Sarah Visits The White City: Chicago World's Fair 1893

In the loose pages I discovered Sarah's description of her trip to the World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Sarah had just turned 10 years old and was as full of adventure and curiosity as ever.

Typical of Sarah, her mind wanders from her topic to the subject of books, so we learn more about her reading material than about the fair. Still, it's fun to know that she went there. I'm sure she wrote more about the Howe family's visit to "The White City," but this is all I've found so far. As you read, you can "visit" the buildings and exhibits Sarah saw in an online virtual tour of the Chicago World's Fair.

As before, ellipses indicate lost or omitted words (these pages are badly torn), and brackets enclose my own comments or clarifications.

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Now the last day of school, in the 3rd grade, drew near, and I was certainly glad of it! We had passed all the exams and had also gotten display papers ready to be sent to the Kentucky display of the Educational Exhibit at the World’s Fair (in the Liberal Arts building, I think). I had one in Geography and in Grammar — diagramming sentences — also one in arithmetic! We also had papers in Kentucky history, tho I believe the book was not studied that year but in the 4th grade; we were just given questions to answer about Boone, Harrod, the date of settlement, names, date of statehood, products of Kentucky, first governor and so forth.

Now I come to the crowning event, the unforgettable one of 1893 for us, our two weeks at the World’s Fair in September. I know it must have been, because the fair was nearing its close and the nights on the lake were getting quite cool. (I remember us sitting in “the Peristyle” restaurant and of my wanting to order “chilled watermelon” because I saw it on the menu! And how Mama shuddered at the thought, with those cold breezes blowing, through I think we probably went up there about the last of August. Papa¹ was already there — he had to go ahead, as he had to combine a business trip for buying millinery, I imagine (he always did that for the store).  

Bird's-eye view of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 | Library of Congress

Grandpa Cost,² being rather influential in the city and "in charge” as a commission merchant and broker at the Chamber of Commerce building in Cincinnati, was able to get passes on the railroad quite often as there was no rule against them at that time. He therefore got a round trip pass for Mama³ and myself, and we went to Cincinnati and left from there; Grandma⁴ put us up a good lunch. I’ve heard Mama often speak of how delicious the cold beef steak sandwiches were — sliced thin on French bread — as we ate them on the train on that long trip, of which I remember little except the never ending fields of ripe corn. 

Papa met us at Evanston and took us to the place he had rented for us, at a Mrs. Baker’s, such a nice lady and a nice home. Like many other Chicago ladies, she had opened her home to “paying guests” for the duration of the Fair. Several other friends of ours stayed there, both before and afterwards.

The main thing I remember about this room was the change in what I had to read — magazines on the table, provided for Mama and Papa but giving me a taste of these adult publications I would not otherwise have had. I imagine they were Harpers and Atlantic.    ... the artist [Rudolph Dirks] who drew [starting in 1897] the Katzenjammer Kids, in fact. I imagine he may have been the inspiration for those gentlemen(?). The end of the rhyme stays with me — the bad boys had fallen into the sausage grinder at the close of one of their worst pranks and were ground out in small pieces which fell on the ground in the outline (shown vividly) of themselves. Said the rhyme, “Chickens, leaving other seed, gobble up the coarse grained feed,” a truly German “finis.”

Midway, Columbian Exposition

Now to the real business, that of describing the Fair. Mama that year was not yet 34, Papa was about 38 1/2 when we were in Chicago, and I of course was 10. The Fair came back to me so much more vividly when, this spring, I visited at Bob’s⁵ home and Loretta⁶ took me to the site of the Fair, Jackson Park, which with Hyde Park was the center of activities. The University of Chicago now stands where the great midway was, first and largest of carnival Fair sites, imitated at other fairs but I imagine hardly surpassed. 

... I loved them all. I remember the lady modeling in butter,⁷ I remember of course — she was making busts of Columbus and Isabella — and there was a butter replica of the "Vanderbilt family" which was

also there in marble — it was only about 3 feet high but was said to be one of the best pieces there. What I loved best, though, was “Jesus and the Child,” the face of Christ so calm and lovely, the

Butter sculptor with bas-relief of Christopher Columbus

child with his pretty hands and feet, his curls, the dimple in his elbow. It was life-size, in white marble. 

Mama kept looking for two “portrait heads” made by her cousin Al White (Aunt Milly’s son) but we couldn’t find them — they were there, tho. I may come back to this building as I think of more things, forgotten so long — one picture comes back, whether here or in another building, a ruby-throated hummingbird poised on a flower.
 
