PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 Received an email this week asking for any info on living descendants of a Theo Torgerson. Here is all I have on him from one of my 2008 newsletters: 1923 – Ardmore Wall Paper and Paint Company, owner Theo Torgerson (1859-1946) opposite Ardmore Hotel at…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 A few weeks ago I mentioned a photo I had misplaced on my computer of a baptism taking place at Rock Crossing Creek south of Ardmore years ago.  Rock Crossing Creek is a few miles west of I-35 at the Carter/Love county line.  This week…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 We have mentioned several times the past few years about the Great Hanging of 1862 in Gainesville, Texas.  Local townspeople took the law into their own hands, turning into a lynch mob, and hanging 40 suspected Unionist, and shooting two more who tried to escape.…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 Ardmore’s old St Agnes Academy on E Street SW was razed this week.  It was originally built in 1898 and was located next door to St Mary’s Catholic Church.  Some years later the building was moved across the street to 118 E SW. https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos14a/StAgnesAcademy031114.jpg Here…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 We talked a couple weeks ago about the old Park Theater on Main Street being razed to make way for a new office building.  As of today it it pretty much history, just a memory left. https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos14a/OldParkTheater030614.jpg I guess there is hardly a soul in…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 Back in March of 1996 I created a webpage about the 1915 Big Explosion in Ardmore. Not long after I made that webpage someone sent me a link to a newspaper article printed in the Fort Wayne, Indiana newspaper. The article gave additional facts that were…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 This week the Oklahoma Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association came out with their Winter journal commemorating their 100th year. Its full of old photos and stories from bygone years. If you into law enforcement history and can get your hands on this centennial edition, I encourage you…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 The saying goes, you can never eat just one. In this week’s Mailbag below there is mention of a potato chip factory on C Street SE in the 1940s operated by a Mr. Skipworth. When Frances Dunlap sent in the email about the Skipworths, it…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 I received the following email this week: Butch, I found your article about Bill Dalton Phillips and his relation to the DALTON family.https://oklahomahistory.net/newsletters/ttnewsOCT05.html You and I have been a victim of what I have named “The Bea Elizabeth Dalton Hoax”http://mykindred.com/cloud/TX/Documents/BeaElizabethDaltonHoax/ There is no one named…

PO Box 2, Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402 Email:  butchbridges@oklahomahistory.net Phone: 580-490-6823 Lugert, Oklahoma… the town beneath the lake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKsv7yxhgdM  Before the 1931 trial of former county attorney Andrew Hardy, Deputy Sheriff Con Keirsey, the lead investigator in the Andy Hardy trial, was shot in the chin making an arrest at Healdton. The undersheriff was shot in…