Quite often something really interesting surfaces as we go about our preservation and archiving efforts. A paper turned up recently with hand-written remedies (and gardening advice), mixed with a couple of newspaper clippings from 1912. There is also a recipe for apple butter! I have included it, but don’t count on it for a cure for anything but dry toast. Please note that these recipes are written as found.
Cure for pneumonia or lung fever: Chopped onion. Vinegar and graham flour. Put on stove and heat.
Rheumatism cure: Aunt Clara Barlow. Iodide of potassium 15ç worth in ½ pint water. Take 1 tablespoon before meals.
Rheumatism bladder trouble: Fluid extract dandelion ½ oz. Compound Kargon (a commercial prescription) 1 oz. Compound syrup of sarsaparilla 3 oz. Take 1 teaspoon after each meal and at bedtime. “Is all right for I have taken it.”
Yellow jaundice: Go and get south running water and take one egg.
First day dose: Take one part of the white of the egg, beat it up with 3 tablespoons of the water and drink it.
Second day dose: Take another part of the egg white and beat it up with 3 tablespoon of the water and drink.
Third day dose: Take the last part of the egg white and beat it up with 3 tablespoon of the water.
Use the same egg each day. The white is in three parts. And take one part each day. Sure cure. 1912.
To keep bugs from melons and pickles: Take a moth ball and break in two and put in bottle around hill. Or also plant an onion in hill.
To make good apple butter: Boil 30-gallon cider down to 12 or 13 gallons. Put in 16 gallons sliced apples, few at a time, until all in, and then boil 3 or 4 hours down to about 9 or 10 gallons. Add 12 ½ lbs. granulated sugar. Cook until sugar is thoroughly dissolved.
Here is cure for poison ivy that never fails: boil one-half pint of shelled oats in water until the water is real dark. Then wash the poisoned parts with the water. It does the work without any pain. M. L. B., Clark Co., Ind.
Sand and sawdust make a good bed for flowers like the rhododendron, which require an acid soil.
My Coal-Oil Cure-All by S. E. Bandy.
Coal oil (kerosene) is a commodity found in every farm home, yet its many uses and benefits are known only to a few people. I have saved many a fine watermelon patch from destruction by the striped beetle by mixing coal oil and wood ashes – one part coal oil, by measure, to twenty parts ashes – and putting it on the hills around the roots of the melons.
The coal oil must not touch the vines, and one large spoonful to a hill is sufficient. The bugs will depart immediately. It should be repeated after each rain.
A handful of coal oil and salt mixed and dropped into each mole run will cause them to change their location. A peck of lime thoroughly mixed with a gill (one quarter of a pint, or four ounces) of coal oil and spread lightly around the early cabbage plants will prevent the cutworms from destroying them. When it is hoed in later, it seems to act as a fertilizer.
With coal oil I cure scaly leg in chickens by applying it directly with a feather. I also find a mixture of coal and lime used generously around over the chicken house will prevent mites.
We do not recommend trying these remedies at home, but as always, we find that our ancestors were hardy and ingenious people. Our archives are full of the stories of incredible people, and we love to share. Stop by the Museum anytime! Our hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 until 4.
The archives here at the Marshall County Historical Society and Museum are full of stories of people living their daily lives, throughout our history. This article, first published in the Marshall County Independent, on February 4, 1898, on page one, shows the interest locals felt in the gold exploration in far-off Alaska. The headline was “Frank Thomas Writes Home,” and we have lightly edited for clarification.
SKAGWAY, ALASKA, January 7, ’98
John W. Thomas, Plymouth IN
Dear Parents,
Well here it is 1898, and I am 3,500 miles from home, my people and friends at Plymouth, though that does not count much in a fast-going age as this. Everything passed off here during the holidays as usual. Just as it did at home perhaps, only that outside appearances here recognize no holidays, or Sunday, all days are alike to this surging throng. Everybody is hurrying hither and thither as if they had lost something and were trying to find it, possibly lost a dog. There are so many dogs here it would be hard to find one unless he had a special mark, and they all have special marks. There are dogs everywhere here, and I never thought that a dog was as useful an animal for drafting as they are. Dogs are worth money here now; a good dog can pull from 100 to 500 pounds on a sled depending on the condition of the roads and the dog of course. They usually work them six in a team single file, and they go on a trot most of the time. They are using all kinds of dogs, but the big long-haired fellows are the best. Except for perhaps the native dog, Friskies as they call them, are the best of all as they can stand more hard knocks and go longer without feed. They look just like gray wolves and are fighting half their time at work or play.
