1922 :: Rockdale Woman has an Old Paper

Dallas Morning News. Rockdale Woman has an Old Paper. Copy of Galveston News of June 6, 1888, has Much of Interest Now. 

Special to The News. Rockdale, Texas. -- An interesting relic of the early days of Rockdale is a copy of the Galveston Daily News of June 6, 1888, the paper having been carefully preserved by Mrs. B.B. Baxter, widow of the late B.B. Baxter, well-known cotton factor of Rockdale in its earlier days. Mrs. Baxter lived here for the last forty-seven years, having reared a large family of sons and daughters, including B.B. Baxter of Fort Worth, E.F. and Dr. T.D. Baxter of Chilton, Charles L. Baxter of Chicago and Mmes. W.M. Wells of Morgan, Texas, and W.D. DeGrassi of Amarillo.

Doubtless the paper owes its long life, for a newspaper, to the fact that it contains a column write-up of the most disastrous fire which destroyed the Mundine Hotel, a three-story brick structure, causing the loss of life which led the reporter to say, "It almost surpasses human conception as to a building with such numerous avenues of egress that of thirteen people only two should have escaped. The only rational theory advanced is that the fire originasted about the staircase in the first story, and a comparatively small space being to the top of the house operated as a flue, filling the house with a volume of smoke so dense that the inmates were only awakened to suffer almost instant suffocation."

Then, as now, The News ran a column called "State Press," under which caption were numerous comments and quotations from various State journals, some of which have long gone the way of all flesh. Among those quoted are the Rockdale Messenger . . . Dallas Morning News. February 20, 1922.