... The Iowa building was fascinating — its pictures and decorations were done in corn mosaics, red, yellow, black and white, the effect was beautiful in the extreme.

The New Mexico building I liked so much (it was still a territory, you know, and so was Arizona) (or maybe just made into a state, I know Oklahoma was quite new — we still had “Indian Territory” on our maps in the little geography). One exhibit of opals; Mama was so interested in the Indian relics, beadwork and all, I liked it very much. Grandma Cost had bought me a beaded show (an ornament to hang up) from Columbus when I was a little girl; it was red cambric with red & white beadwork. ... 

 [The beginning of the next paragraph is missing. Sarah apparently refers here to books she read at the house in Chicago where they were the paying guests of Mrs. Baker. Huckleberry Finn had been published in the U.S. only eight years before.]  ... but it was that part of Huckleberry Finn where he describes the  ... killing of his friends. I never forgot the vivid scene, but it was many years later when I found its place in literature. From another (as yet unidentified) serial, which I’m sure was much too advanced for me, all I retained was a new way to eat an orange, which I therewith adopted and kept up for years. We had always peeled off the skin and eaten them by sections, but in this story it described the sultry heroine as “sinking her white teeth into the skin and then sucking the juice as tho she were a tiger sucking the blood of her prey.” Now our hostess, not knowing what the solemn child was gleaning from these choice bits, brought her some children’s books! One of them had nursery (!) rhymes, one of which was so harrowing and unpleasant that I have never forgotten it. It was about two “characters” named Max and Maurice [Moritz], and by its brutal and violent nature so reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm, I am pretty sure it was translated from the German.

ENDNOTES
¹1 Robert James Howe (1855-1910).
² Richard Henry Cost of Cincinnati (1831-1910)
³ Alice Ada Cost Howe (1859-1939)
⁴ Sarah Evaline Arnet (1836-1917)
⁵ Sarah's son Robert King Salyers (1907-1977)
⁶ Loretta Smith Salyers, wife of Robert King Salyers
⁷ Caroline Shawk Brooks, whose talent in butter sculpting made her a favorite attraction at many fairs and expositions. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_sculpture.

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So ends the only writing I have found about Sarah's trip to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Here are some links to websites that offer details that help us imagine more about the Howe family's time there. The first link goes to a beautiful, full-color, 31-page "program" or portfolio, digitized from an original. I'm surprised not to find one in Sarah's scrapbooks.

• https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/authenticportfo00
• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/wce/tour.html
• https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/1893-worlds-fair-what-remains-125th-anniversary/ 
• http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11421.html
• https://dcc.newberry.org/collections/chicago-and-the-worlds-columbian-exposition
• http://www.friendsofthewhitecity.org/architecture/buildings/the-midway-plaisance

  

Bits & Pieces: Humor, Mission Work, and Insight into the Gregarious Salyers Brothers

Hello again. I'm back from vacation with just enough time to develop a blog post in time to publish at the usual Sunday morning time. Today we'll look at some bits and pieces from scrapbooks Sarah Eva Howe Salyers compiled in the early 1930s. Some of these items take us back in time, but several seem relevant now, almost 90 years later.

The Howe-Salyers family named every car they owned or used over the years. The car below is "Old Bouci." A discovery elsewhere in another scrapbook hints that "Bouci" could be based on a character Sarah played in a community theater production in Lexington in the 1930s. On the other hand, the three Salyers brothers, all readers and thinkers, may have named the car after reading about a 1300s French knight known as Boucicaut. The knight was quite popular with the ladies. That sounds like a reference these young men would have enjoyed, whether they were bragging or poking fun at themselves.

We'll also never know for sure why this next item was in the scrapbooks. I'd love to know which person found this cartoon worthy of keeping and what it meant to them. (Of course, I could be overthinking this. Maybe it was just funny to somebody!)

I've seen in the scrapbooks several letters from politicians, actors, singers, and other well-known people. The Salyers children apparently liked to write letters to public figures and receive responses.  Here is one example: In early 1932, Sarah's youngest child, 16-year-old David, wrote to Morton Downey, a popular singer whose son is credited (blamed?) for pioneering the "trash TV" talk show format in the 1980s). David asked the star to include specific songs on his nightly radio program, "Camel Quarter Hour." David received this response dated Feb. 15, 1932. No word on whether or not the singer fulfilled David's request, and no idea why David's brother Jim wrote his initials and an undecipherable word on the letter. (If you knew Jim, though, you'd know that he wrote his initials and undecipherable messages on a lot of things!)

