Mar 22, 1934, The Orestes Packing Plant was almost completely destroyed by fire at 11:00 today. Defective electrical connections could possibly been the cause of the blaze. The plant was valued at $20,000 and part owner, Clarence J. Palmer announced that plans are to rebuild the structure. The business was formerly owned by the Davis Brothers of Orestes but went into receivership several years ago. Charles DeHority and George DeHority of Elwood are also part owners. A night watchman is generally on duty but none was scheduled at the time. The fire department was also hampered by a limited supply of water and high winds.

Sept 17, 1935, the Frazier's Canning Company of Alexandria is suing the Brunson Canning Factory of Orestes for possession of 5,000 tomato crates. Both companies have made statement claiming that they are theirs. Brunsons was said to have contracted from the same farm one year ago at a time which the crates were mixed. Fraziers claims that the crates that are theirs and have the company initials on them.

Mar 2, 1936, four men were slightly injured in a head on collision today one and one half miles west of Alexandria on West Washington Street. Ted Murray of Elwood was traveling east and encountered a car being driven by Arthur Harrison of Orestes. Neither could avoid the collision on the bridge. Both drivers and Mr. Harrisons passengers were slightly shaken up and bruised. Also injured were John Custer, Keith Johnson, Robert Dwiggins, and King Davis.

Jan 18, 1937, Fred King of Orestes was hurt seriously in an accident at 2:00 p.m. Sunday on St. Road 28 near the Lilly Creek Bridge. King was driving a car owned by his sister-in-law, Mary Norris, and pulled out to pass another car and could not pull back in to avoid the collision with a truck.

Sept 19, 1938, Troy Fox has opened a gravel pit just south of Orestes on the old Smith farm and now has for sale both gravel and sand.

July 7, 1939, Orestes has announced that Kenneth Smith will be in charge of the C.R.P., a new recreational project sponsored by the Orchid Club and the L.S. Bridge Club. The committee is as follows: Mrs. Kenneth Brunson, Mrs. Edsel Smith, Mrs. Pat Ferguson, William Blake, Harlan Plackard, and John Gardner. The project involves an indoor recreation program. The Knights of Pythias Hall will be the site and will display various crafts and various forms of entertainment. Volleyball and tennis will be offered nearby and metal tapping, woodcraft, puppetry, rug weaving, quilting, and music lessons in the Hall.

Sept 28, 1938, a large crowd approximately 100 of the community attended the opening of the Orestes Center last night at the Knights of Pythias Hall.

Oct 16, 1939, fire of an unknown origin burned over a twelve acre field of corn and a twelve acre field of clover on the Jason Gross farm a mile north of Orestes.

Oct 26, 1939, a crowd estimated to be around 500 patrons, bus drivers, teachers, and their families attended a masquerade party and fun festival sponsored by the Orestes Parent-Teacher Association in the Orestes School building tonight. In the grand parade at 8 oclock, Theresa King and Margaret Hughes were awarded the prize for the best dressed couple. Other prizes included: Doris Beilhartz, dressed as a clown, ugliest costume; best skeleton prize, Eulen Walker; negro woman prize, Jack Dwiggins; Junior Dertsler, fat man prize. Mr. & Mrs. Hershell Carey occupied a booth demonstrating candy making and drew a great deal of attention. Mr. & Mrs. Weldon Barber were in charge of pop corn sales. Others booths that were operating included a shooting gallery, fish pond, freak room, and fortune telling. Cake walks were conducted by Rudolph Bowers and Orville Hon. Twelve cakes were donated by patrons. Mrs. Thelma Timmons room was converted to a kitchen where doughnuts, sandwiches, and coffee were sold. A nice profit was realized from the fall festival and will be applied to the fund for hot lunches at the school.

Feb 6, 1940, Orestes Aces basketball team beat Gimco 33 to 27 to remain tied in the Alexandria Basketball League. Players on the Orestes team were: Hiatt, Weaver, J. Walker, Cook, B. Walker, Abernathy.

May 4, 1940, Willis Tappan makes plans for the Madison county Beekeepers Field Day to be held July 27th at the Anderson YMCA.

