Oscar Langford contacts the Fredonia Censor in January 1925

The Fredonia Censor
Fredonia, New York
Wednesday, January 14, 1925

Page 9

Headline:    Who Knows This Old Fredonian?

Sub-headline: Resident at Printer’s Home Recalls Former Days In Letter


                                Colorado Springs, Colorado
                                    January 5, 1925

Fredonia Censor
Fredonia, N. Y.

To the Editor:
   
    If there are any of my old boyhood friends living today in Chautauqua County, I wish to extend to them a New Year Greeting. Next month, if alive, I will reach my 88th birthday. As a boy I was raised near Fredonia by Benjamin Griswold, and attended the old red school house at Laona in my younger days. One of my four brothers, James M. Langford, was a printer on the Censor in the old handset days, and died in Fredonia in 1847. I served apprenticeship in the “Art Preservative” in Erie, Pa. and Clinton, Iowa, and have since traveled extensively as a journeyman printer in both the East and the West. I heard Daniel Webster make a speech in Dunkirk (NY) at a celebration of the completion of the New York and Erie Railroad to Dunkirk in 1848. I also heard political speeches from Wm. H. Seward, Stephen A. Douglas and other notables before the Civil War of 1861-1865.

    I remember reading the old Fredonia Censor at the farm in boyhood days. W. McKinstry and brother were the editors then and its proprietorship has been under the succeeding generations of the McKinstry family.

    I have been a resident of the Union Printers’ Home since 1898, about 26 years, and expect to remain here until the end. If there are any of my old school mates yet living, I should be glad to hear from them.

Oscar Langford
(care of Union Printers’ Home)