David also saved these next bits of paper related to his days at Lexington's Henry Clay High School, where he received his diploma in 1933. The montage includes a football game ticket, a construction paper "Blue Devil" school mascot, and a cartoon, probably from 1932. I suppose the issue of sponsors in athletics may have been up for discussion even then. When I saw the cartoon, my first thought was of this decade's debates about allowing thoroughbred racing jockeys to display sponsors' names or insignia on their riding silks.

Another curious clipping is this ad for Ballyhoo, an irreverant humor magazine published by Dell from 1931 until 1939. It featured cartoons, jokes, parodies of major newspapers, and barbed comments about advertising, politicians, cultural trends, and life in general. It's easy to imagine the Howe-Salyers family subscribing and appreciating this publication. This ad for Ballyhoo parodies the ad industry's penchant for overblown claims by making overblown claims itself. I think damage to the paper erased two letters from the headline, which apparently was the quirkly term "LAPSE FOBIA."

 While we're on the topic of ads, here's one that I include just because I find it whimsical and charming. 

In a scrapbook filled with 1930s items is this piece from the 1920s. Various committees and organizations throughout the U.S., including the women's missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, sold "China Life-Saving Stamps" to raise funds to provide food for the people of China. Each stamp cost 3 cents, which was said to buy enough food to feed one person for one day. (An online inflation calculator says that 3 cents would now equate to 42 cents or so.) Buyers pledged to increase awareness of China's plight by placing a stamp on the back of every piece of mail they sent. Sarah was an active member of the Carrollton Methodist Episcopal Church and was involved in organizing the church's Chinese Famine Fund.

Next, a nostalgic look at what came to be Morton Junior High in Lexington, built at the corner of Short and Walnut streets, the site of the city's first public school. This is how that corner looked circa 1930, when Sarah and her family moved to the city from Richmond. Son David attended this school before he enrolled at Henry Clay High. He was in the school's "senior" class (ninth grade) of 1930. I know Short Street is still there, but I think development may have erased Walnut Street.

The same scrapbook included this composite of the school faculty: N. Isabel Schmidt (principal), Tomie Bronston, Anna Louise Connor, Fan Lee Dalzell, Catherine Dunne, Laura Harp, Elizabeth Henry, Lena O. Johnson, Elizabeth Morris, Marylark Nichols, Laura Parrish, Martha Payne, Florence B. Ralston, Katherine Rankin, and Katherine Walker.

This list of the teaching staff (below) includes these educators who are not included in the composite: Coleman Alford, Paul Averitt, Ruth Bartlett, G.R. Griffith, Marcia Lamport, Ernestine Ligon, Maude McInteer, Theresa Newhoff, Mary K. Stoner, Phoebe B. Worth, Sarah Walker, and Wallace Williams.

To end this "Bits & Pieces" post on a light note, I include a paragraph published circa 1933, probably clipped from a University of Kentucky fraternity newspaper by one of the Salyers brothers.

With that, I bid you a fond farewell for another week. I'm eager to see what I'll find to share with you next. I hope you'll stay tuned.

The 'Influence and Beneficial Effect' of Cousins

 Sarah Eva Howe was devoted to her family, both immediate and extended. As I look through the scrapbooks, reading her essays, letters, and notes, the relative I see most often mentioned (other than her parents and her sister) is her first cousin, Jenne Winslow Howe.

Jenne (to this day remembered as "Cousin Jenne" by Howe descendants) was the daughter of William Ficklin Howe (Sarah's father's brother) and Louisiana "Lou" Winslow Howe. She was born in 1883, the same year as Sarah, so it's easy to imagine the two girls playing together, walking to school together, sharing secrets, giggling about boys. They were in the same grade in school and usually in the same class. In 1898, when they were about 15 years old, they traveled to Louisville together to visit friends. As my grandmother might have put it, the two girls were "thick as thieves."

Jenne, unlike Sarah, completed high school. Apparently, she never married. She lived with her parents on Fifth Street and later Sixth Street in Carrollton, Kentucky. Her brother John J. Howe, an attorney, and sister Lillie M. Howe, who taught across the river at a college for women in Oxford, Ohio, also lived there. I have found no stories or documentation that either of them married. Their father died in 1916, when Jenne was 33. She and her two siblings continued to live with their mother.

