Ft. Gibson Post

Vol III No 29 (the May 7th issue was No 28)

Thursday June 2, 1898 (Part 2)

Abstracted / Transcribed by Linda Haas Davenport

When the print is so faded that it cannot be read <.....> will be used . All transcription will be as found in the paper, misspellings and all

Page 1, column 5

NOW INCORPORATED.
Fort Gibson Allowed to Organize Her Municipality
     On the 20th ult Judge Springer, at Muskogee, granted the petition of the citizens of Fort Gibson asking to be allowed to organize a municipality under the status of the State of Arkansas. The town was represented before his honor by F H Nash and attorney F J Boudinot, and as no objections were raised the petition was granted.
     The papers are now on file at Muskogee and will be subject to contest until June 20th, at the end of which time, if no legal objections are proven, an election will be ordered not less than ten days later and organization completed. According to this program Fort Gibson will have her municipal election about July 1st.
     Great credit is due Mr. F H Nash for the active interest he has taken in pushing this matter to successful consumation. Now the whole town should lay aside whatever prejudice any many have and work in harmony in the selections of good, suitable men for the various offices to be filled.

DEATH OF JOHN HAAS.
     John Ellud Haas, son of our worthy townsman, J F Haas, died at his home in this city on the 21st ult. of pneumonia. The circumstances surround young Haas' death are very sad. A couple of weeks before his death he was placed in jail in Muskogee on a trivial charge. There he was divested of his warm apparel and dressed in a thin hickory shirt and a pair of overalls and a blanket and an iron bed to sleep on. This radical change caused him to contract pneumonia and before his father knew anything about his condition he was beyond medical relief. Such inhuman treatment and neglect of prisoners by the jailer at Muskogee deserves even more than the righteous condemnation of all good people.

Page 2 & 3 - preprinted

Page 4, column 1

The next annual meeting of the Indian Territory Press association will be held at Wagoner on July 8th and 9th. After the meeting is over the editors and their wives, daughters or sweethearts will go on an excursion to the Omaha exposition. An unusually large attendance is expected.

According to our Muldrow correspondence this week that town must be organized under the laws of Spain instead of the laws of Arkansas. An investigation should be made and if this is found to be true the Grand River flotila should be dispatched there at once by telegraph for the subjugation of Rear Mayor Watts and his walking squadron.

We see from an exchange that there is a housewife down in Arkansas so fastidious that she kneads bread these hot days with her gloves on. That isn't a circumstance to our condition. We need bread with our hat on; we need bread with our pants on, and if some of our delinquent subscribers don't come in and pay up pretty soon we will need bread without any pants on.

The Watts reunion at Muldrow was not as great a success this year as formerly. There were much less in attendance and but little enthusiasm. Watts has fought and lost with persistence and fortitude worthy of a better cause, and at last is about financially busted. There was a good-sized "skeleton at the feast" in Muldrow, and a still larger one in the closet at home. All is not gold that glitters with the fallen "King of the Intruders."

As the day of our coming city election draws near it behooves the citizens of Fort Gibson to case about for a good candidate for mayor. The other offices should also be carefully filled, but the mayor's place is the most important and the best man the city affords should fill it - an honest, enterprising man, who wants to see the town prosper as it should. Men with personal interests at stake should be avoided when it comes to the election.

"To be or not to be" is the question to be settled by the people of Fort Gibson. If their splendid townsite ever amounts to a row of pins they will have to wake up and begin doing something. Our unsurpassed natural advantages, pure water, healthful climate and rich land will never make Fort Gibson unless her leading business men and citizens come harmoniously together and work together for the interests of the whole town. A house divided against itself cannot stand, nor can a town divided against itself prosper. Wake Up!

Page 4, column 2

A FADING DREAM.
     One year ago this month The Post, under its present management, began its labors in Fort Gibson for publishing of what we then believed and yet believe to be by far the best natural location for a city in the whole Indian Territory. For a year we have labored hard and earnestly. We have diligently set forth the unparalelled advantages of Fort Gibson over other aspiring towns; we have erected castles (in the air), built brick blocks, paved the streets, established water-works and electric lights, and we have painted pictures (in our minds) of a great state capitol building and hear the voices of the Territory legislators who should flock here in droves to enact laws for the people. We have seen a great big black spot on the revised maps of the country representing Fort Gibson with lines of railroad branching out from it like a spider's web, and we have seen our streets and stores thronged with traders and great clouds of smoke rising from factories. For a year we have thus dreamed, worked hard and fought to keep the wolf from the door. We came here with more money than we now have and were given more support by the business men and citizens than is now being given. If our efforts in behalf of Fort Gibson have been appreciated except by a few it has been poorly shown. A few, however, and only a few of our business men and citizens have done anything to promote the interest of the town by supporting The Post as they should. This few have perhaps done and are still doing all they feel able to do, and we thank them, but without the general support of the town and community no local newspaper can long survive in Fort Gibson. Days and months and years of hard work, privation and almost starvation is enough to cause the average editor's dream of future prospects of his town to vanish like vapor and his brilliant pictures of a coming great city to fade like a June rose in the noonday sun. Thus it is that our hopes and admiration for Fort Gibson's great natural site for a city are slowly being crushed by stern and relentless poverty. Our better judgment tells us that even an editor cannot live on hopes and future promises, unless his credit at the stores is exceptionally good and his garden "truck" is plentiful.
     Support is what The Post needs, and which, if it fails to get, it will be compelled to seek in a town that is able and willing to give it.
     These are stubborn facts, and they are given, not as a bluff or to parade our poverty, but for the serious consideration of the citizens and business men of Fort Gibson.

Page 4, columns 3-4