Welcome back to One Century Ago, a collaboration between Patch and the .
Each week we bring you the front page of a local newspaper that covered the news in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (North Tarrytown) one hundred years ago. This front page comes from the Tarrytown Press-Record. The Press-Record was published as a weekly from 1893 to 1946 and has been preserved by the on microfilm.
Friday, August 30, 1912:
Editor of Daily News Shot at, Police Assure Him it was Imagined
Wallace Odell, editor of the Tarrytown Daily News, was pounding away at his typewriter in the office of the New York Telephone Building, writing a telegram for one of the New York papers. His concentration was abruptly broken when there was a loud crack and a glass paper weight on the desk in front of him exploded.
Wallace Odell “turned pale with fright” in the silence which followed the deafening gunshot. “Was he to meet his doom when barely started on a brilliant career? Was the flame of life to be snuffed out by the lowly bullet of some cowardly Italian? Ye gods, no!!” (The Press-Record took the liberty of quoting Odell's personal thoughts verbatim). He ducked down beneath the desk, awaiting a second gunshot, but none came. Cautiously at first, and then with frantic haste, he reached out, lifted the telephone, and dialled for the police headquarters.
Within a few minutes Officer Schneider arrived, and was greeted by a panic-stricken Odell. The policeman gazed about the office, and noting that the doors were closed and the screen on the window was unbroken, calmly said “Darned if I can see how anybody could shoot you in here, Wally.”
He picked up the remains of the glass paper weight and inspected it closely. After a few minutes he laughingly declared that nobody had tried to assassinate the newspaper editor, there had simply been a crack in the paper weight which caused it to shatter when the desk was jarred by the typewriter. When Odell protested that the noise had been too loud for that, the officer reassured him that a key in his typewriter had probably broken, and he had merely imagined that he was being shot at, “And you thought the Black Hand was after you! Gee whiz, that’s the best yet!”
Cruel Husband
Mrs. Edward Boyd, of Sheldon Avenue, entered a complaint against her husband at the police headquarters, accusing him of cruelty and attempting to shoot her.
Officer Cregier called at the Boyd residence to learn the particulars of the case, and to question Mr. Boyd. When he arrived Mr. Boyd was intoxicated, and rather than deny the charges against him, he simply promised that he would “be good” in the future. Cregier reprimanded the drunk man, threatening to lock him up if there were any more complaints, and after that the matter was dropped.
Esteemed Citizen Turns 93
On August 29th, 1912, John O. Brown of North Tarrytown celebrated passing the “ninety-third milestone on life’s journey”, and looked back on almost one century in the Tarrytowns.
Mr. Brown was born in Mount Pleasant in 1819, and lived there for a number of years before moving to North Tarrytown, where he remained. To celebrate reaching such a venerable age, he spent a happy day with his two daughters, and talked cheerfully about persons and events of three generations past.
Every day Mr. Brown took a walk in the villages, and frequently made trips across the Hudson with his friend, Captain Lyon. His friends remarked on how well he looked and expressed the hope that he would pass the century mark, to which Mr. Brown replied “I won’t make any rash promises, but I will live as long as I can.”
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