Nov. 24, 1919
Search underway for missing woman
The family of Mrs. Carrie Evans of Hanover Green was searching for the woman in Scranton.
According to police, Dr. Walter Green and his wife, Carrie, were in Scranton on Nov. 17. Dr. Green said he last saw his wife board a streetcar bound for the Providence section of the city. He said she was going to visit with friends.
Dr. Green said she was to meet him at the Laurel Line Station at 6 p.m. but didn’t arrive. He said he stayed at the station until 9 p.m. and then decided to go home.
Laura Evans, the couple’s 16-year-old daughter, told police that about a year before, her mother disappeared for about two months and was later found by police.
Man kept valuable gem close by
John Mihok, a former Scranton resident living in Omaha, Nebraska, kept his “good luck stone” in his pocket for 20 years.
But the “stone” was actually a large, flawless pigeon-blood ruby. According to Mihok, in 1889 when he was leaving his home country of Hungary, his father gave him the stone for good luck. Once in the United States, he traveled to Scranton to start a new life.
In Scranton, he found a wife and started a family. Later, he and his family would move to Cleveland, Ohio, and later to Omaha. All the while, he kept the stone in his pocket.
After reading a newspaper story about a man finding a valuable ruby in a stream, he finally decided to have his good-luck stone examined.
Mihok traveled to Chicago to visit a lapidary about the stone. The lapidary informed Mihok that the ruby was 23 carats and could be worth at least $100,000. The lapidary also told him the ruby could be one of the largest in the world.
BRIAN FULTON, library manager, oversees The Times-
Tribune’s expansive digital and paper archives and is an authority on local history.
Contact Brian at bfulton@timesshamrock.com or
570-348-9140.