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One Hundred Years Ago in Louisiana:

Courtesy of the Manship School of Mass Communication - Louisiana State University 

May 1

Lake Charles Daily American

Big Day For The Base Ball Fans

            The directors of the Lake Charles baseball club are making big preparations for the opening game of the season which is to be played here Sunday with Capt. Hutchcroft’s bunch from Morgan City. It is expected that an immense crowd will be in attendance at the game as the home enthusiasts will be swelled by a throng of visitors who will come in on the excursions over the Southern Pacific and Watkins.

            The game will be a hot one and no mistake. Morgan City has started out well, defeating President Carbo’s Alexandrians in the opening game and making a fine showing for a team that played their first game together the day the season opened.


May 2

Alexandria Daily Town Talk

Train on the Burlington in Montana Wrecked With Dynamite

            Butte, Mont. – The eastbound Burlington train, No. 6, due here about midnight, was dynamited about a mile west of the Northern Pacific station, shortly before12 o’clock last night. The explosion caused portion of the engine to leave the rails but it plowed along for a few hundred feet without turning over. The second engine crashed into the bank south of the track and turned over. Every person on the train has been accounted for except Engineer Bussey, who is supposed to be buried under his locomotive. The dynamiting is believed to be the work of some tramp seeking revenge for being ejected from a train.


May 3

Daily Picayune

Storm At Monterey

            Monterey, La. – General excitement prevails since the cyclone of last Friday morning. A heavy rainfall of Wednesday, after a few days of quiet since the storm, set everything into general nervousness again. All household plunders and clothing that was picked up has been soaked again.

            Ten persons were killed and about twenty wounded, some slightly bruised and some badly injured.

            Sixty-five buildings were dashed from their foundations and torn into splinters.


May 4

Shreveport Journal

Plotting To Use Bombs To Kill Off Foreigners

            Calcutta – The police are investigating a native plot uncovered here yesterday to murder Europeans by means of bombs, and the more they go into the matter the more serious and widespread does the conspiracy appear. The documents seized at the house where the bombs and explosives were being manufactured reveal that it was a part of the plot to kill Lord Kitchener. The authorities believe they are facing an attempt at revolution. A number of prominent Bengalese are implicated and sensational arrests are expected to follow.


May 5

Lake Charles Daily American

To Benefit The Rice Industry

            The rice men of Louisiana and Texas are gathered in full force in Lake Charles today for the meetings of the Louisiana and Texas Rice Millers’ and Distributors’ association and the Rice Association of America. There are about thirty prominent rice men from the two states here, representing the leading mills and distributing firms of the south. The meetings are being held in the board of trade rooms. 


May 6

Alexandria Daily Town Talk

A Woman Near LaPorte, Ind., Supposed to Be Many Times a Murderer

            LaPorte, Ind. – From out of a mass of tangled and sensational evidence, which indicates that Mrs. Bella Guinness was one of the most monstrous murderers of the century, and that her beautiful and well-kept farm, a mile northwest of LaPorte, was a clearing house of assassination and crime, there developed today the startling theory that the woman herself did not die in the fire which destroyed her home on April 28, and that she is still alive and in hiding, probably in Chicago.

            This theory is strengthened by the fact that the head of the body of a woman found in the ruins of the Guinness home after the fire is still missing, although every effort has been made to locate it, even to going through the charred timbers piece by piece.


May 7

Daily Picayune

Half A Million Fire Burns Two Big Stores

            Thousands of people crowded into Canal Street between Bourbon and Royal last evening, and for several hours watched the historic building of the F.F. Hansell & Bro., Limited, Publishers and Stationers, and the store of H.B. Stevens & Co., Limited, clothiers, on the south side of the big thoroughfare between St. Charles and Carondelet Streets, burn from the roofs to the ground, leaving only the scorched fronts to mark one of the largest fires in several years.

            Men, women and children, even from the suburbs and even over from the little city across the water – Algiers – thronged against the big stretch of ropes, keeping their places because policemen acted as monitors to every ten feet of the line, and gazed upon the blaze which caused a damage of perhaps $450,000.


May 8

Shreveport Journal

Two More Skeletons In Indiana’s Charnel Farm

            La Porte, Ind. - Two more bodies were unearthed at the Guiness farm

today in a grave near the spot where three of the four bodies were

exhumed Wednesday. The first body to be turned up was undoubtedly

that of a grown male and the second is believed to be the bones of a

woman. A soft spot under a pile of refuse was selected as the most

promising place to begin operations.

