March Gleanings #2: Grasshopper Destitution, Selling Bones and Booming

  

If you read the January and February “Gleanings,” you know that Coffeyville, Kansas newspapers - and lots of other papers - ran “Seen-around-town” columns, especially in the 1870s and ‘80s. This is a compilation for March. I enjoyed selecting items and researching things common in the lives of our ancestors so much that I did two this month.

4 March 1875

Vegetables are scarce.

March came in like a lion.

Capt. Hershey says the fur trade is not over yet, “not by a longshot.”

It is sad that there is a large number of destitute people in Fawn Creek Township.

Larkin Cook has sent a carload of corn from Iowa to be distributed among the destitute in this vicinity.

Joe Baker, who returned yesterday from a trip to the Territory, says there is a great deal of destitution among the Creek and Cherokee Indians. 

John Carey, one of the substantial farmers of Fawn Creek Township, was in town yesterday looking after the interests of some of his destitute neighbors.

We understand that Col. May has donated largely to his destitute neighbors.

If the vertebrae of winter has been broken, will someone please remove the carcass?

     The destitution mentioned related to the previous year, when first drought, then a terrible grasshopper plague decimated crops. Those who suffered most were western Kansans and new arrivals who hadn’t had time to have established homes and farms. Bur people in eastern Kansas were also affected. 

     In September the governor called a special session of the legislature to seek ways to help people survive. Legislators concluded that it was not the job of government to provide aid directly, but they approved $73,000 in bonds and issued a plea for help from the rest of the country. Americans responded generously and the railroads provided free transport of supplies such as beans, pork, corn and rice. 

     My ancestors lived in Fawn Creek Township. An obituary decades later for Eliza Corbin Patchett (my great-grandmother Melissa’s aunt) mentioned these hard times, and that the family’s sons helped provide food by going out rabbit hunting in the evenings. 

3 March 1880

Cattle are scanning the prairies in search of grass.

Another large pile of bones at the depot, ready for shipment.

Barndollars loaded three teams with goods yesterday for Shawneetown in the Territory, nearly 200 miles south of Coffeyville. 

Just out - Hood’s great book of the war, Advance and Retreat….Published for the Hood Orphan Memorial Fund.

     Bones were collected and sold to a number of industries. They still are, only not by the average consumer or “bone man,” but large, corporate meat processors. Bones are still used to make gelatin (including in gummy candies), bone meal fertilizer, bone china, and in chemical processes. In the 1800s and at least up to 2000, it was used to make glue. 

     The Shawneetown mentioned is now a ghost town, but it was once a settlement where Shawnee and Chickashaw Indians lived. 

     Finally, the ad for the book wasn’t actually in the “Local Gossip” column, but ran in a huge ad on the same page. I couldn’t resist including it, because it’s an interesting story. Confederate General John Bell Hood lost the use of one arm, and had a leg amputated during the war. Afterwards, he moved to New Orleans where he became a cotton broker and president of an insurance company. He married a New Orleans native, Anna Marie Hennan, and they had eleven children in ten years – three sets of twins. In the winter of 1878-79, a yellow fever epidemic swept New Orleans and ruined his insurance business, leaving him broke. His wife and oldest daughter, Lydia, died of the disease. A few days later, Hood also got yellow fever and died, leaving ten orphaned children and no means to support them. Knowing he was dying, he asked that a memorial fund be set up by Confederates to provide support for his children. They were two-month old Anna, Oswald, 13 months old; three-year olds Odile and Ida; Lillian and Marie, 6; Duncan, 7 and John Jr., 8; and Ethel and Annabelle, 9. 

     The children were split up and adopted by seven different families in five different states. His book and a picture of the ten children were sold for their benefit. The Texas Brigade Association provided financial support for the children as they were growing up. Anna died in childhood, but the rest survived and the money from the Hood Memorial Fund was distributed to them when they turned 21. 

19 March 1887

The bee is humming.

Meadowlarks are numerous and gleeful.

Every citizen can do his share toward booming the town.

Croquet sets at Harry White’s.

Let everybody join in the grand effort at booming the town. 

Doors and windows open and fires out most of the time for the first time for the past two weeks.

Children’s hose supporters and corset waists. Call at Mrs. Carpenter’s and see them. 

A society of Elk City women have issued a call to their sisters urging them to attend the polls and vote. 

     There was a lot written about boomtowns and boom and bust cycles in the 1880s. “To boom” was used as a verb. Like most newspaper editors of the time, Coffeyville’s were vigorous town boosters. It was a decade of wild speculation and boomtowns, followed by “bust” at the end. But at the time the Coffeyville editor urged his neighbors to “boom” the town, there was nothing but optimism. Why, they could be the next Chicago! So thought many a town. 

     By 1890, when the bust came, there were sayings such, “In God we trusted; in Kansas we busted.” But even at the time the editor wrote the above, a poem already circulated in newspapers around the country: 

There was a town as dead as a tomb,

It died from the cause of too much boom!

It was boomed by the papers and boomed by the people,

Till prices were hoisted as high as a steeple,

They plastered the land with mortgages deep,

And burdened the town with taxes so steep.

They paid a big bonus to build a new road,

And laid for the suckers on whom to unload.

But the cash they snaked in from their victims so rank

Was all gobbled up by the “3 percent” bank.

Its officers skipped while the boom was still high,

And left the poor victims to suffer and sigh. 

      After failing to win suffrage in national elections, women in Kansas turned to municipal elections. In 1887, they were successful and in April Kansas women could vote in local elections. The first woman mayor in the country, Susanna Madora Salter, was elected in Argonia, Kansas in that election. She was nominated by a group of men as a joke, and surprised them by winning. A mayor’s daughter, it is said she governed well, but she never sought office after her term ended. 

21 March 1890

Spring fever is prevalent. 

Hypes’ bath rooms are fast attaining popularity. The place is neat, complete and well-kept.

F. Pfeister shipped nine cars of cattle over the K.C. and P. yesterday.

The difference between a dog and a dude is that the dog’s pants never bag at the knee. 

The teachers and pupils are making big preparations for their exercises on Commencement Day – next Thursday. 

     Samuel Omer Hypes, owned a barber shop and bath room located in the Masonic building. He was only 21. He later moved to South Coffeyville, Oklahoma and lived till 1935.

      It’s hard to imagine today, but many working class people did not have easy access to bathing. Especially men who worked as ranch and farm hands, coming into town for a bath and a shave was a near necessity. 

     In 1890, San Francisco built what is thought to be the first free public bath house, the James Lick public bath house. It was built with $150,000 from the estate of James Lick, California’s wealthiest resident at the time of his death. It housed 40 men’s, and 20 women’s bathtubs, where people could come and take a hot bath for free.

     In 1891, the People’s Baths was created on the Lower East Side in New York, funded by the Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor. Philadelphia had a dozen municipal baths by 1897, located in the city’s poorest sections. They were large concrete pools that were drained, flushed and cleaned twice a week, and the use of soap was discouraged. About 28,000 people used the baths every week. 

     Public baths were something our ancestors were familiar with, and after 1900, they were common in large cities. Many barber shops like Hypes’ provided a paid place to bathe.  

Sources:

     “Public Bathing, Wikipedia, November 2022, n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_bathing#:~:text=A%20New%20York%20state%20law,least%2014%20hours%20a%20day.

Glassenberg, David. “The Design Of Reform: The Public Bath Movement in America,” American Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1979), pp. 5-21. 

     Miner, Craig. “A Place of Boom and Bust: Hard Times Come to Kansas,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, 34 (Spring 2011), pp. 70-79. 

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023