The articles date from 1964 through 1978, and they're wonderful.
This 1978 article is one of Lester's:
Ledger entry tells of 1894 hanging
Walter S. Gorski, Cedar Lane, Penns Park, a World War II veteran and Lingohocken fireman, showed me a book he purchased that contains ledger entries dated 1816.
Isaac Atherton paid 28 cents for a quart of apple whiskey. George Jones bought sugar for 17 cents and one yard of muslin cost Dorothy Smith 35 cents.
Fascinating is the news story, dated 1894, about the hanging of Wallace Burt, a half-breed Cherokee Indian charged with the murders of Samuel M. and Lena Rightley in Northampton Township.
The gallows was erected in the area between the main entrance of the jail wall on South Pine Street, Doylestown, and the prison building.
It was reported that after being used In Doylestown, the gallows would be taken to Allentown, where Johnson, a child murderer, would be hanged.
The gallows, strong and simple, had a trap door that opened downward, sprung by means of a rope. Burt could watch the gallows being built from his cell window.
The autopsy was conducted by Drs. W. H. Kirk, John A. Fell and Frank Swartzlander, Doylestown; Dr. Harvey Kratz, New Britain, and J. Edgar Fritz, a medical student.
Burt asked for a plate of ice cream the first thing in the morning on the day of his hanging. It was promptly furnished and he ate it with relish. He ate breakfast at 7:45 a.m. of fish, eggs, bread and smoked a cigar.
At 9:45 his spiritual advisers came to see him and the feminine members of the sheriff’s family bade him farewell.
At 11 a.m. a dozen physicians took positions along side of the gallows. Burt was brought out of the prison, manacled, in his stocking feet. He wore a dark blue business suit, white shirt, collar and tie. The clergy brought up the rear.
In glancing over the crowd, he saw ex-Sheriff Beans. He said “How are you sheriff? I’m glad to see you. How’s your wife and children? I’ve been wanting to see you.”
The black cap was adjusted over Burt’s head, the noose tightened and Sheriff Nicholas rushed from the scaffold. The rope was seized which released the bolts. The man dropped. Save for a partial turning round of the body as it dangled from the end of the rope and a little twitching of the heels, it hung motionless and in 13 minutes his heart ceased to beat. The body was cut down and removed to the prison laundry where the autopsy was conducted.
Other news items are:
Charles B. Ott, Pleasant Valley, 1859, offered at his nursery for sale Catawba and Isabella grapevines at $1.25 a dozen and $8 per hundred.
In 1860 stagecoaches operated between Buckingham and Philadelphia. The stagecoaches left the railroad depot at Front and Willow streets, Philadelphia, traveling through Jenkintown, Moorestown, Willow Grove, Hatborough, Warminster, Hartsville, Warwick Bridge Valley, Bushington and Centreville, (now Buckingham). They left Cotson’s Hotel, Centreville, at 1 p.m. and arrived in Philadelphia that evening.
John Young advertised his photography business opposite Brower’s Hotel in Doylestown.
The first annual fair and exhibition of the Bucks County Poultry Association was held in the Masonic Hall In 1874. A.M. Dickie was president; Theodore P. Harvey was recording secretary. Admission was 25 cents.
Horse clipping — $5 for one, $9 for two — was done at Atkinson’s Hotel, Newtown, by E. McCabe.
The Newtown Lyceum held a debate: Resolved that the death penalty be repealed.
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