American history is filled with stories of people who recognize the advance of technology and capitalize on it, making themselves rich and providing their fellow citizens with better lives. St. Joseph benefitted from a man who saw modern times coming. He became an influential citizen, and St. Joseph became a modern town. It was 1879 before residents of St. Joseph could make a telephone call; not many calls were made then because, after all, not many people had telephones. For a while you couldn’t make a call to
another city. However, just two years after St. Joseph’s first telephones went in, residents could call Atchison, Kansas. That historic hookup was the first telephone line connecting two cities west of Buffalo, New York. The systems in St. Joseph and Atchison are only two of the advances of science St. Joseph residents enjoyed through the efforts of a real estate man named Joseph Aloysius Corby.

AOWM – July 25