Snapshot of History by Mike Avitt

I took this week’s photo on May 27, 2025 and, although I’ve written about this building or Lefty’s three times prior, I earnestly enjoy writing about anything connected to Randolph Beall. Thomas F. Armstong started a Mount Ayr newspaper called the Weekly News on April 4, 1892. It was located at 113 N. Taylor and…

I love it when I get a new (to me) photograph. Sandy Moon posted this picture on Facebook and I was all over it! I knew who it was, when it was, and where it was. Let’s start with the woman in front. She was Bernice Marie (Jackson) Moon and was born to Mr. and…

Homeowners often ask me about information and photos concerning their property. They want to know when their house was built and who first lived there. I want to know those things, too, so let’s look at what I know and what I don’t know. This week’s picture came with the information “Wilson’s boarding house.” The…

German was the last name of the family that owned the hotel. This hotel would briefly become a sanitarium, but allow me to build up the story. Last week I spent the day with Fred Stark in Washington, Iowa. Fred is a former teacher (1964-1973) in the Mount Ayr School District. In the 1960s, Fred…

I am a phillumenist, that is, I collect matchbooks and matchboxes. I began collecting casually in 1974 and aggressively in 2002. It was in 2002 I joined Rathkamp Matchcover Society and learned how to collect, store, and display matchcovers. In phillumeny, the hobby of collecting matchcovers, it is common to remove the staple and combs…

This week’s picture is a photo taken of a “linen postcard.” These types of postcards had a cloth-like finish and were most popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. “Linens” were colored with dyes and inks. Color photography existed, but was too costly for small-town postcards. The back of the postcard tells us the Clinton…

David Pugh took this week’s photo in the early 1990s. David took many pictures of Mount Ayr’s business district in the 1990s and he loaned them to me in 2005. I was to keep the duplicates and copy the single photos, which I did. He passed away in 2006. The hotel was closed in 1985…

This week’s photo comes courtesy of Nancy Thompson and shows the Mount Ayr Hotel in 1928. The hotel was started in 1865 or 1866 at 116 E. Madison St. by Francis (Frank) Ellis and his wife Susan. It lasted until 1985. I don’t have much info on the hotel until the early 1870s because my…

I have further information on the ghost town of Eugene which was located halfway between Shannon City and Tingley. I stumbled upon an old ledger which contains the secretary minutes of the Eugene United Presbyterian Church beginning in 1872, before the Eugene U. P. Church was built in 1874. But, let’s go back to 1858. A…

I received a book from Lora Stull of the Mount Ayr Record News I had never seen before. It was a compilation of biographies first published in the Ringgold Record newspapers of 1880-81. I knew of the biographies scattered through the Ringgold Record newspapers, but was unaware of the book put together by Lena Saville…