Schuler

Dear Mr. Editor: We have examined a few copies of your paper and found it to be a real up to date newspaper.  Though in its infancy, is the superior of some older ones.  It speaks for the interest of the people, and I hope it will not go behind the door to do it.  And as we have an invitation  to use all of the space in your paper we see fit, we may use more than our share, if we do you will have to manage some other way, as we do not intend to quit saying until we say all we want to said.

Now, thanking you for your kindness and courtesy, we will proceed to tell your where our little town is located.  Schuler is a strung out town on the ‘pike. Its principal business men are J. Schrek, merchant, J. F. Dougherty, M. D., F. A. Bullock, general blacksmith, H. H. Bellew, photographer, A. W. Stith, J.P.P.C., W. H. Caldwell, contractor and builder, also about 60 farmers and a full crop of preachers ? too numerous to mention.  The center of our village, (i. e.) the Portland school house, is four miles southwest of DeMossville, a point on the L & N Railroad twenty five miles south of Covington, Kentucky.  DeMossville is the shipping point for all the people of this section.  The pooling place for their tobacco, their voting place at all elections, their post office, also, the place where the great many go to purchase the necessities of life; a lodge of Masons assembled there, also a Council of Jr. O.U.A.M [a temperance group] and a union of the A. S. of E. [American Society of Equity – a farmers organization most known in Kentucky for their opposition to the American Tobacco Co.’s attempted tobacco monopoly. See item on  Night Riders, here].

For these reasons, many people are compelled to visit DeMossville, and to make things clear, it might be well for us to give the boundaries of DeMossville, as we are sure a great many are not aware of the condition of things here?  DeMossville is bounded on the north by the L & N RR, and the Licking river, and the west by Grassy Creek and a bluff fifth feet high, built on an angle of 77 ¾ degrees, on the south by a hill 1 3/16 miles long, built on an angle of 49 ¾ degrees, on the south by a “toll gate” (in Pendleton county) with a penalty of 2 ½ cents per mile for one horse and buggy and 5 cents per mile for two horse vehicles. 

Every person from this section of the county must and do pass the south boundary of DeMossville and pay the penalty, as there is no other way to enter, still we are paying a tax to insure as “free pikes,” and further, the people of this place and DeMossville had subscribed about $250 to donate the Fiscal Court to help pay for the one mile of bed rock, which we are paying so dear to drive over, that the south boundary of DeMossville might be changed ? from a toll gate to a broad and prosperous territory; inhabited by free people, who have equal rights and freedom, instead of an "unrecognized set,” who are both “taxed” and “tolled” for free “pikes”.  It might be well to add that Grassy Creek precinct votes the Republican ticket.  We notice a great many papers are boasting that 35,000 rural carriers are pulling for better roads.  Why in the name of “duty, justice and equal rights” don’t 3,200 voters of Pendleton county pull for better roads and justice to all mankind?  It is a disgrace to the county that conditions are thus, and no honor to any political party.  We again ask that we have the same rights and privileges as other parts of the county.  We have had promises; what we want is the real thing.

Unsigned letter to the editor of the Falmouth Outlook, August 16, 1907