Hark The Herald Column List
Back in 2012, Virginia Singletary wanted more people to know about and take advantage of the newly digitized archives of the Alto Herald newspaper. Thanks to a generous grant from the Tocker Foundation, these snapshots of life in Alto over the last 100 years had become easily available to anyone with a computer or even a phone. To spread the word, she began writing columns for the Cherokeean, each one mining the old Heralds for information and opinions on some topic of the day.
I will be making these columns available here throughout 2026, augmented with links back to the Herald editions and relevant historical photos from the excellent collection of the Stella Hill Memorial Library. I hope you enjoy these and are inspired to do your own explorations of these wonderful resources.
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Holcomb Reunion
Buzz words for July in Alto – hot – dry – watermelon – and of course “Holcomb Reunion”. The July 24 1958 Herald gives a detailed history of the gathering: In 1897, George and Thomas Holcomb (brothers) who lived in Houston County arranged with their niece, Maggie Holcomb Singletary of Cherokee County to spread the
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Alto’s Wild Weather
The tornadoes that have been so much in the news these last few weeks brought to mind a question. When did we stop calling them cyclones and start calling them tornadoes? That is just the kind of question that can be answered by a search of our online Alto Heralds. The most serious storm to
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Searching The Flashbacks
It has been just about a year since I started scouring the online Alto Herald for interesting stories to share with Cherokeean readers. The search process is not fool-proof, but it is easy and fun. For instance, for my first column on the Titanic, I just put the word “titanic” in the Search box and
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Artesian Bottling Works
Did you know that Alto once had a soft drink bottling plant? I knew, because my late father-in-law, Grady Singletary, had told me about it. So I was very excited when my daughter Anne found and purchased on Ebay this bottle from the Artesian Bottling Works Alto, Texas, 1915. A search of the online Alto
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50 Years Ago -1963
What was happening in and around Alto half a century ago? Let’s take a look at the Alto Herald and see. 1963 started off with a bang-up annual Football Banquet honoring the Alto Yellow Jackets team that won the district title in 1962. The theme of the banquet was “Starlite on the District Champs” and
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School Days
The start of school has always been big news in small towns. Browsing the September issues of the Alto Herald shows how AISD has developed over the years. The 1914 school year at AHS started off with the organization of a couple of clubs, the Alto Athletic Association and the William Jenning Bryan Literary Society.
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Gone With the Wind
Did you know that Gone With the Wind was originally to be called Tomorrow Is Another Day? And that when it came out it sold 600,000 copies for an unprecedented $3.00 each? These facts are found in Editor Frank Weimar’s column A Little Ado About Something by A. Hick in the Alto Herald of February
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Clubs
Two of Alto’s best known and best loved clubs, the Lions Club and the Thursday Study Club, were both formed almost 100 years ago. Of course the Herald reported on them then and through the years.
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Mystery Solved
After revealing last weeks mystery person, who was definitely not a rat, we cover some contests for the schoolkids – some of whom you might recognize. They weren’t rats, either, but rats were involved.
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Mystery Person
Who is this person who was all over the pages of the Alto Herald for decades?