This Week In History, 12-3-09

S.P. Bell had a sale of his personal effects on Saturday, at which there was a large crowd and the bidding was spirited. Bell moved his family to Spencer the first of the week.

C.C. Starcher and J.W. Pell, two of the great nimrods of the present time, returned Friday from Bear Fork, where they spent several days hunting squirrels and other game that abounds in that area.

C.N. Snodgrass of Braxton County is quoted in a telegram from Charleston as saying: “The railroad now chartered to Rosedale will soon be extended to connect with the road down the Little Kanawha River and to the Ohio River.”

Snodgrass does not give the source of his information, but it hoped that he knows what he is talking about, especially when he says it will be built soon.

1959, 50 years ago

Calhoun County residents are being asked to weigh the merits of a school program being proposed by the Calhoun County board of education association and the classroom teachers association.

The program has two basic parts. The first is new buildings and additions to present buildings, purchase of library and text books, and other equipment additions. The second is an increase in salary of personnel.

To pay for the program, voters would be asked to approve a special three-year levy, raising approximately $100,000 per year. This is not a bond issue, but an extra levy of taxes.

The two parts of the program would share equally in the additional dollar amounts raised.

One of the main results of the proposed program would be a consolidation of more of the one room schools into both present and proposed graded schools. Pupils now attending the one room schools would be taken to the graded schools on small feeder bus lines--the program to provide money for the additional schools and the buses.

One of the biggest items in the program is a new six-room grade school in the Five Forks area. Pupils in the outlying areas would attend that school, relieving the overload at the present Grantsville Graded School, and the seventh and eighth grades now at the high school would be returned to the grade school.