Family and local history for Skidmore and northwest Missouri.
For those wishing to compare their telephone bills to those of our Skidmore, Missouri ancestors, here are the rates published in the Skidmore News, June 15, 1916, page 1: Revised Telephone Rates The following are the revised telephone rates, effective… Read moreRevised Telephone Rates, 1916
Opinion piece about telephones from an exchange, as reprinted in the Skidmore New Era (Skidmore, Missouri), 1907.
Brief report of a scuffle at the Mutual telephone central office in 1907, thanks to the Carden City Items published in the Skidmore New Era newspaper (Skidmore, Missouri).
Skidmore was an up-to-date place in 1901. Not so different, really – we have Google fiber, they had telephone wires. This progress report appeared in the August 16, 1901 Standard on page 1: Hanamo Improvements. H. E. Ralston, with a… Read moreHanamo Improvements
Long before YouTube, long before iTunes, we had a desire to connect with music from afar. From the November 4, 1902 Skidmore Standard, page 1: Unique Entertainment. Next Saturday afternoon at 2:30 o’clock the Bell Telephone Co. will give an entertainment… Read moreTele-entertainment
As announced in the December 13, 1917 Skidmore News: Hoagland-Armstrong Announcements have been received by friends of the contracting parties announcing the marriage of Miss Beulah Hoagland and Mr. Roy Armstrong on Sunday, December 2, at the home of the… Read moreThe Hello Girl Gets Married
More business news from the January 16, 1919 edition of the Skidmore News, page 1, of course: Telephone Meeting The consolidated Telephone Company held its annual meeting in the Opera House Tuesday. The treasurer’s and secretary’s reports showed the company… Read moreTelephones, 1919
If you wanted to know who visited whom, when the next ice cream social would be held, how the Skidmore baseball team fared that week, what trips the owner of the paper had taken, or what was on sale at… Read moreSomething Doing in the Telephone Business
The reporting of the Skidmore News sometimes leaves modern readers wondering about the story-behind-the-story – and sometimes leaves little doubt about the editor’s thoughts on the matters reported. Here’s some fine reporting from the front page of the April 13,… Read morePolitics and Telephones
It can be hard for our cell phone generation to fathom a world in which telephone calls involved a lot more than speed dial and text messages were things you wrote on paper and put in the mail. As this… Read moreUnnecessary Telephone Calls