150 YEARS AGO

JULY 7. 1876

Three thousand people in town on the Fourth and not a drunken man to be seen. All honor to that crowd.

It is customary with the average editor to “laud and magnify” every occurrence of a festive nature happening in his community, and Truth not always guides the pen. Failures are heralded as successes till one knows not what to believe. The practice is baneful.

Will the reader divest himself of any incredulity the practice, too common, may have engendered while we announce that this county never gathered together at one time such a concourse of people as at Marion Centre last Tuesday?

From Judge John W. Williams’ address at the nation’s centennial celebration July 4 in Billings Park:

“Our needs, like many other counties in the state, are not few in number. Coal is desirable that our timber may be preserved in order that rainfall may be increased.

“We need, too, a class of handy yeomanry, whose hands are hardened by the tilling of the soil to keep alive and moving the march of progress our county has assumed.

“We need emigrants who will make this broad expanse of prairie blossom like roses in the month of June with fields of golden grain.

“We want progressive men and women to keep the ball of progress rolling as it has been started for here in this county, where but a few short years ago, the buffalo and the Indian held mighty sway, there is room enough for men and women of progressive ideas and energetic natures to fill every nook, every valley, every knoll of ground with all branches of labor.”