Fort Wayne Gleanings for April 1870s: Temperance, Panoramas and Fresh Lettuce

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 Newspapers in the 1870s and beyond almost all had a column with a name like “Gleanings,” “Brevities” or “Town Topics” in which the editor commented on local happenings, seasonal changes, who was visiting in town and so on. I’ve compiled collections of these from the two places the Barbour branch of my family were living in during this era: Coffeyville, Kansas and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Almost all my earlier “Gleanings” articles were from Coffeyville, however. Now I’m picking up with Fort Wayne. 



Fresh lettuce was a treat after months without. Iceberg lettuce, shown here, was developed a few decades after the "Gleanings" of the 1870s.

     Although “Gleanings” columns contained some similarities, the different make-up and character of the two cities definitely come through. Fort Wayne was a long-settled manufacturing center with railroad service since the 1850s. Coffeyville began as a trading post on the edge of Indian Territory in 1869, with no railroad connections. Indians were forcibly removed from northern Indiana in the late 1830s and ‘40s. In Coffeyville, tribes such as the Ponca and Delaware were forced to move out of Kansas in the 1870s. 

     These differences were naturally reflected in the columns of each newspaper. Fort Wayne attracted the major entertainment acts of the day, for example. Even after the railroad, that was not the case in Coffeyville. But of course, the main reason for that was size. The population of Coffeyville in 1880 was 753, while the population of Fort Wayne was 17,718. Another difference is that Indians came into Coffeyville to trade and buy goods and were frequently mentioned in the Gleanings columns. That of course wasn’t the case in Fort Wayne.

     I also include snippets from ads and stories that appeared on the same page as the Gleanings. Here is a selection from the 1870s. 

     

1 Apr 1873 Fort Wayne Daily Gazette


  • One of the largest and most wide-awake temperance meetings that ever occurred in this city was held in Hamilton’s Hall last night, by the friends of the temperance law. 

     The chair appointed Messrs. McNiece, Barbour and Henry Davis to a committee to nominate a committee of forty prominent citizens…whose duty it shall be to use all lawful means to secure the prompt enforcement of the law.


  • Colerick’s Opera House - Bordwell’s Mammoth Ireland! Franco-German War Panoramas. Covering an area of nearly 4,000 square feet of canvas and Irish Comedy Company. Two entertainments for the price of one. Matinee Tickets 35 cents adults 15 cents children


     Temperance advocates must have felt like they were on the cusp of winning a huge battle when the Indiana General Assembly passed its first temperance law in 1873. The Baxter Act required the approval of a majority of voters – all men, of course – in a ward, town, or township, before a liquor license could be granted. Mr. Barbour was my great-great-great-grandfather, who had the painful personal battle of an alcoholic son who he tried repeatedly to help. Those opposed to the Baxter Act were alleged to have accumulated considerable financial resources to prevent its enforcement. The meeting my ancestor attended was for the purpose of insisting on its enforcement.

     A panorama was a massive circular painting meant to give the viewer a “you are there” quality when gazing upon a depiction of a battle or historic scene. Viewers stood on a central platform that seemed to place them in the center of the scene. They were very popular, a form of virtual reality for our Victorian ancestors. In the U.S. they were also called cycloramas. Today only five cycloramas survive in North America. One is “The Battle of Gettysburg,” owned by the National Park Service and displayed at the Gettysburg National Military Park. To give a better idea of the size of these paintings, it is 42 feet high, 377 feet long and weighs 12.5 tons.


19 April 1873 Fort Wayne Daily Gazette


  • Fresh lettuce, onions, radish and spinach greens were received at the Boston Tea Store last evening.


          Seasonal produce was truly seasonal. There are mentions each year of the earliest spring produce coming to market. How welcome they must have been with nothing fresh all winter.


14 April 1875 Fort Wayne Sentinel


  • Out of the fifty-four candidates examined for teachers license by Superintendent Hillegass, thirty-two passed. 


  • There is a large number of book agents, or rather, representatives of different school-book publishing houses now in town. The question as to a change in the series of arithmetics and readers used at present is an all-absorbing one. The contest for the introduction of readers lies between three series, the “Franklin,” the “Independent” and the “McGuffey." The latter one is now in use and is generally popular. 


3 April 1878 Fort Wayne Sentinel


  • A bastardy case before Squire Ryan was settled Saturday last by a marriage ceremony. 


  • W.B. Felt, esq., undertook to swim his team across the St. Mary’s River, and found the experiment a disastrous one. A calf floated out of his wagon into the river and was drowned, and his butcher knife, cleaver, etc. were also swallowed up in the vertex, so to speak. Mr. Felt felt good to save his horses.  


  • During the month of March 16,879 loaded freight cars passed through the Wabash yard in this city – an increase of almost 6,000 over the corresponding month last year. 


  • The Hyers Sisters will appear tonight at the Opera House when “Out of Bondage” will be presented. 


  • The roads are drying up very rapidly.


     A bastardy case was a woman’s only way of gaining child support for children born out of wedlock. It was a difficult choice for a woman to bring such a case to trial as it was publicly humiliating. Many cases were settled by the man agreeing to marry the plaintiff. I wrote about bastardy trials in “Lum Harkins Bastardy Trial” in March 2023.

     The Hyers Sisters were a Black Vaudeville act and pioneers of Black musical theater. Their father moved to Sacramento after the Gold Rush and gave his daughters a musical education with training by a German professor and an opera singer. Under their father’s management, Anna and Emma made their professional debut in 1867. They organized their own theater company and produced musical dramas including, “Out of Bondage,” which the Library of Congress says is the first play about slavery with an African-American cast. It was a rare chance for white audiences to see Black performers who were not in minstrelsy. 



The Hyers Sisters ran a huge ad for their performance of "Out of Bondage." Reserved seats were 75 cents, or 50 cents at the door.


Sources:


     Selin, Shannon. “Panoramas: The 19th Century Virtual Reality,”  Imagining the Bounds of History, https://shannonselin.com/2016/11/panoramas-19th-century/

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