May 14
In 1997, house movers hoisted the Jane Ross Reeves Octagon House from a field west of Wilkinson and began the ride to downtown Shirley, close to the town’s Depot Museum and the former office of late longtime doctor Ralph Wilson.
May 15
In 1935, members of the Hancock County Bar discussed a recent Supreme Court opinion that reversed a ruling in a criminal case because no women were part of the jury. No women had sat on Hancock County juries so far. “No accommodations are provided for women in the jury room and for that reason perhaps more than any other none have been called to serve,” read the story.
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May 16
In 1924, downtown Greenfield motorists noticed street commissioners had painted new parking lines overnight along Main Street between Pennsylvania and Spring streets. The new lines were for “flat-to-curb” parking. While parallel parking reduced capacity, it was also hoped to relieve the congestion caused by narrowing the street with angled parking.
May 17
In 1918, Teddy C. Brewer, 20, died from wounds suffered the day before while defending the front-line trenches in Germany. The Greenfield resident, once a Daily Reporter carrier, served in the U.S. Army and became of the first of at least eight Hancock Countians to die in World War I.
May 18
In 1999, moviegoers began lining up in the afternoon outside the Legacy 6 cinema on West Main Street in Greenfield, anticipating the showing of “Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.” By 10 p.m. more than 100 patrons were in line.
May 19
In 1919, Hancock County Council was taken to task for not yet using $400 it appropriated to prepare the courthouse so that its restrooms could be open to the public on Sundays, even as the rest of the building was closed. According to this day’s edition of the Daily Reporter, “People traveling through Greenfield in automobiles are apt to have a distasteful memory of the town for this lack of accommodation.”
May 20
In 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh soared over Hancock County in his Ryan NYP monoplane during a flight of seven hours, 20 minutes, from St. Louis to Long Island.
In 1935, the sale of household goods drew buyers to the Riley Home, as Julia Riley — sister-in-law of poet James Whitcomb Riley — prepared to move to California to live with a niece. A group of residents was gathering funds to buy the home, “so that it can be cared for and maintained in the future, and this association would also have liked to have kept the furnishings intact but did not have sufficient money at hand to time to do so,” according to that day’s edition of the Daily Reporter.