The weather is fine here; there is just a little snow, hardly enough for good sledding, but I see they are using bob sleds instead of wagons. They are now sledding up along the river with small hand sleds and are using the ever indispensable and useful dog, as well as horses to sled over the summit. People are coming in on every boat. There has been a number of boat loads landed here within the last two or three weeks. Three, the Elder, the Seattle and Topeka boats brought over 1,500 people for Skagway and Dyea, and the rush has not commenced either. Two more steamers are now due, and they will be crowded to full capacity. They say that nearly all the boats on the Pacific coast are going to run up here next summer, and a number are coming around Cape Horn and some from Europe. If there are 500,000 people coming to Alaska and the Northwest Territory this next summer. Four out of five will land at Skagway, which is an assured fact according to estimates made here, and if that does not mean a boom for Skagway, then it does for Alaska. There are a number of people coming out from Dawson every few days. I have seen men who I knew on the trail this fall and most of them give very flattering reports about the weather down the lakes and river. They say it is very cold but dry. Not very much wind, especially where they are sheltered by the mountains. They report also that provisions are very scarce and that many more will have to come out of the country before spring. These men came all the way on ice. Some of them have dogs to pull their grub and blankets and have to pull enough to last them out. They all agree that it is a tough proposition and further say that it is an absolute impossibility for anyone to move an outfit down on the ice. As it is all one can do to move as much as it takes to last them while they are coming out. So, I think the best and safest thing anyone can do is to wait until the ice breaks up in April or May and go down in a boat which will be much the quickest and the cheapest. You wrote me that there were a number of people coming from Plymouth and vicinity. I shall be ever so glad to give them all the information concerning the trail and country that I can. Many will go via St. Michaels, that is much the easiest way, but it is much the costliest as well as much the longest. Those who go down by the lakes as soon as the ice breaks up will reach the gold fields fully a month earlier that any steamers can get up from St. Michaels. In the spring it will be comparatively easy to reach the lakes with an outfit from here (Skagway) as the wagon road will be completed to the summit and from there one can sled for 15 miles on Summit Middle and Shallow Lakes and from there to Lake Bennett. There is now no good sled trail.
People are now moving goods over at one tenth the expense that it cost us last fall. To say nothing of the labor and exposure, as well as the risk of life that we were subjected to. No doubt we ought to be whipped for being so crazy and foolish to attempt to cross a trail as this Skagway trail when we went in, but how could we know until we had gone beyond a return limit. I wonder now that men could endure the hardships we were compelled to undergo. Horses died by the thousands from the effects of incessant, chilling rains, exposure and lack of rough forage, as it was impossible to carry hay along. Usually when a horse went down in the mud he had either given out or had a broken leg and had to be shot. It rained about 21 days out of 30 while we were in the Pass. Our outfit consisted of eight horses, about 6,000 pounds provisions, tent, tools and clothing for four men, but now it is different. That amount can be moved over the summit in possibly five days on the wagon road now nearing completion.
But please don’t understand me as advising anybody to come who has not already made arrangements to come. It is all a gamble, with the great majority of people who go in, and anybody intending to come must consider that there are many chances to lose as well as win. They will have to take even chances with possibly 500,000 people who will go down the Yukon either ahead or to follow after, all in the next spring and summer.
Father, I wrote the foregoing thinking you might want to publish a little. I did not want to write much to the papers concerning this country, nothing flattering in the least. I don’t want to influence anyone who would not come otherwise. It will be a lottery with everybody, especially the tender foot with small or insufficient means who have many more chances to lose than to win.
I am sure there will be plenty of work here in Skagway this summer, wages depending entirely on the amount of laborers coming in. Common labor $1.50 and board, skilled labor $4 and $5. Now don’t have any fears, Mother, about robbers and foot-pads (robbers in foot) bothering here; they have to lay low and nearly everybody carries a revolver, and grafters are afraid to act. As long as I have been in the country, I have never seen a quarrel or a fight. Well, goodbye from your loving son, Frank L. Thomas.
Money was hard to come by in 1924 when Fred and Etta Jane (Berkeypile) Brugh were raising their young family in a remodeled log cabin two blocks northwest of the Marshall County Courthouse in Plymouth. He worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, then the Plymouth Radio Company, while she cared for their four daughters. Frugality necessitated handmade then hand-me-down clothes for Myrtle, Goldie, Hazel and baby Helen.
