Lou’s View – April 23, 2015
Fun Times in Dunnsburg
by Lou Bernard
You’d know it as Dunnstown, a small community on the Susquehanna River where you can adopt a puppy and get the occasional spaghetti dinner. I’d know it as Dunnstown, the oldest community in Clinton County and almost the county seat of two different counties, but not quite. First it was founded in 1792 by William Dunn, then proposed as the county seat of Lycoming but lost out to Williamsport in 1800, and then proposed as the county seat of Clinton in 1839 but lost to Lock Haven.
In May of 1904, however, it was apparently quite the amusing place for a while.
Every now and again, when I’m looking through the microfilm, I’ll find some fun little events from the past. There’s a lot of amusing stuff that happened about a century ago, and it’s fun to write these little “slice of life” stories. (“Slice of life” sounds better than “I found it by accident in the microfilm while I was stuck for an idea.”) There was a lot of amusing, exciting stuff happening in May 1904 in Dunnstown, apparently, except back then it was still referred to as “Dunnsburg” by the Clinton County Times.
The Clinton County Times is one of my favorite old newspapers. They ran a lot of wild stories. They’d have run stories about Elvis sightings, except he wasn’t born yet. And they always had columns in the paper where correspondents from each community wrote in and said what was going on locally.
You could open any paper, and see reports from Wayne Township, Tylersville, Mill Hall. Even Glen Union, in spite of the fact that meant that one of the Glen Union citizens reported on what the other two were doing. And in 1904, there were some entertaining bits from Dunnsburg.
On May 6, they asked,”Where is our supervisor?” They were wondering why the township supervisor hadn’t noticed that the road needed to be fixed. The Times said that they didn’t really expect him to go and do it personally, though that would be nice, and suggested that he’d realize how bad the road was if he ever had to ride on it.
“The largest flock of black birds that has been seen in this vicinity was seen on Wednesday,” the paper continued. The birds were heading west. The article said,”The rear was at Moran’s and the front at R.D. Myers’s.” Wow. That’s a lot of birds. I assume, having no idea where these people lived.
It wasn’t just birds that week. Roy Johnson was plowing his field when he saw a huge snake, which would be enough to make me run for my life. That’s about what he did, actually, before grabbing a club and killing the snake with the help of his dog. I’m always glad that PETA doesn’t read my column.
On May 20, the Times ran a piece saying,”You can talk about big eggs, but Muffy holds the record. An egg found in her nest measures 9 ½ inches around the long way and 3 ½ inches through.” I love the assumption that the readers would all know who Muffy was—I’m assuming a chicken, though I wouldn’t necessarily rule out a Thunderbird, either.
William Boyer had a big fish pond installed on his property that month. (It was a slow news day, apparently.) He claimed to have seventy-two fish in it, and forty-one poplar trees around it. Boyer invited anyone to come and take a look.
The Times declined to give the name of this next young man, who asked a girl out on a date. (I swear, this was stuff they printed in the newspaper back in 1904.) They had apple dumplings, and the girl began to choke on the last one—She just couldn’t swallow it; her throat was closed up.
The boy called for a doctor, who came and told him,”She’s got the mumps.”
“No, doctor,” said the boy,”She got the dumplings. I saw her when she ordered them.”
And that month, the Clinton County Times wrapped up with a statement about young Lock Haven businessman Richard Boyer, who had come to Dunnsburg looking for eggs. (No mention if he consulted Muffy or not.) The paper accused him of using these egg runs to score a date, however.
“It wasn’t eggs he was after, he had a nice seat-mate, that’s what he was after,” said the Times. “I hope the next time he comes for eggs he will come alone.”
This is the kind of ridiculous stuff they reported in the newspaper back then. Now that I write it all down, I have to wonder what future people will make of our headlines. Maybe I really should learn to watch my mouth.
