Bits of Information from 1894

 In a Special Illustrated Edition of The Crittenden Press, dated August 9, 1894 here are some "Bits of Information" that was published about our town and county.  Today, Feb. 3, that was 131 years ago.

• In 1893 we produced 2,315,070 lbs of tobacco.
• We have a church for each 289 inhabitants.
• The county has 76 acres of land for every voter.
• We have 6,668 white voters and 154 colored.
• The average price of land, as listed for taxation, is $6.50.
• We have sulphur and chalebyate water in great abundance.
• There are three saloons in the county, only one to every 4,520 people.
• Forty of the teachers in Crittenden have first class, first grade certificates.
• Last year we had 8,481 acres in wheat.  The '93 corn crop amounted to 600,000 bushels.
• There are six Masonic in the county; Marion, Shady Grove, Mt. Zion, Hurricane, Liberty and Dycusburg.
• The Ohio Valley rail road runs diagonally across the county, a distance of twenty two miles.  It has six stopping places in the county
• Crittenden has had one legal execution; that was forty years odd years ago, and one man has suffered death at the hands of a mob.
• There are 67 school houses in the county.  If they were all collected into a village and people with the four thousand children who annually attend school, wouldn't it be a merry time?
• While the Ohio river forms our entire northern boundary, more than twenty miles, the Cumberland affords ample shipping facilities on the south west, and Tradewater navigable part of the year, takes out coal, and other products on the east.  These water high-ways affords the cheapest transportation in the world.
  
• There are forty-eight churches in the county, divided among the denominations as follows:  Fourteen Missionary Baptist, four General Baptist, one Primitive Baptist, eleven Southern  Methodist, four Methodist, two Campbellites or Christian, eight Cumberland Presbyterian, three Presbyterian and one Universalist
• Recently coal has been discovered in two places within three miles of Marion, and if the veins prove profitable we will have very cheap fuel, although our coal now costs but little.

 One of the best evidences of the fact that we have a good county, is the return of so many who go out to grow up with country. 

• Early in the spring a party of twenty went to California, all are now back except one family.
•   Two years ago Manuel Stephens, Charlies Haynes, Sam Thurman, J. M. Cain and Ed Haynes, young men, all sought the Eldorado of the golden gate; all are not back in good old Crittenden except one.  
• Ex-circuit clerk, W.J. L. Hughes, went to Kansas and remained some years, he is now happier in Crittenden than he was in Kansas. 
•  Silas McMurry went west to come back and is now a prosperous citizen of Crittenden.  
• Mr. C. S. Nunn went to the State of Washington to locate.  You will see his handsome face in this paper as an admirer of our plain, good old county. 
• H. M. Cook sought a fortune in Tennessee, but somehow he was pleased to get back to Marion.  
• Then there is Mr. R. E. Pickens, after a sojourn of six year in Texas, he again became a good citizen of Marion.  
• Mr. S. F. Crider got back from Kansas a few years ago, completely broke; now he owns one of the best farms in the county. 
•  Then we might mention W. D. Haynes; he went to Kansas with his family, but he didn't stay by a large majority.  
• W. B. Yandell, the dashing chairman of the Republican county committee, spent a few years in the northwest, came  home and married and settled down in God's country. 

 Scores of others might be mentioned, but these stand as living monuments, epistles to be read by all men, testifying to the worth of our county.