By Dr. Ferrell Miller
Geary County Historical Society Board Member
“Use of Early Phone Directories Offers Clues To Local History”
It is interesting to go into our archives at the Museum and look at early telephone directories to learn about the location of a business or look at the advertisements from the past. For those who are only acquainted with searching for such information by using Google or another search engine on their cell phone or computer, there once were phone directories or books published for each resident with a phone to be able to physically look up the phone number of a person or business. Names of individuals and business were listed in alphabetical order usually with individuals in the front of the book and business in the back. Recently this writer was researching the location of a business and found the owner had started at one location, moved the business to another location and eventually closed the business over a period of several years.
However, distractions came from wanting to look at other business listings. Businesses advertised in the directories listing the type of service, location, phone number, address and in some cases their hours of operation.
In an article written jointly by Kathy Brown George, former Geary Museum Curator, and Ralph Murphy for the January 6, 1985, JC Union newspaper they shared that while looking through some scrapbooks, photo albums and schoolbooks a 1919 telephone directory was found at the Museum. This is some of what they discovered.
Local merchants were represented by large ads instead of being carried in the yellow pages. The first pages of the local 1919 telephone directory were missing up through the middle of the C’s. There were numerous home locations that were puzzling. J. T. DeVault lived at Cherry Croft, former C.H. Manley homesite; J.H. Gabby’s address was Prairie Home, also with no street location. Rural subscribers were usually listed as living on a “farm”. Four party lines were common with different patrons given a letter after the shared number. Telephone number 229 would appear four times with a one-letter suffix – a, b, g, j, x or y used to identify the subscriber.
Some of the businesses listed in the directory included: The Durland Sawtell Furniture, Undertaking at 117 W. 7th which had a phone number of 1; Hogan Milling Co, East 8th was 2; Cole Brothers Dry Goods Store, 715-717 N. Washington was 3; Bartell Barber Shop, 608 N. Washington was 4; Eisenhower Drug Store, 622 N. Washington was 8 and Miller Drug Store, 701 N. Washington was 9.
“Two Junction City Instructors Wrote And Published Their Own Song”
The late Marilyn Heldstab, former Geary Museum Director, wrote an article about a sheet of music titled “Dreaming of My Childhood Days”, which she found in the Museum’s Gift Shop one day. This is some of what she wrote.
The song was published in Junction City, Kansas by Olsson & Williams Music Co. The information on the front of the song sheet stated that C.O. Williams had written the lyrics and Phillip H. Olsson, the music. Olsson, or Professor Olsson as he was sometimes known, was the band instructor in the junior/senior high school during Marilyn Heldstab’s high school days.
C.O. Williams liked to write poetry and often wrote short verses. The copyright on the song sheet was 1926 and Olson did not come here until 1932. It is a bit confusing how the collaboration was completed.
Olsson was born in Assaria in 1891. The 1932 Junction City High School yearbook, The Pow Wow, explained his duties. “Mr. Phillip Olsson, directs the two orchestras and the band. Strange sounds sometimes issue from his studio in the old Principal’s Office, for there he teaches ambitious horn tooters and fiddlers all about sharps and flats, or whatever music is made up of.”
Both John Williams and Ada Margaret Olsson, Olsson’s daughter, agreed that “Dreaming of My Childhood” was the only song the two wrote or published. The Rotary Club was the first to hear the new song composed by the two men.
Through the generosity of John Williams, copies of “Dreaming of My Childhood” are available for purchase in the Museum Gift Shop. The Geary County Historical Society Museum is located at the corner of Sixth and Adams Streets and is open from 1:00 until 4:00 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.