A column entitled “Quarter Century Back,” as published in the Elizabethville Echo, June19, 1903, refers to the predecessor of the Echo, published in 1878 at Washington Square by J. A. Ettinger, and known at the time as the Weekly Democrat. Ettinger was the owner of the Victor Printing Company located in Washington Square along the railroad tracks in what was Elizabethville’s first railroad depot building. The stop on the Lykens Valley Railroad was then known as the Cross Roads Station. In 1893, the various entities, Elizabethville, Cross Roads, and Washington Square, were all incorporated into a single borough, thereafter known as Elizabethville.
Ettinger published his newspaper under several different names between 1878 and 1882. After 1878, the paper was known as The Independent. Most of what we know about what was published in the Ettinger newspapers is from other sources which re-printed excerpts. Very few of the original copies have survived. The Library of Congress has no copies and the paper is not listed in its U. S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-present.
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QUARTER CENTURY BACK
Elizabethville news twenty-five years ago, from J. A. Ettinger‘s Weekly Democrat:
On Thursday last the ten shares of stock of Mary Mallick deceased in the First National Bank of Millersburg, were sold to Eli Swab at $97 per share (coming dividend included).
Mr. H. E. Lehr, proprietor of the Armstrong Mills, intends shortly to procure a steam engine and will thereafter run his mill by steam. This will furnish the necessary power to run his machinery regularly.
Eight or ten very fine deer passed through this place [Washington Square] to-day en route for Lykens. They were shot by Messrs. Frank Byerly, William Wingert, George Hawk and others, in the northern counties of the State.
Mr. J. H. Eisenhower, a school teacher of Halifax Township, has two of the strangest birds ever seen. The head resembles that of an owl, the back is of a brown color. When any one approaches their cage they make a strange noise. They were taken out of a hollow tree. Their like is not seen even in the Zoological Gardens.
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News articles from Newspapers.com.
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