“The first telephone exchange in Haubstadt was located on the second floor of ‘Emmert’s Drug Store’ at the northwest corner of Main & Gibson Streets,” where the Haubstadt Library is now located. “It was installed in 1898, twenty-two years after Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his invention at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in June of 1876. The first switchboard operator here in Haubstadt was Mary Emmert Schiff, one of the three druggists at the store.”
“By the early 1900’s, this new communication device was moved across Gibson Street, into a small building,” where the Haubstadt Town Hall currently houses a meeting room behind its building. “A new operator by the name of Anna Williams Weatherly Smith replaced Mary Schiff…There were a number of ladies who would assist as needed. As well as can be remembered, the following assisted: Alice Ann Williams, Helen Greubel Lutz, Thelma Greubel Sharpe, a Mrs. Houchins, Fern Trible, and her daughters, Pat and Jean. Lilly Hickrod was the last of the operators at this exchange when it closed in 1957.”
“In its beginning, the switchboard had only two lines, one incoming and one outgoing. The operator would take the message and a runner would deliver it to the person for whom it was meant…The last of our telephone ‘switchboard’ operators was…Lilly Rose Hickrod. From the years 1946 through 1960, she operated our telephone service with a pleasant demeanor that everyone could relate to.”
**Information quoted and summarized from “A History of the Haubstadt Area” by the Haubstadt Area Historical Society, 2002 (pages 539-541). You can read this book at both Fort Branch and Haubstadt Library locations.
(Picture below taken directly from page 541 of the book mentioned above.)