Jenne's occupation is listed as "none" on the census forms until 1940, when her occupation is "teacher." By then she was 57 years old. I speculate that she was forced into the workplace when her brother died in 1939. He had probably earned a handsome income as an attorney, and Lille's income as a teacher was not enough to support the household.

In 1944, when Jenne was 61, her mother died. Two years after that, sister Lillie died. With her parents and her five siblings gone, Jenne was the last of the William F. Howe family. My husband, her first cousin twice removed, remembers visiting Cousin Jenne in Carrollton. He recalls that she was active in her church and community, that she always drove a late-model car, and that her home was nicely furnished. He remembers her being fun to visit. Being a typical little boy, he also appreciated that she liked candy and ice cream and had some on hand to share with him when he visited.

Jenne died in 1957.

On the scrapbook page that launched this post, Sarah wrote this about the value of having cousins:

I just can't say enough, tho I didn't realize it so much at the time, of the influence and beneficial effect on me of knowing and playing with the Howe cousins and their friends. Aunt Sallie Froman's¹ children were too young for me to really enjoy them so much – besides, I saw them so seldom; and Mama's brothers² were great comrades, her sisters Lee and Naomi³ too, and made much of me when I visited there, but they again were not with me much, and besides treating me like a favorite doll or pet ... . Of course from Harry and Morris I learned the latest "music hall" songs and from Aunt Momie⁴ and Lee the first marvelous drafts of mythology stories from Tanglewood Tales⁵ ...

Sarah's reference to her Howe cousins would include Jenne and her siblings, the children of her father's brother. Other Howe cousins were either too old or too young or lived too far away to be Sarah's companions. On her mother's Cost side were teen-aged aunts who treated her "like a favorite doll" and young uncles who were close enough to Sarah's age to seem more like cousins. (Read more about that in the post dated September 8, 2016.) So her first cousin Jenne Howe was Sarah's first and favorite playmates.

ENDNOTES
¹ Sarah Varena "Sallie" Howe (1862-1950), sister of Sarah's father; wife of Herman M. "Mack" Froman.
² Richard Henry Cost, Jr. (1876-1949) and Morris Elliott Cost (1879-1961)
³ Mary Naomi Cost (circa 1869 – ??) and Ida Lenora Cost (1874-1921) 
⁴ A nickname for Sarah's aunt Mary Naomi Cost
⁵ Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (published 1853) was a re-writing of well-known Greek myths. Electronic versions of the book are sold on Amazon.com and offered free of charge by Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/976.

Sarah and Jenn Travel to Lakeland, 1898

I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1940s and 1950s. On days when my two younger sisters and I wore our mother's patience thin, she would throw up her hands and proclaim, "I might as well check in at Lakeland." We were too young to know what Lakeland was, but Mama's tone of voice told us it must be a place for people who had just about reached their breaking point.

Decades later, I figured out that Mama was referring to Lakeland Asylum for the Insane (as it was once known), a mental health facility in Anchorage, just east of Louisville. Other names for the facility were Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum, Lakeland Hospital, and Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane. You may know it by its present name, Central State Hospital.

In 1898, Sarah Eva Howe and her cousin Jenne, both about 15 years of age, traveled from Carrollton, Kentucky, to Anchorage to visit Mildred Goslee, whose father was the Lakeland superintendent. Sarah's comments give us a peek at some of the social customs of the day and include references to some of the charity and mission projects that involved her mother, cousins, aunts, and friends in Carrollton, Kentucky.

Lakeland Administration Building, built c1872 ²

As soon as school closed, Jenne and I began to get ready for our big trip, which was to be a visit to Mildred Goslee at Anchorage, or rather Lakeland, for tho she went to school at Bellewood¹and we were to attend her closing exercises, she lived with her family in the Superintendents home at the Asylum. We ate at their table, with the other doctors and their wives, and the food was really delicious; we went all over the buildings “on tours,” especially into the kitchens, where I saw more beans being prepared to cook than ever in my life so far. On Saturday night we looked on at the dance given every week for the patients and attendants. We attended class night, when Mildred sang and several girls contested for a prize in “elocution.” The girl who won had a long recitation about a gypsy, which ended “like Wild Zaratella, whose lover is dead.” Sunday we attended church at the present Anchorage Presbyterian Church. At the close of the service Mildred introduced us to several of her friends; one well dressed lady rushed up to us and said “Have you ever heard of Ramabai?” We were dazed, we never had, and didn’t know whether it was a medicine or a new kind of flower or food.

