My local paper is published weekly and is, I suppose, a typical small-town paper. There are lots of mentions of the local High School and Youth sports teams, the goings-on of the fire department, rescue squad, Moose Lodge, Eagles Nest, VFW, and so on, and a police blotter full of seemingly every single call the department responds to, which is admittedly not many. They even publish the menu for the public schools for the upcoming week.

One of the features of the paper is reprints of articles from what was the local newspaper in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This week, in addition to articles on the Bussard-Beans wedding, which was attended by many “fashionable people”, a long article on the move of the newspapers printing plant from one building to another, a local woman who was suffering from a severe bout of rheumatism, the launch of the new trolley car extension, and several “personal mentionings”, was this item:

April 19, 1907
NEW LIQUOR LICENSE LAW FOR THIS COUNTY
BURKITTSVILLE TO GO DRY

The new liquor license law for Frederick county, enacted at the last session of the legislature, will go into effect on the first of next month. The law, which required applicants for licenses to secure the indorsement of freeholders residing in the neighborhood where saloons are to be located and imposes restrictions regarding proximity to churches and schoolhouses, will put some saloon-keepers out of business. Others, because of a general understanding that the Anti-saloon League will scrutinize all applications and enter objections where there is an opportunity, are on the anxious bench.

We understanding [sic] Burkittsville will go dry as a result of the law—a condition long desired by the better class of citizens. The saloon-keepers who have been doing business there have been unable, we learn, to secure the proper signers. From all other sections of the county, petitions are coming in to the Court against the issuing of certain licenses, and nothing is being left undone to by the temperance people to close up “rum holes” wherever it can be done under the new law.

Up to April 1st, 57 applications for licenses to date from May 1 had been filed, and April 20 is the date set as a limit for the filing of remonstrances. As stated in THE REGISTER two weeks ago, there are seven applications for licenses for places in the village of Knoxville, which has about 250 inhabitants. Knoxville is not far from the railroad town of Brunswick, which is a local option town, and the Knoxville saloons do a big business.