What follows are 100-year-old news excerpts from the Jan. 8,
1919 edition of The Evergreen Courant newspaper in Conecuh County, Ala.
Former Conecuh Citizen Dead: The many friends of B.F. Mason,
a former well known and highly esteemed citizen of this county, will regret to
learn of his death which occurred at the home of his son at McDavid, Fla. on
Jan. 4. Deceased was about 80 years old.
A Mobile boy, Pvt. John F. Weir, is said to bear on his
person the evidence of 44 distinct wounds in battle, 13 of the number he
describes as “bad” in a letter to his father. He is only 19 years old.
Winton Deming reached home Monday from Charlotte, N.C.,
having been discharged from the army service.
Commissioners Court was in session Monday. The regular
monthly session should have been held on the 1st, but the inclement
weather and bad condition of the roads prevented the members from assembling.
Miss Kate Kendall, who has been engaged as army nurse at
Camp Jackson, S.C., is here to spend a while with relatives.
Monday’s casualty list carried the
name of Ryx Smith as having died from wounds in France. Some weeks ago his
mother was notified that he was severely wounded. Young Smith was a son of the
late Herbert Smith. His mother resides a few miles east of Evergreen. She has
the profound sympathy of everybody in the loss of her boy.
The regular quarterly meeting of the local Veterans Camp was
held on Jan. 1 with a fair attendance. The camp reelected all officers by
acclamation and adopted resolutions regarding the matter of pensions. By
special invitation, Conecuh’s representative met with the Veterans and he
assured them of his desire and intention of doing all in his power to have
their pension allowance increased when the legislature takes up the matter for
consideration.
Even since the night of the noisy
celebration of the signing of the armistice, when guns, pistols and all kinds
of shooting irons were brought into service to make noise, Manager Dearborn of
the local telephone exchange had been endeavoring to locate a defect in the
long lines of cables, and finally on Friday last, his eagle eye espied the
cause. A .38-calibre pistol ball had penetrated the cable in front of Millsap’s
stable, severing several of the small wires. Mr. Dearborn soon mended the
defect while the temperature was below the freezing point.
Conecuh Boy Was Knocked Out Early: Cpl. J.N. Peavy, 167th
Infantry, wounded in battle at St. Mihiel, and now at the Overseas Convalescent
Detachment hospital at Camp Sheridan, in discussing the battle says that when
he was struck by shrapnel on the left hand that he was knocked unconscious for
a few minutes and when he came too again he was in a hospital.
“It was early one morning that we started over the top when
I was struck by shrapnel on left hand. I fell to the ground from the wound, and
I was carried back of lines by Red Cross Worker. That was the last fighting I
did, and I am mighty sorry that I was not with the boys when they crossed into
Germany, as that was always my ambition after I reached France.”
Cpl. Peavy was with the Old Fourth and left with the Rainbow
Division in November 1917. – Montgomery Advertiser.
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