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By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

The Main Street Bluffton building housing today’s CVS Pharmacy served the community as a retail business for nearly 125 years. Originally the building housed two businesses, one on the north side and the other on the south.

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By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Question: When did Bluffton High School first offer a girls’ basketball team?
Answer: We aren’t certain, but we are getting closer to the answer.

We’ve pushed it back to 1911, thanks to a photo in the collection of Rose Harvey, whose grandmother, Clara Fett Andrews, was on the team.

Here’s the sophomore girls’ basketball team from that year. We know this because the basketball reads “Soph – 1911.”

And, 1911 was the first year that Bluffton had its own high school building. Prior to that all 12 grades were housed in one building on Jackson Street.

This team played games either in the 1911 BHS building, where the gym eventually became the band room. Or, they played games in a building behind The Food Store which was also a roller rink. We know that boys teams played in both locations.

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By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Imagine attending a lecture in Bluffton presented by a Cheyenne speaking from the point of view of native Americans just four years after the Battle of Little Bighorn.

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By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

The 19th amendment guaranteed all American women the right to vote on Aug. 1920.

Despite that date, a brief notation in my grandmother’s diary reads: “I went to vote and Margaret and Florence went with me. Margaret is one year old, Nov. 2, 1915.”

The note with the 1915 date confused me. I knew that women did not receive their constitutional right to vote until the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

So, how could she vote in 1915?

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Word flashed over the wire that the Armistice was signed

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Bluffton celebrated the end of the Great War in an all-day-long event on Nov. 11, 1918. The Bluffton News coverage stated it was the biggest demonstration in the town's history.

Following is the Nov. 14 Bluffton News account of the Armistice. And, following that story are several additional Bluffton News reports leading up to Nov. 11.

Nov. 14, 1918
The biggest demonstration in the town’s history began Monday morning at 3 o’clock, Nov. 11, as word flashed over the wire that the Armistice was signed.

Whistles, bells and auto horns heralded the Allied victory from dawn until dark. The noise increased in volume from 3 o’clock on, and a big parade organized, marched up and down the main street Thorofare, terminating with the building of a spectacular bon fire in the square.

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The tale of Bluffton's first teenage speeding ticket

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Take a wild guess. You’ll be way off.

In which year was the first Bluffton teenager pulled over by a Bluffton police officer and charged with speeding?

Would you believe 1919?
The holders of this distinction are Raymond Stratton and Tesla “Tubby” Stearns. These Bluffton speed demons may have raced at the unheard speed, topping perhaps 15 miles per hour,  and in so doing created an incredible racket.

The story as we understand it follows from an interview we had with “Tubby” in 1989, when he lived at Mennonite Memorial Home, 70 years after the incident. First, a little background on these two potential juvenile delinquents. Stearns was a 1918 Bluffton High School graduate and Stratton was a 1919 grad. 

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