The Cornwell Collection: All the news thats fit to share

News from Opheim – particularly news that can be recognized as the Cornwell Collection – gets around.
Even if it is 80 years old.
Long in the protective hands of Gwen Cornwell and her parents, 66 precious copies of The Opheim Observer have endured far longer than the newspaper's relatively brief life in publication during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression.
They were found in an attic, wrapped in a blanket or maybe a gunny sack, moved a good 1,200 miles to Missouri and then brought back to the Hi-Line. And for decades, they've simply been stored away.
Now the fragile, yellowed treasures are going public.
“That's my purpose, to just try and share them with other people,” says Gwen, a First Community Bank receptionist, mother and “ranch wife” who lives with her husband, Bud, near Tampico.
After seeing the new “Yesterday's Courier Memories” feature in this newspaper, the Opheim native and Glasgow High alumnist called to make her cherished Observers available to the Courier. She later visited the office, carrying what could be mistaken as a large pizza delivery box. Inside were the historic papers, kept as unfolded full pages and wrapped individually in large plastic sleeves that she bought online.
For the Courier alone, the availability of the Cornwell Collection is noteworthy.  The Courier boasts bound archived volumes of several defunct newspapers dating as far back as 1904 – the Nashua Independent, Nashua Messenger, Valley County News, Hinsdale Tribune and the Culbertson Republican – but not The Opheim Observer.
Gwen's papers from 1926 to 1931 reveal that The Observer, under the professional guidance of Editor H.R. “Cy” Helland (who became a Courier institution after the Observer folded), was tightly written, cleanly edited and packed with news from near and far. Library of Congress records show that the paper was published from 1916 to 1931 and merged in 1918 with the old Glentana Reporter.
My, the stories that Gwen's papers can tell:
– Oct. 29, 1926: Opheim School District 9 announced a school census of 346 children age 5 or younger, up 37 from 1925, and of 699 from ages 6 to 20, up 138. Compare that to today's enrollment of 56 for preschool through Grade 12. The Opheim community's population change has been just as dramatic: 424 in 1930, 111 in 2000.
– Dec. 23, 1926: Montana railroad expansion was booming. Great Northern announced a $900,000, 33-mile extension from Richey to Circle. Northern Pacific announced $4 million plans for two branch lines, one from Glendive to Brockway and the other from Florence through Stevensville and Hamilton along Bitter Root River.
– Feb. 24, 1928: Legendary pilot Charles Lindbergh flew his old air mail route from St. Louis to  Chicago on one of six planes carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail, the largest shipment in aviation history.
– Nov. 9, 1928: Herbert Hoover was elected president, part of a Republican landslide in Valley County.
– June 19, 1931: A “well-dressed” and “alleged lunatic” was roaming Hinsdale, calling himself the “son of Joseph” and telling people he was a Supreme being.” He was quoted telling an intervening police officer, “You people up here won't get rain as long as you treat me this way.”
– Jan. 30, 1931: From Schafer, N.D., came a report that a mob of about 80 “grim visaged men” broke into a jail, practically destroyed it, tied up the sheriff and lynched a man who confessed to slaying the entire Haven family.
– Advertising: The Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. was promoting “voice visits” to family and friends in distant places, with day rates listed as $3.50 to Kansas City and $4 for Chicago. Lofgren & Stadig Co. – one of the automobile dealers in an Opheim business district that included banks, bars, stores and theater – was selling a Model T Chassis model in 1926 for $300 with free shipping from Detroit.
Gwen finds it intriguing that some local advertisers, such as the Markles, and news issues have carried on into modern times.
“I read (in the Observer) that the county commissioners had it on their agenda to try and keep the north-south roads open during winter and, you know, they're still trying to do that,” she says.
Gwen's late mother, Doris Rogers, gave her the Observers in the late 1980s or so because, she says, “I always had an appreciation for that old stuff.”
A little digging this past week brought Gwen more insight into the collection.
She said her father, Neal Rogers, recalls that the papers were found decades ago in the attic of a home on family farmland that was being remodeled. When the farmer and his family moved to Missouri  during part of Gwen's childhood, the papers went with them.
“He said, 'I just put a blanket around them to keep them preserved,'” she says. “Or maybe it was a gunny sack.”
Either way, it worked. For their age, many of the papers seem to be in fine, though sensitive, condition.
One mystery remains: The name Peter Hagen is visible on a number of the papers, either written in pencil or typed on tiny labels.
“No, I don't know who that is,” Gwen says. “You know, in my mind, I'm thinking that I work with a gal who's maiden name is Hagen. I don't know if they're some relation.”
Orrdinary People appears in The Glasgow Courier. Please suggest special people to Jim Orr at 228-9301 or publisher@glasgowcourier.com.