            The first skeleton, which was badly disarticulated, and somewhat

scattered, but the bones were in a good state of preservation. It is

believed the body had been underground for about two years.

            The second skeleton was found in the same place and directly

underneath the first, with an intervening space of earth. The bones

were much smaller and thought to be those of a woman.


May 9

Lake Charles Daily American

Dr. Wright Had A Good Meeting

            The district court room was comfortably filled last night with an

audience of interested listeners who went to hear Hon. Seaborn Wright

of Rome, Ga., speak on the subject of prohibition. Attorney U.A. Bell

presided and Hon. P.A. Sompayrac introduced the speaker in his usual

pleasing manner with a few appropriate remarks.

            Mr. Wright, who is well known throught the South, and who has done

so much to further the prohibition cause in the South, treated the

prohibition question last evening almost entirely from an economic

standpoint, and did not make any sensational attacks on the saloon

keeper and his clientele.


May 10

Daily Picayune

Anarchist Newspapers

Congress Proposes to Put a Ban on Them

            Washington - Approval of the recent action of President Roosevelt in

denying the mails to an alleged anarchist publication of Paterson,

N.J., will find an expression in the Postoffice appropriation bill,

the consideration of which by the Senate Committee on Postoffices and

Postroads was completed to-day, if an amendment is suggested by that

Committee, which proposes to amend the law on the subject of

suppressing immoral periodicals. The proposed addition reads as

follows:

            "And the term 'immoral,' within the intendment of this section,

shall include matter of a character tending to incite arson, murder

or assassination and the Postmaster General is hereby authorized to

exclude from the second-class mailing privileges any anarchist

publication which contains matter that suggests, advocates or

approves the abolition, overthrow or destruction of any and all

governments, or the commission of arson, murder or assassination."


May 11

Alexandria Daily Town Talk

Fiendish Deed of a Negro Man at Montgomery Causes Loss of Life

            Montgomery, Ala. - Four negro children are dead and a fifth is

barely alive, as a result of a fire which burned a negro home here

during the night.

            Jim Kennedy, the father of one of the children, is alleged to have

set the house afire, and he is now locked up in the city jail. It is

said that he set fire to the house to have revenge against his wife,

who had refused to live with him.


May 12

Shreveport Journal

More Battleships and Fewer Statesmen Needed Says Fighting Bob Evans

            North Platte, Nev. - Rear Admiral Evans passed through North Platte

on the Union Pacific "Overland" train this morning and stopped long

enough to hobble to the rear of the train and make a short speech, in

which he said:

            "We will always have war as long as we have anything worth while to

fight over, and the more battleships and the fewer statesmen we have,

the longer we will have peace."


May 13

Lake Charles Daily American

Damage Suit Against City

            Through his attorney, Winston Overton, N.J. Mills brought suit against the city of Lake Charles to the amount of $500 for damage done his property on Hodges street near the corner of Clarence in the recent grading done by the city.

            Mr. Mills claims that his property has been rendered almost inaccessible in rainy weather by the lowering of the grade on Hodges street. Mr. Mills also claims that the approaches necessitated by the grading will cost a considerable sum as his property has no outlet whatever to the street and cannot be placed in touch with vehicles of any kind until the necessary approaches are constructed.

            This suit is one of many that the city is threatened with on account of the Hodges street grading.


May 14

Daily Picayune

Tornado Causes Damage in North Louisiana

            Shreveport, La. – A telephone message from Belcher and other towns about Shreveport states that the town of Gilliam, twenty miles north of this city, on the Texarkana, Natchez and Shreveport Railroad, was struck this evening at 5 o’clock by a furious cyclone, resulting in the killing of two persons, the injuring of several others and the blowing down of every house in the place except two, which were damaged.

            From Belcher it is reported that two men rode into that town from Gilliam, which is two miles north of there, with the message, and the appeal to call on Shreveport for immediate assistance.


May 15

Alexandria Daily Town Talk

Fifty Sticks of Dynamite Taken Possession of By U.S. Marines Near Pensacola

            Pensacola, Fla. – Fifty-seven sticks of dynamite, each weighing a pound or more, were found at a point about 500 yards from what is known as Big Bayou trestle, west of the city and the entire lot is now in possession of officers at Navy Yards. For the Navy Yard and inasmuch as the Naval reservation has its boundary at Big Bayou, they took possession of it. The police say those who have been dynamiting the cars of the street railway during the strike had probably a secret supply near the bridge.