DOUBLE CHECKING – It appears that Ironton took a nosedive in the nose count…We quote from this column on Monday morning… “Ironton boosters and the Board of Trade should be prepared for bad news… “If anyone is expecting a gain in the city population when the census figures are announced they should not hold their breath”…This was verified in the newspapers yesterday.
The new census figures bring back memories of 1920 when the population of Ironton was announced…The Chamber of Commerce was sure that the city was shortchanged…E. B. Adams, then the new secretary of the chamber will perhaps recall the prompt meeting of his board of directors…
The newspapers announced that families who the enumerators had not contacted, please phone the board office in the Masonic Temple…Several did…The chamber then organized volunteers from among the members for a recount…More than 100 businessmen and checks in retail stores volunteered to take the census according to house numbers…The time was set on a Monday night between six and nine o’clock…The newspapers suggested that one member of every family remain at home to make available the information wanted.
As one of the volunteers, we were assigned “the other side of the railroad”…The territory extended from the railroad to the river from the city water works to the DT&I roundhouse…The late Leo Brumberg was our partner for the job…The territory covered First and Front Streets, and few homes between those streets on Walnut, Spruce, Pine, and perhaps a couple of other streets in that industrial section…It got so dark before nine o’clock and the dogs barked and growled at strange feet in the neighborhood, that we agreed to give it up, and early the next morning before six o’clock we completed the assignment.
Among family names recalled in that section of the city, some very nice homes, too, were the Shannons, the Wise families, Spence, Markel, Lipker, Mays, Williams, and Wagner…Millard M. Davis lives in the same location today where we knocked on his door 40 years ago…
Other names that come to mind were Frank Double, Otis Vance, Marion Pruitt, Chet Spicer, Dusty Matthews, Henry Bode, Andy Wise, and Dennis Hughes…We can’t recall the difference in the figures of the businessmen’s census over the federal figures, but it was a slight gain as we recall, but not enough to get the city over the 15,000 mark.
Analyzing the figures released yesterday with recent happenings in the city, it seems strange that a city that has just spent over two million dollars on building new and enlarged old school buildings should show a decline of 1,771 in population over a figure of 30 years ago…In other figures, this city’s population of 1960 is only 1,703 more than the 1910 census figure of 13,147…
In 1910 there were but three houses on South Ninth Street between Vine Street and the Woodland Cemetery gate…There were less than a dozen homes in all that territory above Vine Street from Sixth Street to the hill…The site of the General Hospital and many blocks around was a swamp in 1910…
Sedgwick then wasn’t a part of Ironton…The city corporation line was at Orchard Street…It would be easy to go on and on with examples of vacant land in 1910 and even in 1950 that is now covered with hundreds of homes…your guess is as good as ours about the number of folks there should be in Ironton today.
Written by Charles Collett
Huntington, WV Newspaper – May 20, 1960
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