proprietor of the American Shirt Manufacturing Company, is moving the machinery and material from the old school house on Gravel Hill to the Shoe Factory on the French Flats.
    The two year old child of William N. Bolig and wife died from scalds, by a washer full of scalding water having been pulled over it by the child herself. We gave an account of the accident last week.
    S.O. McGinnes, who recently sold his interest in the Central Hotel in Middleburg, last week purchased the stock and fixtures of Young's Hotel in Mifflinburg.

75 Years Ago - 1935
    D.E. Heiser and wife of Mt. Pleasant Mills have returned home from a trip to Illinois. The met with an accident on the way so they returned with a new car.
   Mrs. Carrie Nornhold, 62, slipped and fell off the back porch of her home at Globe Mills on Thursday. She suffered a fracture of the right arm near the shoulder.
    Mrs. George Yoder of Beaver Springs is a winner of a five dollar cash prize in the nation-wide "Make It Yourself" contest conducted by Sears & Roebuck Co. Mrs. Yoder was awarded one of ten fifth regional prizes in the senior division for rugs.

50 Years Ago - 1960
   Nevin Bingaman, proprietor of the Western Auto Store in Middleburg, is a patient in the Evangelical Community Hos-pital after fracturing his hip last Thursday in a water skiing accident on the Susquehanna River.

35 Years Ago - 1975
   Albert J. Bickhart and Galen Moyer of Troxelville have gone on a fishing trip to Canada.
    Alan Yeater of Baltimore, MD attended the Bean Soup last week. His method of travel was unique, and duplicated by very few. He rode his three-speed bicycle all the way, travelling a distance of 150 miles.

From the Archives of
The
Middleburg Post

To help celebrate the Beavertown Bicentennial, candy and clothing items with the special logo will be available for purchase at the Beavertown Borough Office. The Susquehanna Bank in Beavertown will have items on display in their lobby.

Beavertown Items
Made Available
For Bicentennial

Clothing is available to be purchased or you can place an order by contacting the Beavertown Borough office at 570-658-2482 or by calling 658-7205 weekdays from 6 to 9 P.M. or Saturdays noon to 9:00 P.M.

Airplane tragedy was no stranger to Snyder County. The SCHS Library, has available for research, information regarding these unfortunate events, in their transportation section of the library. Library hours are Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10 am to 3:30 pm and Sundays from 1:30 to 4:30 pm. Phone 570-837-6191. Location 30 E Market St., Middleburg PA.

World Famous Will Rogers
Makes Emergency Plane Landing In Beaver Springs

     In the 1920's and 30's, Will Rogers, an Oklahoman and part Cherokee Indian, was an American icon. That era was so different from now, that it's difficult to describe his popularity. He was a cowboy humorist, radio commentator, newspaper columnist, author and movie star.
    He was also a pioneer aviation enthusiast and he routinely hopped rides, paying by the pound and rode on mail sacks.

tried to direct the plane onto his field, but visibility was poor and it appeared the pilot did not understand the signals.
     The twisting and turning caused by the turbulent weather caused Will to become quite ill and as he put it “I was throwing up my insides outside the mailbags”.
     The plane eventually was forced by the weather onto a field owned by dairy farmer Ira Gross, directly south of the Beaver Vocational School Building (later Beaver Adams Elementary School). As the plane landed, it narrowly missed one fence row, and stopped just short of hitting another one.
    Former resident Roy Thoman was a teenager at the time and heard the loud noise of the distressed plane. Pedaling his bicycle from his home in Beaver Springs to the landing site. He found the plane mired deeply into the muddy ground which prevented it from tipping forward during the landing.
    Ira Gross, whose field the plane landed in, was a former aviator himself. He and his hired hand, Lawrence Dobson, were milking at the time the plane went down and they dropped everything and ran to the scene.
    When they arrived, they saw the pilot, Nelson,   and   another

Unfortunately, Will never got the opportunity to return to Snyder County. He died in a plane crash near Pt. Barrow, Alaska, August 15, 1935, when he and Wiley Post were on a journey looking for news. The pontoon plane was nose heavy and crashed into a lagoon.

Newsreel footage of the death of Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post.

In November, 1927, Will Rogers attempted his first trans-continental flight from San Francisco to New York as a reporter and advocate of commercial flying. After stopping at Centre County’s Bellefonte Airport (a major fueling stop at the time), the fog-shrouded, storm stricken ridges of the Allegheny Mountains caused the pilot, Thomas Nelson, to become disoriented.
As the plane circled repeat-edly over the small towns of Beaver Springs and Troxelville, the sound of the plane caused quite a stir among the country-side's residents. One farmer

man with a typewriter climbing out of the two seated bi-plane. They explained that the 18 bags of mail had to be taken to a US Post Office immediately.
    Ira Gross volunteered his truck to haul the 900 pounds of what was thought to be very valuable mail to Sunbury while Dobson became a sentry at the plane.
    By this time, a small crowd had gathered around the plane, but nobody seemed to recognize who the famous passenger was.
    “They were all mighty pleasant and nice and wanted to do anything they could to help,” claimed Will.
    While Ira Gross journeyed to Sunbury with the mail, his neigh-bor, Ott Wagner, offered to drive Will Rogers to the Lewis-town train station to catch a train to New York. The pilot stayed with the Gross family that night and left for Newark, NJ next day.

Video of some of Will Rogers' mannerisms and bits of wisdom.

While waiting for Mr. Wagner to come pick him up for the trip to Lewistown, Rogers was coaxed into a delicious ham and potato dinner. Legend has it that when Mrs. Gross was cleaning up dishes after Mr. Rogers left, she picked up his plate and found a twenty dollar bill, a token of his appreciation.
Will Rogers did write about his mishap in the January 28th, 1928 edition of The Saturday Evening Post entitled "Bucking A Head Wind". Here is an excerpt from that article:

"I was kinder disap-pointed it come down so nice. I was just sitting there looking at all that mail around me. If it had tipped over on its nose, I was just thinking what a lot of fun they would have had picking air mail stamps out of me. The letters would have been imprinted all over me. They would have had to send me around to the various addresses and let people read me."

Will Rogers spoke highly of his visit with the people of Snyder County, the "Dutch" as he called them. “They are a great people and I like the way they live. I want to stop in there and stay awhile again sometime when I am feeling better.”

by Jane Kessler, SCHS Lifetime member