On September 1st, Delaware County history records John F. Bauer’s death at 69 after 2½ years of illness. The retired secretary to John J. McClure died at 9.58 a.m. at his home at 2214 Madison St.
Vance and Delaware County traffic
Chief of Police Vance issued a new order in 1926 regulating traffic at principal intersections. Traffic officers handled the light controls at Fifth and Market streets, Seventh and Sproul streets, Seventh Street and Edgmont Avenue, and Ninth Street and Edgmont Avenue.
The new rule drew favorable comments from motorists and pedestrians, a sign that the change was being accepted at the street level rather than only on paper. For readers following the county’s Sept. 1 record, the entry shows how traffic control was being organized intersection by intersection.
John F. Bauer at 2214 Madison St.
Bauer’s death notice adds the personal detail that he had suffered from a heart condition and had been injured in a fall several months before he died. Before his death, he told his family, “I had a full, enjoyable life.”
That line sits beside the harder facts of his final years. He had been ill for 2½ years, and the notice records both the illness and the injury, giving the entry its weight beyond a simple obituary line. A reader can also see why the Sept. 1 column keeps the county’s older record in view: it preserves the names, addresses, and dates that anchor local memory.
1976 and 2001 entries
In 1976, a 23-year-old Chester man tried to escape police during a chase through Clifton Heights, Springfield, Morton, Swarthmore, Chester and Upper Chichester. He will be cited for at least 28 violations after the chase, a count that points to a long chain of offenses rather than a single traffic stop.
The 2001 entry begins with customers stopping in for morning coffee and looking on in surprise as a three-piece band performed. The item cuts off there, leaving the rest of that moment unfinished in the historical listing, but the column still frames it as another Sept. 1 snapshot from Delaware County history. Today in Delaware County history, Sept. 1 shows the same pattern of brief dated entries, each tied to a year and a place.