Mildred arranged that we should go to her home next day to hear about “her” (as we found out later Ramabai was). We still didn’t understand very well when she told us about the Zenana work in India which was Pandita Ramabai's great contribution to progress – it was one of her special charities, this lady, and she was quite wealthy, living in a lovely home. She was so enthusiastic about it that she talked about it to everyone. Since then I have found out what a really marvelous person Ramabai was, but I didn’t understand it then. We had our Missionary Society, the Willing Workers (changed in 1893, I believe, to Carrollton Truehearts for Mrs. S.C. Trueheart) and of course there were the adult

The Willing Workers Missionary Society of Carrollton (Kentucky) Methodist Episcopal Church received this certificate circa 1886 recognizing a $10 donation to a project in China. Sarah's mother Alice Ada Cost Howe was a member of that society, and Sarah later joined.

societies, the Foreign Mission and “home mission” or “Parsonage” societies – but we had no missionaries in India in the southern Methodist church so knew nothing of the work done there.

The graduation exercises were held, I believe, Tuesday morning – this was the week of June 9, for on that day we went to the exercises at "Rest Cottage" named for the Frances E. Willard one in Chicago where poor working girls could go for a week of free vacation in the summer and have instruction and entertainment as well as food and lodging. Jennie Casseday was really the originator of the idea, and every WCTU³ had (and has yet) a department in her honor called The Flower Mission in which special attention is given to sending, as she did (and she was for so many years acclaimed), little bunches of flowers to the sick at hospitals with verses of cheer and comfort attached. Her birthday, June 9th is always especially celebrated by a particular act of mercy – in Carrollton we took a treat and held a service on that day at the Poor Farm.

So, as I say, in 1898 on that day we went to exercises at Rest Cottage. On Tuesday there was the Bellewood Graduation. I don’t remember much about it, except that there was an Anne Finzer who graduated (of the Nicholas Finzer Company, tobacco people). She had the most exquisite white dress of lace and sheer “voile” and carried a sheaf of lilies (and this was why I particularly remembered her) in her withered left arm pressed against her body; she probably had had infantile paralysis⁴, tho we knew nothing of it then – even her wealth had not been able to help that poor little arm.

On another page in the same scrapbook, Sarah provides a bit more history of Bellewood Seminary. The excerpt refers again to Mildred Goslee.

Transcription: [Mildred Goslee was] now living at Lakeland Hospital, where her father was superintendent (appointed by Governor Bradley) and was for the second year attending Bellewood Seminary, a famous local Presbyterian School (its buildings now are incorporated in the Orphanage at Anchorage and the chapel is the Anchorage Pres. Church. This is the school mentioned in The Little Colonel at Boarding School written sometime later.


ENDNOTES
¹ Bellewood Female Seminary, established in 1860 by William Wallace Hill. The school was associated with the Anchorage Presbyterian Church until the school closed in 1916. Source: The Encyclopedia of Louisville by John E. Kieber, page 33, via Google Books.
² Image ULPA 1994.18.0716, Herald Post Collection, 1994.18, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. Used here with permission.
³ Women's Christian Temperance Union. Sarah's mother, and later Sarah, were members.
⁴ An old term for polio, an infectious disease (now all but eradicated in the U.S.) that can cause paralysis, difficulty breathing, and sometimes death. Source: www.mayoclinic.org.

Remember the Maine! Sarah's Reflections on the Spanish American War, 1898

 On April 25, 1898, when Sarah Eva Howe was 14, her nation declared war on Spain. The U.S. went to war to halt Spain's empire-building in the western hemisphere – my basic understanding of a complex world situation.  

Sarah, being Sarah, read about the Spanish-American War in the local newspaper and in magazines. She heard conversations about it at school and at her family's dinner table. Still, from her perspective, the war seemed to have little effect on her family and friends in Carrollton, Kentucky.

Sometime after 1915, Sarah wrote in a scrapbook her recollections of that year. She wrote to her four children, passing the family history on to them. Her recall of specific dates may be a little off, but she captures the mood of the time – at least the mood in her own world.

