September Gleanings in Coffeyville: Back-to-School, Haying and Roller Skates

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     If you read any of the other “ Gleanings,” posts, you might recall that these “seen-around-town” sort of items were a regular column in the Coffeyville, Kansas newspapers, and many newspapers, in the 1870s and 1880s. I am compiling samples for each month.



This back-to-school ad was printed in the Coffeyville newspaper.

16 Sept 1876


Weather cool.

Grasshoppers here.

Our mills are all busy.

Vegetables not abundant.

Potato crop will be short.

Coffeyville’s schools began last Monday with a fair attendance. 

We respectfully call attention of the city authorities to complaints of rowdyism and drunkenness on the streets and about town at nights and especially Sunday nights.  


     School attendance was an issue. At this time, compulsory attendance laws were being debated. In 1877 statistics showed a dismal 40 percent attendance rate of little Jayhawks enrolled in public schools. By 1880 Kansas had compulsory school laws for twelve weeks of school, but they were rarely enforced. For decades the editors of the Coffeyville newspapers beseeched parents to send their children to school, and to get them there on time. 


30 Sept 1876


School is prospering finely. 

Hickory nutting parties will soon be in order. 

Squirrels – there are plenty of them around Coffeyville. 


13 Sept 1884


Autumn.

Indian summer,

Haying progresseth.

Take in the county fair. 

Public schools opening all over the state.

Our county fair commences the last day of the month.

The latest thing on roller skates is to skate on stilts.

The new roller skating rink opened up Thursday evening with good attendance. The rink is thrown open in the morning to lady beginners and children, where courteous attention is given to the women. It is good, healthy exercise for young and old. 

The soldiers’ reunion at Cherryvale was a great success….The trains centering there from every point were crowded. Coffeyville sent up several hundred people, and turned out her old soldiers in full force.

From the large number of men we noticed going behind screens and the large number of “spirited” arguments we heard at Cherryvale on the last day of the soldiers’ reunion, we do not believe that prohibition prohibits in that place. 

Bicycles are being introduced in our city by the boys. They are quite an improvement on the velocipede.

Buggy riding is about all the amusement our young people can take now, but they put their time in well at that. A person can hardly procure a team at the livery stables on Sunday, all having been previously engaged.  


                                  This roller skate ad ran in an Illinois newspaper in 1885.

A roller skating craze swept the country in the 1880s. In 1863, a man who could be called “Father of the Roller Skate,” James Plimpton, revolutionized the sport with four wheels over the previous three, and other innovations. He also started the New York Roller Skating Association and opened the first roller rink in 1866. He marketed skating as a wholesome activity men and women could do together. An estimated 3,000 roller rinks were built across the country in the 1880s.

     But not everyone saw this new pastime as wholesome. The Wichita Times thoroughly mocked a Baptist minister from Wellington, Kansas who predicted a trip to hell for those on roller skates. There were also comical poems about the fad. Here’s a bit of verse from 1884:


She went to the roller-skating rink,

And put the sliders on;

A strap or two upon her shoe,

And then she’d off and gone.


She slid, she slide; she glid, she glode,

Unheeding fear or fetter

But at last the gentle maid was throwed.

The roller skates upset her.


     The velocipede was a precursor of the bicycle, lacking geared chains. The pedals were like those on a child’s tricycle today.


27 Sept 1884


Cool.

Sunflowers.

Apples plenty.

Mosquitos bad.

Everybody sowing fall wheat.

Corn will soon be ready to crib.

Soon be time for mush and milk.

The skating rink has had splendid patronage ever since it opened.

Female county [school] superintendents are becoming numerous throughout this state. We see no reason why a lady would not as good an official as a gentleman in that department. Give them a chance, at least.

There is too much drunkenness and not enough sobriety in our town on public occasions. 

The circus at Independence last Monday showed to an immense crowd in the afternoon, and would have been a success had not a windstorm came up when the performance was about two-thirds over. The winds rose at 3 o’clock, bringing up great clouds of dust and shaking the canvas up lively.  A few of the people left the tent at the first approach of the dust cloud, and when the gust of wind came that split the tent, the panic was complete, and it was but a few minutes till the vast crowd had transferred itself to the open air….the crowd in attendance was estimated at 4,000…


     Read my earlier blog post on “Mush and Milk.”

     Women school superintendents were hired in Graham County (“Miss Worcester”), and Sheridan (“Miss Stevens”). Miss Hay was up for election in Thomas County in 1885. By 1886 there were 14 “lady” school superintendents and one county clerk. At the state convention of county superintendents in Wichita 1889, it was noted that half of the state’s 14 women superintendents attended. All superintendents stayed at the Metropole Hotel and sessions were held in churches. Topics discussed in sessions included such issues as “Duties of County Superintendents - The Possible and the Impossible,”  and “Gradation and Graduation in the Country Schools.”  They were given a carriage-ride tour of the city in the evening.

     It was the Sells Brothers’ Circus that performed in Independence the day that huge wind gusts split the tent. They advertised as a four-ring circus: museum, menagerie, caravan and circus. They were based out of Columbus, Ohio.


Sources:


     Terry, Ruth. “The History Behind the Roller Skating Trend,” JSTOR Daily, https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-behind-the-roller-skating-trend/

     “Going To Hell on Roller Skates,” Kansas Chief (Troy, Kansas), 6 March 1884, p. 1.

     “Notice to Skaters,” LeRoy Reporter (LeRoy, Kansas), 9 Feb 1889, p. 3.

     “The Fun Our Ancestors Had in the 1880s,” Family Tree.com, https://www.familytree.com/blog/the-fun-our-ancestors-had-in-1880s/

     Women School Superintendents: Downs Times (Downs, Kansas) 18 Nov 1885, p. 1. 

     Fourteen School Superintendents: Onaga Democrat (Onaga, Kansas), 2 Sept. 1886, p. 2. 

     “Educational - No. IV - Compulsory Education - State Aid,” The Weekly Commonwealth (Topeka, Kansas), 6 May 1880, p. 4. 


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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