100 years ago in Gallup

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The wait is over.

The winner of the oratorical contest held on Dec. 19, 1908, was — drum roll, please — Miss Agnes McVicker.

Gallupians were all atwitter about the event and awed about her speech on “New Mexico.” She is now going to Albuquerque to give the same speech on Dec. 28 for the New Mexico InterCollegiate Oratorical Contest.

There is no mention in Gallup newspapers a century ago about how well she fared in that competition, so it’s assumed she didn’t win or place.

For the record, Miss Marjory Harrison came in second in the Gallup speech contest. Her speech was on “Lessons from the Lives of Great Men.”

There was good news that week for members of the Lebanon Lodge of Free Masons in Gallup.

Their lodge was destroyed a few months before by fire and there were in the midst of erecting “a handsome and comfortable new building” that they could use for their meetings.

The master of the lodge, T.C. DeShon, came up with a bright idea on how to raise the money for a new building.

He sent letters to all the prominent Free Masons in the territory offering to send them a Navajo blanket which has the emblems of the Free Masons woven on it as a souvenir.

To get it, all a person had to do was donate $6 for the building and furnishing fund.

“Many Free Masons are contributing and the chances that Gallup lodge will soon get enough money for its new building and new furnishings are very good,” one of the local papers, The Elk, reported in its Dec. 19, 1908, issue.

Of course, anyone who still has one of those Navajo blankets in good condition would probably be able to get a lot more than $6 nowadays.