Birchardville – Selden C. Birchard received a thoroughbred Jersey bull calf from Dalton parties last evening, which will be added to his fine herd of thoroughbreds. The calf’s dam holds the world’s butter record for a cow at her age.

Montrose – Baseball! Baseball! Rain prevented our big game with Keyser Valley last Saturday afternoon but happily it proved only a postponement and incidentally enables us to offer to the patrons of base ball two big games this week, which will be played as follows: Today (Friday) August 16, Montrose vs. Camp Choconut. This is Choconut’s annual visit here and a gala day is made of the occasion. On Saturday, August 17th, comes the Keyser Valley team who boast of their ability to lower the pennant of the undefeated Camp Susquehannock team.

Great Bend – Paul Stelik, aged 35 years, an Austrian residing near Red Rock, a few miles from Great Bend, was struck by an express train Tuesday evening and killed. His mangled body was found near the tracks on the W. D. Mason farm. It is supposed when returning from Great Bend, where he made some purchases, he was struck by the fast train and instantly killed.

New Milford - A. J. Baldwin, of Chino, Cal. is a guest this week of his sister, Mrs. Eudora Millard. Mr. Baldwin, who is a former resident of this county, has been visiting at South Gibson, Susquehanna and New Milford, prior to coming here, and in a number of other places in the East since leaving California in the early summer. He plans to attend the reunion of Co. F. 141st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, which is to be held in New Milford next Thursday, and of which company he is a member. His brother, E. C. Baldwin, and wife, who went to Chino this spring, like the country, although Mrs. Baldwin is homesick for the friends and neighbors at Forest Lake. Mr. Baldwin likes the country and he has been benefited in health, he looking like a man of 55, while in reality he lacks but a year of seventy.

D. L. & W. Railroad – There is a persistent rumor that the D. L. & W. tracks which will be abandoned with the completion of the new cut-off between Clark’s Summit and Hallstead will be utilized by the projected Scranton-Binghamton trolley line. It is probable, as prominent railroad stockholders are financially interested in the new trolley.

South Montrose – The Rogers reunion was held Aug. 8 at Ed. Sheen’s. Aunt Millie, as we all call her, who is 86 years old, drove her horse six miles and back to attend the reunion, preferring to do so rather than ride in the automobile. ALSO Ross Griffis has sold his residence to Alvah Allen and will move to Oklahoma soon. We all wish Ross success in his new home. We shall miss him as station agent as well as neighbor.

Lawsville – The following teachers have secured positions in our township for the coming season: Miss Mary Downs, Lawsville; Mary Cosgriff, Stanfordville; Lulu Lindsley, Rhiney Creek; Ella Bailey, Brookdale; Julia Mahoney, Hillside; Anna Dolan, Mountain Valley.

Susquehanna – The death of Wm. Walter, aged 16 years, occurred at the Simon H. Barnes Hospital in Susquehanna on Friday, Aug. 9, 1912. The young man’s death was due to injuries received in a stone quarry at Brushville on July 12th. He was a young man highly regarded by all who knew him, having graduated this spring from the Laurel Hill Academy in the commercial course. His body was taken to the home of his aunt, Mrs. Spahn, in Oakland, Friday, and later to Catskill-on-the-Hudson for interment.

Dimock – W. G. Thornton was a caller in town Monday. Mr. Thornton, although carrying a bullet in his thigh as a memento of the Civil War, is hale and hearty and enjoying good health. He showed his soldier grit not long since by undergoing an operation for the removal of a tumor of the scalp without taking an anesthetic, the wound having since healed entirely and he anticipates no further trouble from it. ALSO W. H. Palmer has purchased a Ford touring car from Chas. E. Roberts. Mr. Roberts has sold eight Ford cars this season and claims the principal difficulty now is to secure cars, the factory output being absorbed so rapidly that the demand cannot be properly supplied.

Heart Lake – Mahon’s orchestra will give another of those popular square dances here on Wednesday evening, Aug. 21st; tickets 50 cents.

Brooklyn – Little Winston Lee Merrill, now ten weeks old, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Merrill, has six living grandmothers. The grandmothers are: Mrs. Frank Merrill, 51; Mrs. Emerson Sterling, 49; great-grandmothers: Mrs. Mary Sterling, 74; Mrs. Milo Saunders, 70, and Mrs. Julia Sloat, 70; great-great grandmother, Mrs. Sarah Beeman, 89.

Camp Choconut, Friendsville – Albert Miller, tonsorial artist, made his 12th annual trip to Camp Choconut, Friendsville, Monday. He cut 50 heads of hair that day, a job which generally two men would not care to tackle. Mr. Miller says that he always retires early the night before and leaves his nerves at home when he goes, and manages to pull through all right without “pulling hair.”

Lynn, Springville Twp. – While roofing the house of W. A. Welch last week, W. W. Palmer met with an experience he will not soon forget. While taking off the old shingles he came in contact with a yellow jackets’ nest about the size of a peck measure. There was a pitched battle for awhile, the jackets being finally subdued after many stings.