Oct 29, 1940, Orestes, the nearest town on the map to the boyhood home of Wendell Willkie, will stage a big rally Wednesday evening at the Knights of Pythias hall. This will bring down the curtain on the Republican campaign. King Davis, GOP committeeman of the Orestes precinct, is in charge of arrangements. Speakers for the evening will be Sam Johnson and C.S. Arnkins. The entire county ticket will be present. Fife and drum corps from Summitville and Elwood will begin playing at 7 oclock. There will be a program of music with the speaking about 8 oclock. Refreshments will be served immediately after the speaking program. Incidentally, certain history will be made with the Willkie rally. In 1895 when Orestes was first incorporated, Herman F. Willkie, father of presidential nominee, Wendell L. Willkie, was elected as the towns first city attorney. He served three terms in this office during the Orestes boom, in the days of natural gas and window factories. Mr. and Mrs. Herman Willkie, were organizers of the Orestes Knights of Pythias and Pythian Sisters fraternal orders in whose hall the rally is being held. King Davis stated that the Orestes Townsend club and the Orestes GOP committee, composed of Harlan Plackard, Raymond Davis, and Ferrol Johnson, are making efforts to have delegations from all surrounding towns.

June 23, 1941, Raymond Davis, who for more than ten years has been connected with the Herman Benefiel market on West Washington Street in now in business for himself in his home town of Orestes. Today he took over the L. Mitchell Market.

July 3, 1941, William E. Blake, 44, one of the best known business men of Orestes, and a life-long resident of the north part of Madison county, died in the Henry county hospital at New Castle at 6:45 a.m. today from injuries he sustained in a 35-foot fall while at work on the construction of a cement silo on the Everett Conway farm, one and three-fourths mile southeast of Moreland, in Henry county. For many years Mr. Blake has been connected with a cement stave silo manufacturing company at Orestes. In recent years he has been one of the Monroe township school bus drivers, but during summer vacations occupied his time in contracting and building silos. The scaffold on which they were working was secured by ropes and it was when one of these ropes broke that the scaffold twisted and partially collapsed. Blake fell the full distance to the ground below, landing on his feet. One of his ankles was crushed, and five vertebrae in his spine were fractured. Delinger managed to grasp a portion of the scaffold which remained standing and clung to it until he was rescued by the ground workers. He was unhurt.

Jan 27, 1942A Nickel Plate locomotive struck and killed two local residents at Olive Branch Crossing, within a half mile of their home. Charles Elsworth 57 and his wife May 59 died.

Aug 12, 1942, Joe Hartwell, 23, of Orestes, is confined to St. Johns Hospital in Anderson with a fracture of the right hip, which he suffered when he fell 30 feet from a tree at 4 oclock p.m. yesterday. He also suffered a number of cuts and bruises about the head, face, and arms. Hartwell and a friend were hunting squirrels in a woods near Orestes. He had shot a squirrel, but in falling the animal lodged in a fork some 40 feet above the ground. Hartwell climbed the tree intending to retrieve the game and fell to the ground when a limb broke. He was brought to the Overpeck Clinic here for first aid treatment, and later taken to St. Johns Hospital in the Roger C. Gipe ambulance.

Sept 14, 1942, Death of George Chick King, 52, of Orestes. Mr. King suffered a heart attack while horseback riding and died in the family car enroute to Mercy hospital in Elwood.

Dec 3, 1942, Death of James M. Powell, 84, formerly of Orestes, died last night in Brooklyn, Indiana. He was widely known in the tile manufacturing business. He had lived in Orestes for more than twenty years and had disposed of a similar business in the community.

Jan 20, 1943The residence on the Ralph Richardson farm south of Orestes on the Orestes road, was completely destroyed by fire this afternoon. The house was occupied by the family of Burl Hartwell.

Jan 20, 1943The residence on the Ralph Richardson farm south of Orestes on the Orestes road, was completely destroyed by fire this afternoon. The house was occupied by the family of Burl Hartwell.

