In 1935, the Lancaster Daily Eagle, the precursor to the Eagle-Gazette, unveiled a new series, Short Stories of Fairfield County.
Written by Myron T. Seifert, the series debuted in the Sept. 4, 1935 edition and ran through the rest of that year.
The introduction to the series stated that Seifert was originally from Bremen, although at the time he lived in Columbus and was a teacher at a high school there. He was also the former high school principal in Bremen.
With an interest in history, he wrote a series on the early history of Columbus and Franklin County that appeared in the Columbus Citizen.
Then one day, he walked into the Eagle’s office for a chat and told the editor how he had recently dug up a mass of data about Fairfield County and its towns from the archive of the state library and the state archaeological museum in Columbus. The paper agreed to run Seifert’s series, and it began with “The Famous Lottery of Town Property.”
In all, Seifert produced more than 80 articles for the Daily Eagle.
Our current-day historian Joyce Harvey even wrote about Seifert and his series in 2019.
His series includes how various areas of the county came to be and other nuggets of information, such as the first courthouse.
In 1950, when the Eagle-Gazette published its Sesquicentennial Anniversary Edition, the series was repurposed to run once more so another generation could hold on to the legacy.
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, and we look back at our own history, the Eagle-Gazette once again offers up these pieces of history. We have made digital clippings of the series, which can now be found in a gallery at LancasterEagleGazette.com.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Early Fairfield County history for a new generation
Reporting by Tonya Shipley, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette / Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tonya Shipley, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette | USA TODAY Network
