LIBRARY TALK – MARCH 30, 2023
From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
Another ‘day in the life of’ postcard. The brick building to your left is the church that was then the movie theater, then burned down and is now the location of the laundromat on the corner of Market and 2nd Street. The church is the Centenary Methodist church with its steeple still intact. What we find interesting are the buildings in what is now the front yard and parking lot of the church! Looking at the Sanborn maps, the building on the church corner of Market and Second was a bakery with an oven attached to the rear of the building from 1884-1895. In 1884 it was the Fisher’s Vienna Bakery “all goods fresh, pure and cheap”, and in 1886 there was a name change to “new Vienna Bakery” with not only baked goods, but candies, groceries and tobacco products.
Next to it was a meat store, then dwellings going down Second and up Market. By the next Sanborn map of 1904, no longer a bakery, and by 1920 says repair shop. The pump that the boys are hanging around shows up on the Sanborn maps as well—in 1884, 1890 and 1895 it is listed as a well and pump. 1904 shows just a well, and by 1920, gone. The fence on the left was in front of the public school, and just past the fence but before Market Street was the town hall—both set back and out of the picture. No date on the card.
For those of you who visit our newspaper archives online, the search now includes Adams Co. News (1890-1892, 1928-1981), Manchester Signal (1897-1987), Adams Co. Record (1903-1920) and a few very scattered issues of other Adams County papers. The years listed, sigh, we wish they were complete, but they are not, it was all that we could find to send out to be digitalized. However, it did add thousands of pages to help you in your local history search, be it genealogy, events or just fun browsing. Haven’t tried it out? Go to our website www.ripleylibrary.com, select newspaper archives of Ripley, Ohio, then to ‘access the newspaper archives’ and have fun! Have any questions on how to best use the site, give us a call, we’d be happy to help.