April 29, 1943, in connection with the year-end closing of Orestes School tomorrow, the final work on the sale of war stamps and bonds during the year will be done. The Orestes pupils have made a record which is outstanding in this regard. They began selling war stamps on January 28, 1942, less than two months after Pearl Harbor, and by the end of the term in April, the sales had reached $1083.95. The sale was resumed as a regular school project when the present term opened last September, and up to last night, the sales for this term aggregated $5,945.65, making a total of $7,029.60 paid for stamps and bonds since the beginning of the project. In a scrap drive last fall, the pupils gathered in more than 12,000 pounds of iron and 700 pounds of rubber. During the present term all outside activities in the school have been cancelled on account of the war effort, and this self-denial, Principal R.E. May said, has made possible the fine patriotic record established. In this connection it was announced that 87 former students in Orestes School, many of them graduated there, are now in the various armed services. A large number of them attended Alexandria High School and graduated.

Richard McMillan, Glenn Hoop, Russell Grose, Wayne Gosnell, Robert Lee Johnson, Carlos Trice, Dale Blacklidge,, James Richardson, Neil Perry, Robert Nash, Philip Leach, Lloyd Loveless, Francis E. May, Ronald Porter, Dallas Ludlow, Sherman Davis, Robert Abernathy, Paul Cunningham, Robert Vannatta, William Abernathy, Harold Vannatta, George Harman, Robert Lawson, Donald Porter, Hilda Ellis, Donald Dickey, and Ned Trice.

George E. King, Sylvestal Etchison, Jimmy Lightfoot, William Ervin, Wade Ellis, Wayne King, Russell Stafford, Verle Allen, Dwayne Chalfant, Paul Porter, Rollin Johnson, Robert Vogel, Leslie Caldwell, Alfred Hughes, Bernard Balser, Robert Henshaw, James Vogel, Loren Porter, Kenneth Baker, John Nacoff, Jack McMillen, Samuel DeVine, Donald Galloway, Harry Ellis, Elbert Hague, Howard Vannatta, Jimmie Smith, Warren Shirley, Mulford Davis.

John Cook, Arthur McMahan, Walter Shirley, Claude Beck Jr., Walter Vogel, David Teague, King Davis, Frank Bicknell, Elmer Baxter, Charles Richardson, Fred Johnson, Charles Trice, Morris Loveless, John Lane, Zebedee Gosnell, Marion Bicknell, Eugene Fields, Robert Maynard, James Leach, Rudolph DeVary, Ted Ervin, Robert Hobbs, James Swisher, William Ellis, Frederick Fields, Donald Davis, Harold King, Rufus Meador, Jack DiRuzza.

There are 17 boys and girls in the eighth grade at Orestes School this term. They will finish their work there tomorrow and will be pupils in the high school at Alexandria next year.

June 2, 1943, George Harley Cook died two days ago as a result of injuries from an automobile accident near Westfield. Mr. Cook was a son of Dr. Joel and Mary Anne Cook, residents of Orestes for many years. She passed on in 1925 and Dr. Cook in 1931. A brother, Dale Cook, died in a military hospital in Washington D.C. in 1940.

Jan 18, 1944, Pupils of the Orestes consolidated school, who have been making a fine record in the purchase of war bonds and stamps, held an auction sale at the school Friday, the 14th, to stimulate the purchase of bonds and stamps for the opening of the Fourth War Loan Campaign. Articles were bought by the pupils on the basis of bond and stamp purchases. One article sold for $100, another for $75, a softball for $50, a Milky Way for $30. Total receipts for the sale were $1,288.65. Since Pearl Harbor, the Orestes pupils have centered their outside activities on the war effort instead of athletics and have raised in actual cash $8,429.90.

Dec 18, 1944, a meeting of the stockholders of the Orestes Telephone Company was held at the town hall Friday the 15th. Most of the stockholders of the company were present and voted to sell their stock to Mr. and Mrs. Albert Hawkins. The Hawkins are experienced telephone people operating exchanges at Winchester, Monrovia and Hall, Indiana. The Orestes Company was established in 1903 and at one time had more than 100 subscribers. The number has dropped to about 75aor 80 at the present time. Mrs. Freda Cortright has been in charge of the exchange at Orestes for some time. For several years the patrons of Orestes have had the benefit of long distance service through the Indiana Bell exchange in Alexandria and the service will be continued. The 100 stockholders of the old company were mostly farmers in the community west and northwest of the town and Alba Perdue has served as secretary-treasurer for the past eight years. The business will continue to be operated under the name of the Orestes Telephone Company.