The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
APRIL 1901 ATTESTED · the minstrel benefit for the high school library
Walkerton had an opera house, and the town's paper proves it in passing: the Walkerton Independent of 20 April 1901 reports that "the Walkerton Minstrel entertainment given in the opera house last Friday evening under the direction of Geo. W. Barnes, for the benefit of the High School library, was a marked success" — a sentence that carries three of this section's facts at once: a hall called the opera house stood and operated in Walkerton in 1901; the town's stage entertainment of the era was the community production, locally directed; and its beneficiary was the high school's library — culture raising money for culture. The building's own course — its name, its site, its builder, its end — does not appear in the record reached, and it stands in the gaps register with its settlers, the Sanborn fire insurance sheets and the Independent's full run. What prints here is the attestation, at the strength of the paper of record: in the spring of 1901, Walkerton's entertainments had a house.
Sources:
- Walkerton Independent, 20 April 1901 (the opera house entertainment under Geo. W. Barnes, for the High School library) — the paper of record, OCR at transcription strength.
- Sanborn fire insurance maps for Walkerton and the Independent run in Hoosier State Chronicles — named as the building course's settlers.