[MrMon]

If you Google "Red Bank Telephone", you don't get much, but you do get this account of a meeting in 1905 or so.

[ QUOTE ]
Another interesting meeting was at a stockholders meeting of the Red Bank Telephone Co., held in the Brookville County Court House. They had so many stockholders that they could not all get into the Court House, and the largest stockholder only held $20.00 of stock.

This was strictly a farmers' line, each member building the line across his property, buying his own telephone and keeping up the batteries, etc. They had only a single grounded line that reached into three different counties, and they charged each subscriber ten cents per month for switching charges. They had so many telephones on one line, that they could not work a ringing code, but would give a ring and everyone would answer to find out who was wanted.

The only telephone in use then was the old Magento Crank ringer with wet battery. Most of them had a jackknife switch installed in the telephone, so they could cut out the battery while they were listening, and most of them thought so much of their telephone that they had cotton flannel bags to keep them covered up when not in use. You can imagine the service with a single line running into three counties of free service, and with hundreds of subscribers.



[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like an interesting story here. I too want to know what you find out.