September 21, 1906

The electric display that passed over Milton on Wednesday morning of last week came too late for us to give an account of it in that issue, yet it was the most awful and terrible that has visited us this season. It appeared as though the north and south were engaged in awful conflict, and the tragedy of Fredericksburg was being re-enacted with Milton for the Rappahannock. About 2.30 o’clock the conflict began. Two clouds arose in the west, one going down the Chesapeake, the other the Delaware. Lurid lightning flashed from the west, and vivid lightning flashed from the south, while the artillery of the skies thundered and reverberated all along that horizon in an apparently settled over Milton, the Rappahannock of the occasion. When the storm began, the family that I represent arose and went to the lower rooms and remained until four o’clock. I remained in bed until three o’clock when I got up to look at the situation. Not being enamored of it I went back to bed and stayed there until day. The lightning and thunder continued after day. Judging from the comments we heard the next morning, with few exceptions, all of the families in town were out of bed during the raging of the elements and in their lower rooms. The storm was unaccompanied by wind, and no damage was done in or near Milton.

Dr. Joseph Conwell, mayor of Vineland, N. J., and wife are visiting their old home and spending a few days with the friends of yore.

Mrs. Thomas W. Jefferson has purchased the property of the late Captain Stephen R. Bennet on Broad Street.

Charles H. Megee, son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Megee, of near Harbeson, died last week of typhoid fever, aged 13 years, five months and 20 days. Funeral services were held at the home, and the interment made in White Chapel Cemetery. Rev. Sites conducted the funeral, and S. J. Wilson & Son buried the body.

Fred Ellingsworth and wife, of Philadelphia, are visiting friends.

Captain George Hunter is a guest of Milton.

Rev. W. M. Conaway, pastor of the M. E. Church at Salem, Md., Is a town visitor.

Miss Lillian M. Aker and mother have removed from Laurel to this town and occupied the property of John Wilson on Mill Street.

Mrs. Charles Veasey has removed from the country and is located in part of the Lofland property on Federal Street.

Miss Adele C. Neal, of Hampton, Va., who has taught the colored school for the last four terms, will become its teacher again on Monday, October 1. Miss Neal appears to have given satisfaction during her pedagogical career in Milton. Before her advent the colored children were a mass of unkempt, saucy beings. Now one can seldom meet a colored child over six years old that is not polite, and this is attributable to the teacher and her method of tuition. All competent teachers are leaders, who will educate the young in the right way, are the ones who will solve the “race problem”.

J. B. Welch, the poet, is desirous of writing an apostrophe in the form of a poem to Zenaide Konoplaniskova[i], the Russian girl who killed General Mien. He desires to make it heroic like “Columbia, or Drake’s American flag” or the French “Marseillaise.” But the difficulty experienced by Mr. Welch is in making our English patois rhyme with the Russian name. Should one of our readers think of fifteen or twenty words, that with ezthm and exme, will suit this beautiful name, their suggestions will be most gratefully received either by D. A. C., or the poet, Mr. Welch, and certainly acknowledged.

William Warren put so much steam on his private phone from his Union Street office to his residence on Saturday that he broke the wire. Mr. Warren had been to Milford the day previous.

It was said in the spring “there would be no pears.” Thomas Spencer’s orchard within town limits is full. The trees are broken down with a superabundance of fruit. The limbs of the trees of at least one-fourth of the orchard are torn from the parent stem. The orchard contains 800 trees.

Mr. H. C. Seth, assistant treasurer of Chester, Pa., and wife have been entertained during the past week by Mr. and Mrs. William Mears on Federal Street.

Although last Saturday was a rainy day, there were many people in town, and the registration of that day was 265. One vote, however is contested and will be ignored on account of the would-be elector having received help from the county. The same thing was brought up against the same person at the registration of two years ago. But the Democratic palaver prevailed, and the party was allowed to register. The throwing out of this one gives to 264 that were registered on Saturday, and with the 132 previously registered gives 396 that are now on file. According to the vote of two years ago, there are about 240 to register yet to make a full vote in this district.

Jacob Hancock has returned to Milton after an absence of sometime in the Philippines, and Jake says he proposes to make things lively around between now and the election, and it will be necessary for Jim Palmer to turn out any rats to do it either. “I’m going to be married,” said Jake. “To whom?” “Well,” said he, “the first initial of her name is Fannie.” “Ah, I see!” and Jake lit another cigarette.

The Douglass White Shirt and Overall factory has introduced into their business an electric cutting machine. Through the courtesy of Mr. Douglass, Jr., we were invited to view the operation. The material is laid 120 folds deep, and the machine guided by the operator works like a little engine, and the cutting is perfect.

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[i] The spelling of the name of the Russian girl is closer to Zinaida Konoplyannikov, and the assassinated general is Georgiy Alexandrovich Min. The daughter of a soldier and a peasant, she was educated in the Baltics and St. Petersburg around the turn of the century. By her own admission, the plight of her similarly unprivileged students helped radicalize her. She was arrested twice for minor acts of subversion before the bloody suppression of the revolutionary movement in 1905. Konoplyannikov avenged herself on one of the great villains (from her standpoint) of that reversal, G.A. Min — commander of the Semenyovsky Life Guards regiment which bombarded Moscow’s Red Presnia working-class district to crush the last bastion of revolutionary sentiment in December 1905 at the cost of more than 1,000 lives. Konoplyannikov gunned him down at a Peterhof train station the following August; in a closed military courtroom (giving her no opportunity to use the trial as an oratorical platform), the assassin was condemned to hang in less than an hour. She reportedly died calmly, sure in the ultimate victory of her cause. Source: http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/08/29/1906-zinaida-konoplyannikov-assassin-ga-min/

It is somewhat astonishing that J. B. Welch would choose to glorify a revolutionary at a time when anarchists, socialists and other radicals had been demonized in the American press, particularly after President McKinley’s assassination a few years earlier. It is not known whether Mr. Welch ever completed his poem, or if anyone had sent him words that suited his rhyming scheme.