Monday, May 28, 1917
An elderly inmate at the Saratoga County Jail drops dead while on a light work detail this morning, The Saratogian reports.
James Smith, a 70 year old Stillwater resident, was serving a three-month sentence for public intoxication. A repeat offender, he had spent time in jail last winter.
“Smith, because of his age, was not given heavy work,” a reporter explains. Saratoga County Sheriff William J. Dodge assigns prisoners garden work as part of the wartime effort to increase the nation’s food supply.
“The man had been engaged all the morning in holding up one end of the marking line while other prisoners were planting,” the report resumes, “Suddenly he rose from the sitting posture he had been occupying, stretched and dropped dead.”
FATAL ACCIDENT
Hadley town assessor George A. Evens, who also serves on the town board of education, is killed this afternoon when the car he’s riding in with two other assessors tumbles down an embankment at Wolf Creek.
Assessor Reuben Lyman Wheeler owns the car and is driving the men home from a three-day business trip when the accident takes place.
“They had reached a point between John H. Dority’s residence and the school house when, according to the story told by Mr. Wheeler, the front wheels of the car were thrown out of the road by a rut and before he could bring them back again the machine crashed through a guard rail and down the embankment, landing upside-down on a pile of rocks.”
The car lands in such a way that Wheeler can slide out from under the overturned vehicle and lift the vehicle off the other men, but it’s too late to help Evens, who dies at the scene from a crushed chest. Assessor Joseph George is taken to Saratoga Hospital to be treated for a scalp wound and internal injuries.
SARATOGIAN CUP
After School 4 retired the original Saratogian Cup by winning three scholastic league baseball championships in a row, publisher John K. Walbridge donated a new cup for this year’s champion.
The new cup may also end up in School 4’s permanent collection. The undefeated Spring Street boys clinch their fourth consecutive title today with a 10-9 nail-biter over School 2.
School 4 jumps out to a 5-0 lead in the first inning, but School 2 doesn’t quit. Trailing 6-1 after six, they take the lead with six runs over the next two innings, only to see School 4 score four in the bottom of the eighth. Even then, School 2 almost ties the game in the top of the ninth.
– Kevin Gilbert
