On Feb. 3, 1921, Mrs. Phoenix Donald was exposed as a fraud by Mr. R.C.P. Thomas for impersonating the daughter of former Bowling Green Mayor George T. Wilson.

Mrs. Donald claimed that people asked her if she was Miss Ella May Wilson, so she pretended to be her. The deception lasted almost a month because the similarity between the two women was apparently enough for Mrs. Donald to pass herself off as Miss Ella May Wilson to people who had known the former mayor’s daughter before she left Bowling Green some 10 or 12 years previously.

– “Way Back When in Warren County” is compiled by researchers at the Warren County Public Library and appears twice weekly in the Bowling Green Daily News. For more information about the library, visit warrenpl.org.