Fortunately, Etta Jane was a skilled seamstress who could sew, knit, crochet and tat—the nearly lost art of making delicate lace from thread. She even saved the cloth bags flour came in, dyed the rough material and transformed the bags into tiny dresses decorated with embroidery.
Three-year-old Hazel wore a brown sack-cloth dress that miraculously has survived for nearly a century, and now fits her great-great-granddaughter and namesake, Hazel Jane Seltenright of Plymouth. She was photographed wearing the dress on August 12th before it was donated to the Marshall County Historical Society and Museum with a vintage basket of wooden blocks.
Two little girls named Hazel wearing the same dress nearly a century apart are a wonderful testament to Etta Jane’s handiwork. Amazingly, the 98-year-old brown flour sack cloth dress stitched together with love by Hazel’s great-great-great-grandmother doesn’t even look old.
This sweet dress is a wonderful addition to our clothing collection. The tiny hand stitching and embroidery tell the story of a mother’s love for her children, and her determination to be resourceful during difficult times. These are the types of stories we record at the Marshall County Historical Society and Museum. In time, we’ll be telling today’s stories too. Come in soon and enjoy the history of this special place.
Mary Ann (Travis) Wyand Garber is Hazel Brugh’s daughter. She grew up in Plymouth, worked for The Pilot-News in the mid-1970s and now lives in Lebanon.
During the 1890s, the U.S. was in the midst of its first bicycle craze. Bikes helped bridge the gap between horses and automobiles. The boom awakened an interest in good roads, furthered the cause of women’s liberation and was even linked to changes in social behavior. Improvements in bike technology fueled the fad. Once it was both safe and comfortable to ride, everyone wanted in. The average cost of a bike in the 1890s was $75 – that’s $2,625 today!
The attitude toward women riders was still very conservative during the 1890s. There were questions of whether women should ride, how they should ride, whom they should ride with and what their reputation would be if they did ride! The long, heavy skirts women commonly wore also made biking difficult. Bloomers and shorter skirts were an option but could draw scorn and unwanted attention. However, suffrage advocates praised the bicycle as means of giving women more freedom.
Marshall County cashed in. Bicycle parts made in Plymouth were sold to dealers throughout the United States. There were two bicycle factories located here, as well as one that manufactured handlebars.
Built in 1891, covering nearly 50,000 sq. ft., even featuring its own fire department, the Indiana Novelty Manufacturing Company was one. It was the largest factory in the world that made wooden rims for bikes, as well as mud and chain guards. In 1893, co-founder George W. Marble patented a method of making one-piece bicycle rims from ash that were both lighter and stronger than metal ones. Two carloads of lumber were used daily and by 1895, the plant was producing 700,000 rims a year, as well as 100,000 sets of guards. Indiana Novelty supplied nearly all the leading bicycle companies in the U.S. and had agents in most principal cities, as well as Toronto, London and Paris. They made more than half of the wooden rims used by bicycle manufacturers.
Safety bikes were the alternative to high wheelers, or penny farthings, introduced in the 1880s. Some sources credit Marble with inventions linked to these and other early types of bikes. Marble also created most of the machinery used by Indiana Novelty in the manufacture of its wooden rims. In 1892, he and several other founding members of Indiana Novelty formed the Marble Cycle Manufacturing Company, with the addition of W.D. Smalley, who also had years of experience in the bike trade, and was the namesake for their bike, the Smalley.
In 1894, the company was sold and became the Plymouth Cycle Manufacturing Company.
“It is estimated that the company made approximately 700 bikes a year for the first two years. The output was increased to 4,500 bikes in 1895, with hopes of making 6,000 for 1896. It was reported in the Plymouth Republican that ‘Plymouth Cycle had been operating for months at 13 hours per day. The factory was limited to 5,000 bicycles but now has orders for 2,000 more.’”
However, the country was in recession, and large orders that had been placed were never paid for. Plymouth Cycle was taken over by creditors Bass and McDonald. They reopened the factory in 1897 as the Elektron Cycle Company, but work was halted in 1898 and a judgment secured by former employees for wages due. The company’s machinery and materials were sold to the Shelby Manufacturing Company and moved to Ohio. The bicycle business that had boomed in the early 1890s became a thing of the past. According to the Department of Transportation, bike sales nationwide plunged 79 percent from 1897 to 1904. The craze was over.
Unfortunately, the MCHS Museum does not currently have a Smalley or Elektron bicycle to display, but we do have more good information on display in our transportation room. We always welcome donations of any items made by any Marshall County manufacturer!
