In one cursory glance over the front page headlines of “The Suburban”, the reader of today obtains a quick overall picture of the local news of Radnor township for the week. not so with the “Wayne Weekly Gazette” of 80 years ago. He had to turn to the fourth and last page, where under the general heading of “Local News” there was a short paragraph or two on some of the more important happenings of the week. As stated before in this column, the front page was devoted to poems, essays and short stories, each of the latter with its very obvious moral. Indeed, so well hidden away were the local news items that this columnist did not at first discover what a valuable record they presented of life in our community in the very early seventies.

Under date of August 3, 1871, there is a very brief story of “our new post office,” a news item that would make the large headlines and a picture on the front page of any current local weekly. The “Wayne Weekly Gazette” merely states (and in very small print): “Thanks to our most excellent representation in Congress from this district, Honorable Washington Townsend, our new postoffice has been established and named agreeable with the wishes of the members of the Wayne Lyceum and other residents of Wayne. Mr. Robert H. McCormick has been appointed postmaster. The correct name of the office is Louella Post Office, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.”

(In this connection it is interesting to note that while the postoffice was officially “Louella”, the “Gazette” always refers to the community as “Wayne.”)

The last two issues of “The Suburban” have carried front page stories with prominent headlines on recent fires in the center of the town. A fire that must have been of equal importance 80 years ago is described in a few words and under a small heading of “Destructive Fire” in the “Gazette”:

“We regret to say the barn which was formerly known as the ‘Cleaver Barn’, now on the plan of Louella farm as No. 6, the property of Mr. J. Henry Askin, was burned to the ground on Thursday morning, between 10 and 12 o’clock. It contained about 50 tons of hay, and the products of about 10 acres of rye. The superintendent of Louella, Mr. George E. Askin, and his assistant, R. H. McCormick, believe it was set on fire. It was insured in the Delaware County Mutual Insurance Company.”

(It would be interesting to know what fire-fighting methods were used in a period so far ante-dating our efficient Radnor Fire Company. There is no mention of this, however.)

In connection with the destructive storm that swept this general section and states farther west in December, our readers might like to hear of the tornado of August, 1872, as recorded under the heading of “Heavy Storm.” “The storm and tornado of Tuesday night was very considerable about the neighborhood of Eagle and Wayne. At the Eagle, things generally have been very lively for some time. Two cows belonging to Mr. Floyd were killed and many trees blown down, etc., but no lives were lost that we heard of. At Wayne nothing very serious occurred, save some flowers and vases went over and down. No buildings, however, were in the least injured. We should be thankful that it was no worse.”

However, the section to the northeast of Wayne did not fare so well in this storm, as Charles Lyle, a gate keeper on the turnpike between King of Prussia and Norristown, was struck by lightning while sitting on his piazza talking to a neighbor. “Mrs. Lyle,” according to the “Gazette”, “found her husband upon his face, quite dead, while Mr. Bernhard recovered, but is still suffering from the shock.”

A small item of interest in the “Local News” column was that in the month of August, 1871, “20,000 quarts of pure milk were sent in all from Wayne to the City.” Just how “pure would that milk be considered now by our Radnor Township Board of Health?

Your columnist was much puzzled by the following item in an August, 1871, “Gazette”: “Kauffman Avenue is this week being graded, preparatory to digging the cellars for the ten cottages to be built by Messrs. Duncan and Richardson for the President of the Wayne Lyceum.” She knew that Mr. Askin was the Lyceum president. But where was “Kauffman avenue”, a name so entirely foreign to Wayne of today? In a “Gazette” of a slightly later date she obtained a clue in a piece about “New Reservoir” which stated that “Mr. Isaac S. Cassin, former Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department, is now engaged in building a large reservoir, capable of holding about 150,000 gallons of water, on the high ground immediately west of the new cottages on Kauffman avenue. This point is about the highest ground on ‘Louella’ and the basin in the course of erection is intended to supply the entire plan with water.”

As this reservoir of a bygone Wayne was located at what is now approximately the intersection of West Wayne and Bloomingdale avenues, it was “immediately west” of what is now the first block of West Wayne avenue. It would seem that the latter was once Kauffman avenue! And speaking of Bloomingdale avenue it is interesting to know that “Mr. Martien and family were the first residents on this new and beautiful avenue. The family occupy the first house on the west side of the avenue, above Lancaster Pike. Mr. Martien occupies a position on the Pennsylvania Railroad; is a most worthy and excellent young man, and it affords us great pleasure to extend to him and his family a hearty welcome to Wayne.” (From the “Gazette” of August 3, 1871.)

Going a little farther afield in Delaware County the editor of the “Local News” column says of Swarthmore College: “Any one that has not seen this handsome college should take a trip that way as soon as they can. We cannot give the dimensions of the building nor rightly describe the grounds by merely driving by them. We know that it is a school for boys and girls and we think it is a Friends School. Some one that knows more about it will please favor us with a better local. This is another of the adornments of Delaware County. The building is massive.”

(If someone later favored the editor with “a better local” you columnist has not as yet found it. The above seems a little inadequate as the description of the beginning of one of the best known colleges in Delaware County, indeed, in this whole section of the country.)