 Washington Post cartoon, April 3, 1898 ¹

1898 began like any other year, but what an exciting and eventful year it was for all of us. The Maine was blown up you know early in the year, and war was declared. I believe, anyway, on May 1st Dewey took Manila. As the U.S. had not been at war in the memory of any of us, and as the war didn’t touch any of us very closely, we really enjoyed it. We had little celluloid flag pins of Cuba and the U.S. to wear, and we sang all the really beautiful songs of the time – I still remember them! All kinds of wonderful stories were told about Cuba, Spain, the Philippines, Evangeline Cisneros [the daughter of Augustin Cosio, who was active in attempts to gain Cuban independence from Spain] and of course “our Teddy” Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, and Richmond Pearson Hobson, whom

Theodore Roosevelt, 1898 ²

all of us thought the handsomest man ever grown up in the U.S. (He sank the Merrimac across the channel in Havana Harbor, to keep the ships from getting out.) We wore ribbons, a foot long some of them, and when Patticus my cat presented us with just one live (and one dead) kitten, we named the dead one “Spain” and the live one “Cuba Libre”! (as we pronounced this Li-ber; even the most educated did so). Aunt Liza, who was now our “help” as Maggie had gone to work in a factory for a while, thought it was “Cuba Robber” and always called the kitten that way.) Poor “Cube,” as we sometimes called him! He was a cheerful cat but deformed, for he dragged his hind feet from birth, typical perhaps of Cuba’s early struggles for independence. Unlike Cuba tho, he succumbed to circumstances beyond his control when he was about 10 months old.

The only one of our boys who tried to go to war was Edward Stanley Bridges, who ran off from Hanover College and, being under age, was promptly brought back home. John Howe³  by this time was finishing his first year at Kentucky Wesleyan. Lewis Darling was in his second year at “State College”; so was Allen Gullion, also Rayden Maddox (they had gone on without taking the extra year with Prof. English), Will Salyers, and by this time his brother Bob, too, were in the store with their father,⁴ who, having learned his business the hard way in his youth and taught it to his brothers, didn’t have much patience with college, at least not for men who were going into business instead of a profession. John Adcock had started at Medical School, so had Frank Grace, Dr. Gaines’ grandson. Frank Gaines Jr., his son, had by this time finished his medical course and was working with his father, and had married Daisy Jerrison.⁵

As for our family, Lille⁶ was working in the store.⁷ Jenne⁸ and I finishing that memorable year with Prof. English, Leonora⁹ talking and walking. Brother Turner baptized her on Children’s Day, it was such a beautiful service – the church was decorated as usual with plants and cut flowers and this time canaries were hung in several places among the plants and made a lovely effect.

Cover, 1897 Edition; Wikimedia Commons

We were reading Quo Vadis that year, and many straitlaced people were insisting that the descriptions of the Roman feasts were not fit for respectable young females to peruse. I remember Brother Turner was asked about it, and he guardedly said it was rather extreme in some places for a so-called religious book. Brother Turner was a delightful young man, all of us girls liked him so much.

While I liked reading Sarah's memories of the Spanish-American War era, I wish she had included some of the items she mentioned: the celluloid flag pins, the ribbons.

Sarah mentioned singing "all the really beautiful songs of the times." In the scrapbook, she wrote the titles of those songs. I was confused by the references to "blue and gray," typical of the Civil War. Sarah cleared up my confusion in a note at the bottom of the page: "U.S. uniforms during the Cuban War were all blue except the Rough Riders'." The opposition, apparently, wore gray.

Cuban war songs were "Mr. Volunteer," The Blue and the Gray," "Little Boy in Blue," "Goodbye Dolly Gray," "Farewell my Bluebell," "Goodbye, Little Girl, Goodbye," "Just as the Sun Went Down." A little later, "You Will Have to Read Your Answer in the Stars" had a verse like this: The Philippines and Cuba too Were conquered by our boys in blue. The Philippines are on the shelf, But we've let Cuba run itself. Will we let Cuba be a state? You'll have to watch the flag and wait! (Chorus) You will have to read your answer in the stars. Just drop a line to Jupiter or Mars, For the end of Cuba's story You will have to watch Old Glory! You will have to read your answer in her stars! (This is a pretty good indication of the feeling about Cuba for a good while.)

ENDNOTES
¹ The cartoon, "And Boys, Remember the Maine!" by Clifford Berryman, appeared in the Washington Post on April 3, 1898. (National Archives; public domain.) It shows an angry Uncle Sam addressing sailors as the USS Maine sinks in the background.
² Image by B.J. Falk [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
³ Sarah's cousin John Junior Howe, son of her uncle William F. Howe
⁴ Charles D. Salyers, who later became Sarah's father-in-law. His store featured heating and cooking stoves and other goods. His sons were Will (William Levi Salyers, Sarah's future husband) and Bob (Robert King Salyers)
⁵ The writing is hard to read. Could the name be Jennson? Jamison?
⁶ Lille Howe, one of Sarah's cousins; daughter of William F. Howe
⁷ Howe Brothers, Inc., the family-owned department store
⁸ Jenne Howe, another first cousin to Sarah; another child of William F. Howe
⁹ Sarah's baby sister Leonora Alice Howe   

"Papa" – Sarah's Father, Robert James Howe (1855-1910)

Sarah Eva Howe was a daddy's girl. That's my sense, based on what I see in her early scrapbooks. There are many loving mentions of her mother, Alice Ada Cost, but many more mentions of her father, Robert James Howe, and much more detail about the things he did and the ideas he expressed. Today, we get better acquainted with "Papa" – or Rob, as he was known to his friends.