News Briefs: A Pittsburgh photographer has been Ithaca this week, for the purpose of photographing the brains of Ruloff and Menken, famous murderers who were hanged many years ago in Binghamton, and whose brains were later turned over to Prof. Wilder of Cornell University. Wilder’s collection of 1,700 brains is the largest in the world, and the brains of the two murderers are regarded as the most prominent. The pictures of the brains of Menken and Ruloff will be used in a book being prepared for publication by Dr. Sheldon of the University of Pittsburg. AND Local veterans have been quite exercised this week by the failure of their pension vouchers to arrive. This is a condition of affairs unknown for some years, and in many instances has caused hardship to those dependent entirely on the quarterly pension money. With a majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives at Washington, the Democratic House has been enabled to hold up the pension appropriations, it is alleged. The Southern Democrats are not in sympathy with pension legislation and lose no opportunity to put stumbling blocks in the way of benefiting the Northern soldier.

This one might be a little bit off the beaten path, but the case somehow got all the way to the United States Supreme Court so you might find it interesting.  The case involved whether Robert Capato’s minor children were eligible for social security benefits after his death.  Robert and Karen Capato were married in 1999 and had one son together.  During the course of the marriage, Robert was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and he died in March 2002.  Prior to entering a chemotherapy program, Robert had deposited sperm at a sperm bank because he was concerned that the chemotherapy would render him sterile.  After her husband’s death, Karen began in vitro fertilization and conceived in January 2003 and gave birth to twins in September 2003 – about 18 months after her husband’s death.

Karen then filed for Social Security survivor benefits for the twins – and the Social Security Administration denied her claim as the twins had been born more than 18 months after their father’s death.  The Third Circuit Court of Appeals granted her claim and cited to language that provided survivor benefits to “the child or legally adopted child” of the deceased person.  Other federal courts had been more restrictive in their approach to such claims and generally relied upon state inheritance laws to determine whether a child born after death was entitled to benefits.  The Social Security Act provided that state inheritance laws would be utilized to determine whether a particular applicant was a “child” of the deceased.  The Third Circuit rejected the need to look at the state inheritance law as there was no dispute that the twins were the children of Robert Capato.  Given the divergence of legal opinions on the issue, the United States Supreme Court took the case up on appeal.

A unanimous Supreme Court determined that the twins, conceived and born after the death of their father, were not entitled to Social Security survivor benefits.  Justice Ginsburg started off her opinion by noting: “Tragic circumstances – Robert Capato’s death before he and his wife could raise a family – gave rise to this case.”  Certainly, Robert’s death was tragic for both his wife and son, but I am not sure I would agree with the assessment that Robert’s tragic death gave rise to the case.  More aptly, the case arose from the widow’s decision to use her deceased husband’s frozen sperm to conceive the twins knowing that they would not have a father to help financially support them – and then she sought Social Security benefits for the twins.  The wisdom of that kind of decision is certainly debatable, but it is far from tragic.

Justice Ginsburg then went further in noting that the Social Security Act never contemplated this particular set of circumstances when it was enacted in 1934 – precisely because the technology that allowed for the birth of the twins did not exist at that time.  The Social Security Act, however, did authorize the Social Security Administration to use the inheritance laws of the particular state to determine whether an after born child was entitled to survivor benefits.  Justice Ginsburg rejected the Third Circuit’s opinion and concluded that after born children must be analyzed under the applicable inheritance law of the particular state in which the deceased died.  Florida law specifically provided that an after born child could only be considered an heir in the event that the child was conceived prior to Robert’s death.  As such, the twins did not qualify under Florida law as heirs – and the unanimous Supreme Court determined that they were not entitled to Social Security benefits.    

The friend who sent me this story could not believe that this case made it to the Supreme Court – he thought common sense would automatically disqualify such children.  He was even more surprised that it was an issue that the federal courts had been struggling with for many years.  He would be even more surprised to know that had Robert Capato lived in another state, his twins would have received benefits.  Under Louisiana law, a child is considered an heir as long as he or she is born within three years of the father’s death.  In other words, what seems obvious rarely translates nicely into the law.

Given this decision and the advances in technology, Congress will have to determine to what extent it wishes to extend Social Security survivor benefits to children conceived after the death of a parent.  As it stands now, there are 50 different rules to determine eligibility depending upon the state of residence of the deceased parent.

Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org or discuss this and all articles at http://dadesk.blogspot.com/. 

Recently, I decided go back and review some of the columns that I have written for the Susquehanna County Transcript over the last three and a half years. While doing this, I noticed that some of them are just as applicable today as then.

Our “amazing” Susquehanna County Library has been evolving since it opened its doors on Monument Square in Montrose in 1907. It added three additional locations in Susquehanna, Hallstead-Great Bend, and Forest City. It became a library system that has embraced new technologies while keeping the familiar things that we expect in libraries.

The Library is a service agency and depends upon the support of county residents for its continued existence. Just recently, we had the 33rd annual Blueberry Festival, which provides a major source of operating expenses for the entire library system.

The Library is geared to meet the needs of its patrons. It provides computer access and computer training. It partners with homeschoolers to help them reach their goals. It offers “free” library cards, allowing patrons to save money by borrowing books they need instead of buying. The Susquehanna County Library is your resource for lifetime learning.

After living in Susquehanna County for more than 40 years, I will be leaving shortly to move nearer to my son in Maryland. I am going to miss the many wonderful people here and my associates at the Library. Here is one last reminder. Stop in today to see what your library has to offer. I challenge you to become a “Library Lover.”