That “Local News” was not without its humor is evidenced by the story under the title “A Man Forgets his Child.” It seems that “a gentleman, accompanied by two ladies and four children, got off at Villanova, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, with the ladies and three of the little ones, while the other remained quite forgotten and fast asleep on one of the seats. The father was apprised of his neglect by one of the passengers as the train was leaving the station. The bell was pulled and we stopped again, and ye forgetful parent rushed frantically into the car, seized the little slumberer in his arms amid roars of laughter.”

Seventy-five years ago a columnist of the “Weekly Wayne Gazette” wrote of the new year of 1872 just coming into being: “It is midnight! Like a strange dream, warped with troubles and woofed with blood, the year eighteen hundred and seventy one has vanished over the brink of the Great Precipice, and around the corner–the bead in the stream of time–with merry bells we hear the coming of the Happy New Year. Still clinging to the bank while so many have gone by and down forever, waiting for the wave which shall unloose our hold, let us, in fancy, weave a mantle of silk from the dirty blood-stained rags of the past . . . One short year! It seems but like yesterday since we stood at the christening of the one now dead and on its threshold laid our varied gifts–a bundle of plans, hopes, promises and expectation of the future so many are ever dreading.”

Though it is a little difficult to follow our columnist of a bygone era with his many intricate and confusing figures of speech, we gather he was pleased neither with the year 1871 just ending nor with the prospects for the year 1872 just beginning. Indeed it took two columns to express all he felt! However the poet, writing in that same issue of the “Weekly Gazette”, had a much cheerier outlook as witnessed by the concluding verse of a long poem appearing on the front page:

“Whether we greet it with a smile
Or with the falling tear
Thank God for all, and from our hearts
Welcome the glad New Year.”

For the editors of the paper the year 1871 appears to have been a good one as they take stock of it with “the tin horns still blowing” under their window as they went to press . . . to remind them that “the holiday times have not yet passed away.” For the year had seen the birth of the newspaper for its three editors, John Campbell, Miss Sallie B. Martin and Miss Leta B. Bittle–and it had seen not only its birth, but its growth from a hand written sheet to a four page weekly which was “copied by leading journals throughout the States”–a fact which in the future should add “a deal of new energy to the pens and pencils” of these writers.

On December 23, 1871, the “Gazette” was presented to its readers in its new “Holiday Clothes” and “with bright and cheery face” bespoke for its many friends “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” These “holiday clothes,” which continued from that issue on, were the elaborate designs and pictures in the heading as described in last week’s column–up to that issue the simple heading of “Wayne Weekly Gazette” in large lettering, with a small design, under the word “Weekly” had sufficed. An editorial in this issue of December 23 states that “the increasing amount of readable matter accumulating upon our table, and the growing acquaintance of our paper among a reading and thoughtful people demands that our columns be again enlarged for their accommodation. As we are desirous of doing our duty in this age of ‘telegraphic living’ we must needs be up to the times in our labor of good to the people, at which hands it always finds a hearty welcome.”

So much for the year 1871 from the viewpoint of the “Wayne Weekly Gazette”, and so much for its good resolutions for 1872.

With Christmas but two days away as the paper went to press on December 23, a goodly amount of space was devoted to that happy season. There is a quaint two column cut of Santa about to descent a chimney that for once is pictured as large enough for his portly frame. Donner and Blitzen and all the other reindeer are there with “the sleigh full of toys.” And below the picture is the well known “‘Twas the Night before Christmas” with not a word of all its many verses omitted. There is a seven verse poem entitled “Christmas Carol” and another called “Little Children, Can You Tell.” There are “Christmas Side-Views” written for the “Gazette by the Reverend T. Hork.

Your columnist looked almost in vain for accounts of Christmas celebrations in churches and school. There is, however, one story of a Sabbath School party in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lower Merion where “the youthful army, with their many warm friends, filled the church to repletion”. The account of the Christmas celebration in the school is worthy of almost full quotation. Under the title of “Kris-Kringle” the “Gazette” says:

“On Friday before Christmas St. Nicholas made sure of his visit to Wayne Lyceum School. Fire had been put out, and Kris had contrived to get down through the stove pipe in the absence of the old-fashioned chimney. We are not surprised that he comes from his solitude at least once a year to make himself happy with the sight of many children; and we know he will never want to discontinue his visits to the happy place of Wayne. Kris had trimmed the room with evergreens . . . there were gifts of beautiful figured candies and boxes of fruit . . . with a neat little speech a leader from the ranks of the children presented to the teacher a handsome gold pencil and pen and case.”

And with two verses of a poem written by ” J. T. S.” in the January 6 issue of the “Gazette” on the subject of “New Year’s Day” we close our account of the holiday season of seventy-nine years ago in Wayne.

“Poets have o’er it snug
Bells have been o’er it rung
Guns by eager watchers shot
As ‘old and ‘new’ changed about.
Be cheerful, unhappy soul
You will reach a happy goal
Ere many another year
Is laid on the dreadful bier.”