We already know a little about Robert Howe the businessman. I've found a few other items that offer more insight. One is what Sarah called "Papa's little book." It is only 2 1/2 inches wide and 5 inches long. Apparently, he had many of them over time. As Sarah wrote:

"Papa filled endless little books like this with lovely cramped writing mostly of special orders to be looked for on his trips to the cities." 

Look how much writing he wrote on each tiny page! The example below shows a numbered list of expenses for October, November, and December 1894. Among the highlights:

• seltzer 25 cents
• meat 30 cents; figs 35 cents; grapes 50 cents
• 3 chickens 60 cents
• Book Concern 35 cents
• Renewal of St. Nicholas magazine subscription [for Sarah] $3.10
• 2 lecture tickets 50 cents
• Overshoes 85 cents
• 2 concert tickets 70 cents
• Christmas gifts $1.80

These and other entries in the list reveal or confirm things about Robert. His purchase of lecture and concert tickets indicate that he enjoyed culture and the arts and was a life-long learner. His renewal of his daughter's favorite magazine tells us that he encouraged Sarah to read. His habit of keeping these bits of information in such a detailed and consistent way makes me think he was a highly organized and meticulous man. Those characteristics fit with what we have already learned about his approach to business.

Robert's contribution to Book Concern, the first publishing house of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, hints at his connection to that denomination. The scrapbooks confirm that he followed in his parents' footsteps as an active member and leader of Carrollton Methodist Episcopal Church (now Carrollton First United Methodist). Robert was also a leader in church programs on a state and regional level. In the next photo, he sits front and center (to viewer's right of the woman wearing leg-of-mutton sleeves) at a convention of the Epworth League, an association established in 1889 for young adults in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Robert would have been 41 that year, so he and others at the convention were likely the organizers within the organization. His place in the photo tells me he may have had a leadership role.

In her scrapbooks, Sarah pasted many items about her father's involvement with his church – too many to include in one post. She also wrote about his popularity as a Sunday school teacher and his commitment to Bible study at home.

A portion of Sarah's writing about Bible lessons.

"Papa was a joyous teacher of the Bible — that is, he could make it so interesting for us. Before Leonora, Mama and I on Sunday afternoon were his companions in many contests, to see who could first recognize the descriptions he gave of Bible events. He called them Word Pictures and always began 'I see a ____.' Sometimes we took the letters of the alphabet and gave all the men’s names of each letter, or all the women’s names or all the places. I remember how Papa astounded us all by finding the only one for F (it must have been in the Old Testament 'Fair Haven,' in Acts, about one of Paul’s journeys). Of course, there were Felix and Festus for men’s names."

Considering Robert's strong faith and his leadership in the church, we can't be surprised to find his temperance card in the scrapbooks.

In 1870, Irish immigrant Francis Murphy considered the value of temperance after his own drinking had destroyed his family and his successful hotel and saloon business.¹ By 1876, the Murphy temperance movement1 had 65,000 card-carrying abstainers. The Epworth Herald,² a publication of the Methodist Church's Epworth League, promoted a pledge-signing crusade, so Robert may have signed this card as part of his church's participation in that crusade. Robert's daughter Sarah became a life-long member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.³

Lest I paint him as always serious, I include an image of Sarah's Papa at a summer camp in Chicago. Robert (the man with the fishing pole in the picture with friend Harry Given and standing on the far left in the group picture) is not smiling, but I think this camp must have been for fun. The scrapbooks do not indicate what kind of camp this was; maybe it had something to do with the Methodist church or a literary or social organization. The scrapbook has similar photos of other people at the same event. 

Based on letters and postcards from Robert, and Sarah's written comments about her Papa, I know that the meticulous businessman also had a soft side. He cared deeply about his family – especially Sarah, if I dare speculate on that. He doted on her and encouraged her, and maybe, to some degree, spoiled her. He was her champion in education, and he taught her about the world. He included her in conversations about the news of the day.

