A while back I offered to do lookups from a Woodford Co book. Several people expressed an interest in the PICKARD surname. I just ran across a photocopy of a newspaper article (not dated or titled but most likely from the Minonk News Dispatch) with a photo of the old Pickard building. I can scan and send the picture for anyone interested. Here is the text below the photo: "We noted last week that the old Pickard Building which now houses the Petri Bros. Construction Co. was getting a facial renovation with new paint and other improvements. So Babe rummaged around in all his pictures of early Minonk and came up with this one showing the Pickard Brothers business in all its glory. As it shows in the picture the Pickard Brothers were in the farm machinery, buggies, wagon, carriages, blacksmith shop and you name it, we have it, business. Babe says that the East side of town at the time this picture was taken was the busy part of town. Charlie Ridge ran a grocery store there at one time, he tells us. There was a bicycle shop run by old man Livingston, and a millinary store run by several different ladies. There was a paint and wallpaper store and a feather renovating factory, where they steamed and cleaned feathers for use in pillows. A factory that produced cotton flannel gloves was on the east side of the business district at one time, along with a nickelodeon theater about where the theater is now, he says. Pope Meat Market was on the corner for years and years where the beauty shop is now. Several doctors had their quarters over there during one time or another and an early Minonk newspaper, the News, later to be incorporated into the News-Dispatch was in the Pickard building after the decline of the carriage and blacksmith works there. Pickard Brothers were by that time in the grocery and dry good! s business in one of the middle buildings. He said the building was renovated in 1900 at which time the front which we have known there for so many years was put on. The Modern Woodmen at that time had a modern meeting room and dance hall on the second story of the building. Some other interesting notes, Babes says that Johannes De Boer, who was hanged for the murder of Ella Martin, in Minonk's most famous murder, was an apprentice blacksmith with Pickard Brothers at the time of the infamous act. Also, a man named Martin O'Connell had a momument works in the building across the street from the Picard building, and being a bachelor, he lived there at his work. Babe said he had his four legged iron bed extended off the floor by gas pipes with large funnels inverted on the pipes to keep the rats, which were in profusion in the building, from getting into his bed while he slept at night. The idea of the funnel was that the rats would run up the gas pipes and be stopped under the 'roof' of the funnel. He was also in the tea business, says Babe, and when he died several large ratten, tinlined, casks of tea were found in the place. This photo was taken about 1880." Amy Robbins-Tjaden atjaden@mindspring.com amy@tjaden.com