90 Years Ago in Middle Georgia: Record enrollment at Mercer; horse and car collide

The news in Middle Georgia 90 years ago today included word of record enrollment at Mercer University and a scandalous claim of insurance fraud in Fitzgerald, where a man was accused of faking his death in a fire.

The man, 35-year-old Harry K. Sligh, was arrested in Los Angeles on Jan. 4, 1927. The Telegraph on the morning of Jan. 5, 1927, reported that he faced charges that he tried to “swindle” an insurance company after what were thought to be his bones were found in his burned barn in September 1926.

Meanwhile, in Macon, Mercer University’s winter term saw a record enrollment of 577 students.

News out of east Macon was that a young man named Gordon Burns was feared “murdered and thrown in the river,” the newspaper reported. Burns, 20, had not been heard from since before Christmas.

Over in Dublin, a horse that belonged to the Dixie Construction company was killed after its leg was broken in a car wreck. According to a dispatch in The Telegraph:

While giving the horse exercise, its rider became tangled in an automobile traffic jam on the street, and when the horse dodged one car it stepped in front of another. The second car knocked the horse down and broke one foreleg, although the car was running slow, and making every effort to stop.

Front pages in those days were crammed full of news items from across the globe. Sometimes more than two dozen brief stories appeared on the eight-columned page. One that topped the page that day came from Indianola, Iowa: “Teacher Accused of Telling Dirty Tales to Pupils.”

This story was originally published January 5, 2017 at 1:02 PM with the headline "90 Years Ago in Middle Georgia: Record enrollment at Mercer; horse and car collide."