Yesteryear
 
100 years ago

Amos Bennett of Red Bank was waylaid on South Street in New York on Friday night. He was knocked insensible by a blow on the head and was robbed of $9 and a watch. His assailants were not captured.

Patrick Hackett, who went to Toledo, Ohio, a little over a year ago, where he was offered a good situation, has returned to Red Bank. He arrived in Red Bank with his family on Friday, and he says that after all there is no place like Red Bank for a man to live.

Everything was very cheap in Toledo, loaves of bread which cost eight cents here selling for four cents; chickens, full grown, selling for 25 cents each; and other things selling at the same rate. The town is low, and cellars are very shallow. The houses are damp, and Mr. Hackett says that he did not get in a house that was dry the whole time he was there. He and his family suffered from malaria constantly, and he says that most everyone in Toledo was afflicted with malaria. Quinine pills are not bought there by the dozen, for exceptional cases, as they are here, but are bought by the hundred or thousand, for use all the time.

75 years ago

J. W. Brower of Keyport will be 82 years old on Friday, and he has announced that he will be glad to receive his old friends on that occasion. With the exception of failing eyesight, Mr. Brower retains all his faculties.

Robert Crane and George Anderson of Belford met with good fortune deep sea fishing off Sandy Hook last Wednesday. They caught a big lot of weakfish which they sold for $80. Mr. Crane and Mr. Anderson are about the only Belford fishermen who have had a good stroke of fortune this season.

The Interblock Corporation has been formed by Samuel M. Davis of this place, Keyport, and the corporation will purchase Phelps Cherry and Son’s grocery store as the first link in a chain of grocery stores. They are planning to sell stock to 500 people, who will be customers of the store and receive rebates on goods purchased at the end of each six months.

The annual fair of the Port Monmouth fire company last week netted more than $1,000. The money will be used to build a combined community house and firehouse.

50 years ago

Thomas Allen Griffin of Shrewsbury, aged 21 years, and son of Elizabeth and Thomas J. Griffin, died very unexpectedly of acute indigestion Sunday night. He was taken sick at the home of his sister, Mrs. John Dickinson, and died in an automobile as he was being taken to the Long Branch hospital.

Wages of workers in our factories, on an average, have gone up two and one-third times in the last ten years. The average factory worker’s wage was $23.86 a week in 1939. Last year it was $54.91 a week.

The Keyport first aid squad wishes to train at least four persons in each block in the borough who will act as a volunteer first aid reserves. The reserve group will be part of the present squad, but members will not be required to answer routine ambulance alarms.

A first aid training program of 20 hours duration (two hours each week for ten weeks) will be conducted by the squad, which includes ten qualified instructors.