Lacy S. McDonald manages the Genealogy & Local History Library branch of The Hayner Public Library District in Alton. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carleton College as well as a master’s degree in Library and Information Science and a Graduate Certificate in Rare Books and Special Collections Librarianship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ALTON - On October 2, 1924, Missouri Gov. Arthur M. Hyde received a letter. The letter’s author, Noble Shepard, had killed a man and woman thirty years before, was sentenced to hang, and then escaped from the Four Courts jail building in St. Louis two days before his death sentence could...
ALTON - Eight empty box cars and an empty coal car escaped from a switch on upper Piasa Street just before 10 p.m. on September 17, 1924. The driverless cars came careening down Piasa Street on the Chicago & Alton Railroad tracks to Union Depot in downtown Alton. Fred Elsner, traffic cop at 3rd...
ALTON - Alton High School’s first band gave its first official concert on September 19, 1924, at noon. The band played two numbers, “Loyalty Spirit,” a march, and “Falling Leaves,” a waltz, in front of their classmates during assembly period. The band, directed by B.L....
ALTON - On September 17, 1924, the Alton Telegraph announced that the Ocean Wave driving track had officially closed. A year before, Chester A. Murphy, Metropolitan Life Insurance agent and car salesman, had decided to build an ocean wave road on a strip of property near Bethalto. With the help...
ALTON - “You can’t have a circus without clowns and girls, and you must have plenty of both, if you have a big circus, such as the Hagenbeck-Wallace, which comes to Alton on September 8, for afternoon and night performances, with a more than a mile-long street parade at 11 a.m. circus...
ALTON - On Monday, September 1, 1924, Altonians celebrated Labor Day with a parade and big picnic in Rock Spring Park. The Building Trades Council and the Trades and Labor Assembly sponsored the “monster celebration.” The ladies’ auxiliary of the carpenters’ union decorated...
ALTON - Bernice and Clarence Geisler of the Nutwood Drainage District in Jersey County had been married for about a year when a horse trade gone bad tore them apart. Their fathers, Henry Geisler and Charles Ontis, decided to swap horses. For a time, everything was fine, but then Henry Geisler decide...
ALTON - In the summer of 1924, Altonians were excited about driving automobiles. Auto clubs sprang up all over the place, there was a car column in the Alton Telegraph, and there were picnic fundraisers to cinder dirt roads all over town. On August 11, 1924, an Alton Automobile Club presentation...
ALTON - On Sunday, August 3, 1924, the Jewish Community Home of Wood River and Alton held a fundraising picnic at Rock Spring Park. Many people from the area came out to support the cause. There were “a large number from out of the city at the picnic, and a good attendance from Alton, not...
ALTON - The Olympics has been held in Paris, France, three times now: 1900, 1924 and 2024. In 1924, athletes from the United States won 99 medals in all, 45 of them gold. Finland came second in the medal count, with 37 total, 14 gold. Americans picked up gold medals in boxing, rugby, shooting,...
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