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Historical Bluffton

24 years before Roswell

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com
 

What did the twin Gerber brothers witness flying over their farm in the summer of 1923?

The following account of their experience is a reprint from the Fall, 2019, issue of the Swiss Community Historical Society of Bluffton and Pandora “Newsletter.” 

At the bottom of this story, is one suggestion of what the brothers may have seen. This story is part of a new book to be released later this summer titled “Where Bluffton’s Ghosts Sleep.” The book is a collection of ghost stories and other unusual and sometimes unexplained events that took place in our community. Fred Steiner has compiled the book.

The story follows:

Only the sky is the limit. Happening 24 years before a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, twins Vernon and Vilas Gerber became admonished by their mother not to make up stories when they told her about something they said hovered in the sky one summer afternoon in 1923. 

The twins, born in 1912 on the family farm in Riley Township, Putnam County, would have been around 11 at the time. 

Vilas described the event this way: It happened in 1923 on a farm three miles from Pandora, where we grew up. 

On this farm were two large cherry trees. We loved cherries, so my twin brother and I climbed up in the trees. Vernon sat in one and I in the other ready to reach for a cluster of cherries. 

While in the trees I suddenly saw an object. It was cylindrical, cigar shaped, perhaps four feet in diameter. Its length I never saw or don’t remember. It appeared metallic in structure, dull gray in color. It had no wings, made no noise and just hung motionless in the air about 15 feet off the ground, 20 feet from the tree. 

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All that remains is a cemetery

Ever hear of Cannonsburg, Hassan, Webster, Armorsville…

…the story of Bluffton’s neighboring ghost towns

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

A Bluffton News item from Oct. 29, 1896, tells that J.S. Jennings of Armorsville received a letter from his cousin, William Jennings Bryan, Democratic candidate for president. 

Not quite three years later a Bluffton News legal notice published July 10, 1899, proclaimed Armorsville as “absolutely extinct.” Gone without a trace. J.S. Jennings was once a real person living in a real place called Armorsville. 

You could find it just down the county line, north of Ada. Today it’s a ghost town. At the time of its death, or extinction, there existed no mourners, no visitation, no funeral and no final words of comfort. 

None of it remains today. Even its cemetery disappeared, to where, no one knows. The graves might still be in place under a farmer’s field.

Armorsville isn’t the only ghost town on our invisible horizon. There are other places, each literally wiped off the map, existing only as spirits that once represented visions, hopes and efforts of pioneers who created them. Scant details remain of these settlements, today mostly crossroads in the country. Most of what is known of these ghost towns is buried in the pages of 1880-era county history books. 

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Our town was on the Underground Railroad

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Details in a recently found obituary of a Bluffton man who died 125 years ago could be one of the most incredible discoveries in the community’s history.

There’s no historic marker at the entrance to town and the person in this story is buried in an unmarked Maple Grove Cemetery grave, listed as old lot number 120. 

Would you believe Bluffton was a stop on the underground railroad moving African American slaves to Canada? That fact came to light  with the discovery of the obituary or Peter K. Mumma, who died here in 1898.

Mumma’s secret was well-kept as his obituary reads, from a June 1898, Bluffton News.

In a search for his Bluffton residence, an 1880 map shows Elizabeth Mumaugh (sic) owner of Bluffton lot 19, on Riley Street directly south of where Little Riley joins Big Riley Creek. An adjoining property, lot 12, owned by Elizabeth Mumaugh and Wilhelmina Eaton is on the north side of Riley Street, and today is intersected by Spring Street. Peter’s obituary lists his wife’s name as Elizabeth.

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Who started Bluffton High School street painting?

Tom Bell, member of the Bluffton High School class of 1965, wrote this story on how street painting in front of Bluffton High School first began. This story is included in the book, “A Good Place To Miss – Bluffton Stories 1900-1975.” Copies are available at the Bluffton Senior Citizens Center.

By Tom Bell

Ron “Gridley” Steiner actually masterminded the entire deployment. He recruited an unlikely group of artists to carry out his plan. Dick Herr, Larry Moser and I were selected for no obvious rhyme or reason.

We borrowed paint from our parents and mixed it all together. Barn white, porch gray and clothesline pole silver did the trick.

Security, or not getting caught, was a major concern. We knew that Carter Shisler of the police department would be on patrol. We also knew that he would cruise past the high school and use Maple Grove Cemetery as his turn around. We considered locking him in the cemetery, but since Wade Bechtel had experienced that, the police had been alternating the gates they entered.

Finally, after several creative plans were scuttled, it was decided that Larry Moser would be the lookout. He was to hide behind the ivy growing on the school.

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Don’t hitch your horse to a Bluffton fire hydrant

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Imagine being required to turn off your water line each time the fire department answered a fire alarm.

Don’t even think about hitching your horse to a fire hydrant.

Those were the rules when Bluffton’s municipal water plant opened in the late 1890s.

And, this may come as a surprise. The reason the village of Bluffton created a municipal water plant was for fire protection. It had very little to do with providing individuals with running water in their houses.

In a case you wonder, here are additional rules governing water usage in the village when the water plant first opened:

• Patrons had to immediately discontinue using water for any purpose, when the fire alarm sounded.

• It was prohibited to hitch horses to fire hydrants.

• Lawn, garden or yard sprinkling was restricted  to the hours of 5:30 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 8 p.m.

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Life in Bluffton in 1880s

Oil lamps were street lights; hogs roamed at large on Main Street; in rainy weather, the road was axle deep

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Back in the days before electric lights, running water, concrete sidewalks, pavements and other modern improvements, Bluffton presented an appearance much different than it does today. 

In rainy weather, the road was axle deep on Main Street and transportation was as much of a problem as in the country.

Places of business had board walks built in front of the stories, and these for  some reason or other had an overshoot from the roof over the pavement. 

Most of the buildings were one story affairs and many of them had “false fronts” above the roofs to lend the appearance of an upper story. On these false fronts were usually the names of the proprietors of the store.

It was not until the late 1880s that the town got oil lamps on the Main Streets. A lamp lighter was hired by the town council for the purpose of lighting the lamps at dusk, and this individual carrying a ladder about on the round of his duties was much a part of the scene as in the England of “Pomander Walk” fame.

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