Robert obviously loved his wife. When he traveled, he wrote her almost every day – and some days twice. His letters were often brief, but they told of his daily activities and asked about hers. Unfailingly, he signed with "all my love" or "your devoted husband" or other endearments.

He participated in a number of civic groups and literary societies; he attended concerts and plays.

All in all, I surmise that Robert was a learned and sophisticated yet friendly man who was loved and respected at work, at church, at home, and about town.

Endnotes
¹ https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/western-pennsylvania-history/francis-murphy-pittsburgh-great-temperance-movement
² tinyurl.com/zxwdcpf
³ https://www.wctu.org/history.html

Merry Christmas, Sad New Year

Today we pick up shortly after the birth of Sarah Eva Howe's little sister, Leonora. This Christmas, with a newborn in the house and Mama still "in her confinement" and unable to do her usual decorating, baking, and entertaining, is not as festive as usual. Papa takes the role of "Santa" as best he can and makes Christmas 1896 one of the most memorable for his daughter Sarah. The New Year brings a loss and stirs suspicion about some shady financial dealings within the family.

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Christmas 1896 came while Mama was still in bed, and therefore was not as gay as usual — no tree — but Papa filled my stocking, and as he couldn’t find the clean ones after I went to bed, and he didn’t want to wake Mama, he took one of the long black fleece-lined stockings I had taken off when I went to bed, and being a fastidious person, he wrapped up every piece of candy or fruit, even the nuts, he put in it! We had a good laugh together over it in the morning, and it is safe to say, that is one stocking I have never forgotten! (I didn’t hang one up, as I hadn’t expected “Santa Claus” to fill it, with Mama in bed.)

This was the Christmas Papa gave me the Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru; on a previous Christmas, 1894 I think, Grandma Cost [Sarah Evaline Arnet, wife of Richard Henry Cost] had sent me John North in Mexico by “Fred A. Ober,” who turned out to be a learned professor at Yale or thereabouts, I learned afterwards, so the information was authentic. I hadn’t read it for awhile, but when I finally got around to it, I became such an enthusiast on the archaeology and folklore of Mexico as set forth in the book – and then, on my birthday, 1896, she sent me The Fair God by Lew Wallace. No, I am wrong – this was in 1897 and it was Christmas 1897 Papa gave me the Conquests. I have just remembered after writing the above, and will tell later what reminded me. Papa always loved to bring things from New York to put away for Christmas, especially books, and I get a little confused remembering just which year he brought which books.

David Arnet, c1806 - 1897

Early in 1897 Grandfather Arnet¹ died at his home on Baymiller Street, Cincinnati, nearly 92 years old. Grandma Arnet² had died in ’92 or ’93 (and after that Grandfather was very lonely and easily deceived by his grandson Ezra Cross, Mama’s cousin (Aunt Momi's³ son) who lived with him, managed his business (with considerable profit to himself – no one ever knew just how much money he got away with). Grandma Cost’s⁴ family asked to have a guardian appointed in 1895, and the court put in Mr. Hunt, whose reputation was a trifle shady, and whom they suspected (tho couldn’t prove) was “in cahoots with Ez,” as I used to hear some of the family say.

But no one could do anything about it; and when [Grandfather Arnet] died, he left a house and $10,000 each to his two daughters, the surviving children. That there had been much more money before Ezra & Mr. Hunt’s regime no one doubted – in this way too Ezra’s mother got exactly the same as Grandma, tho she and her family had lived on Grandfather’s bounty rent free, for forty years at least, her husband being a nice man but “shiftless” while Grandpa Cost was proud ...  and a “good provider” – wouldn’t even ask for an equal free rent tho he lived in one of Grandfather's houses. Grandma decided to sell the house on Court Street which was left to her, and the family moved into Grandfather's home on Baymiller St. She and Aunt Momi divided the furniture left from that which was sold at auction, and Grandma got a very large bedroom suit, which was later sold to Blanche, a cousin. They paid rent for the Arnet home, but they had been used to that and for the first time in years the family felt free & “well off."

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ENDNOTES

¹ Sarah's maternal great-grandfather David Arnet
² Sarah's maternal great-grandmother Elizabeth Voris Arnet
³ Mary Naomi "Momi" Arnet, wife of John Cross and daughter of David and Elizabeth
⁴ Sarah's maternal grandmother Sarah Evaline Arnet Cost, wife of Richard Henry Cost

Names and dates in this post came from the scrapbooks and the Howe Family Bible.