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1919: Griswold Street plant destroyed by fire

This week in history

99 years ago in 1919:

• Fire of an unknown origin broke out in the plant of the American Block and Manufacturing Co, in the Board of Trade addition near Griswold Street. Flames burned the buildings to the ground, causing the total loss of building and equipment to the company. The loss was estimated at $50,000 and was covered by insurance. A large crowd of people was attracted and witnessed the burning of the two practically new buildings, including a machine shop and a warehouse used for manufacture of webco ground brass seated unions and cargo blocks.

The company, largely belonging to stock holders from Warren, was to commence immediately on the erection of new buildings on the same site.

50 years ago in 1968:

• Hundreds of local persons were on hand at a campaign rally in Youngstown, when third-party candidate George Wallace, seeking the support of organized labor, accused Vice President Hubert Humphrey of deliberately “inaccurate and misleading” statements in what he called a campaign of “fear and misrepresentation.” Wallace addressed a group of protesters of the former Alabama governor who were hissing and booing as he spoke from the Stambaugh Auditorium steps, while another group of youth presented him a Bible to use if he was to be “sworn in as president.”

In his effort to take the labor votes away from Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee, Wallace characterized himself as a lifelong friend of the workingman with a record of “unbroken opposition to antilabor legislation.”

25 years ago in 1993:

• With 12 school tax issues and a lineup of changes on their local boards of education, a large chunk of the decisions facing voters around the county centered around education.

Voters in Warren, Champion and Brookfield were looking to rescue their financially troubled districts while officials in Joseph Badger School District were looking to pass a 0.75 percent income tax levy to avert an impending crisis there in levies that had all been previously defeated.

The Board of Education in Niles was looking to oust a superintendent and four challengers were competing in Champion.

Warren City Schools were looking to repair buildings and eliminate debt with two levies. Improvements in the Girard City Schools and funding was the target of districts including LaBrae, Lakeview, Bristol, Jackson-Milton, Liberty and Maplewood.

10 years ago in 2008:

• Volunteers pushed through the damp and chill of Make a Difference Day helping to create the new Women and Children’s Center of the Warren Family Mission.

Members of the Warren Junior Women’s League, Warren Juniorettes and the Niles Presbyterian Youth Group raked and pulled weeds and trimmed branches at the former site of the New Life Maternity Center on old state Route 82.

Peggy Boyd, chairman of the league’s conservation and public affairs committee, said the groups showed up to assist the mission in readying the center but that was not the limit to what they were willing to do.

“This will be a lifetime project for the league because it is for women,” she said.

— Compiled from the Tribune Chronicle archives by Emily Earnhart

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