- Virgil And Hamilton -
“A survey taken of Virgil, in 1910 found the following facts about the town.
Eight general stores, one hardware store, one drug store, one physician, two blacksmith shops, one livery barn, one meat market, one boarding house, one restaurant and one barber shop. The population of the town was about 100.
There were two Churches, Methodist and U.B. There was 1000 feet of cement sidewalks. There was a school house and telephone exchange. There was a branch of the Santa Fe railroad that ran from Madison on south through Quincy and on to Toronto.
The following two articles were found in the 1915 Hamilton Grit titled “About Assessors.”
Verily the way of the assessor is hard. He goeth forth of a morning with his shoes polished and the mud scraped off his pants. He returneth at night looking like a new dug spud and his soul hangs out of one pocket with a look of world-weary disgust. It is not enough that the weather and road conspire against him? And yet he must endure and wink the other eye when people tell him all the watches and jewelry about the house is brass, that the automobile is just a pile of junk which they don’t intend to use again( until the roads are good,) that all dogs seen about the premises belong to the neighbors- “just a hanging around’ cause we butchered day before yestidy.” that etc. ad infinitum. If a man wants to hold his faith in his fellows, he would better let the assessor job alone.
The second article was titled “Madison Child Lost.” A little two-year child of Clarence Martin, east of Madison, got lost Sunday on the prairie over-night, until found Monday morning by a party of searchers. To save their kafir corn both father and mother were running machines Sunday afternoon cutting it, each think the other had the child. When night came, they discovered their loss, and after searching awhile themselves, called in the neighbors who spent the night looking for the babe. When found, the child was apparently unharmed by the night’s exposure.
A 1917 summary of Santa Fe railroad cars shipped out of and into Hamilton in 1916 follows: 394 cattle, 45 hogs, 54 hay, 1 horse and 7 walnut logs. Car loads brought into Hamilton: 190 cattle, 38 coal, 10 lumber, 14 sand, 10 cement, 13 flour, 16 feed, 28 corn, 4 oats, 2 implements, 8 cotton seed cake, 6 salt, 17 miscellaneous and 9 ice.
A November 1917 article appeared in the Hamilton Grit referring to the shortage of coal in Hamilton due to the United States involvement in WWI. The fuel situation is serious here as well as elsewhere in Kansas. The dealers tell us their orders are turned down and that they do not have the least idea when they can get in coal. If Hamilton people suffer it will be from a lack of organization in getting fuel that is abundant in easy hauling distance of town. There is plenty of wood that can be worked up from one to six miles of town, and a fair sort of coal west of town six or eight miles. However, if this fuel stays where it is until a blizzard from Medicine Hat sweeps down over Kansas, it will be too late then to keep a good many families from feeling its icy breath, and families, too, with little children. If no more coal comes to town this winter than is now in the bins of early buyers, five hundred loads of wood will not be more than is needed before spring to keep all comfortable.
Farmers are getting to the end of their very busy season now, and those with wood on their lands, can not only make fair money, but do a Christian act in seeing that this fuel is brought to town now, not when real bad weather comes.
(About three weeks after this article appeared in the paper, three car loads of coal came in on the Santa Fe railroad.)”
