Go, Wildcats! UK Football Memorabilia From the Early 1930s

While neither William L. Salyers or his wife Sarah Eva Howe Salyers had college degrees, all four of their children attended the University of Kentucky.

• Robert King Salyers II, The eldest, apparently attended UK for two years before transferring to Eastern Kentucky State College and receiving his diploma there in 1929. He later worked as a research assistant to UK President Frank McVey.
• James Richard attended UK and, like his three brothers, was active in Kappa Sigma fraternity. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees there.
• Mary Alice was a UK graduate and was a member of Kappa Delta social sorority and several honorary and leadership societies.
• David Hillis II spent his years at UK participating in various choral and drama groups. He got his diploma in 1937.

No wonder I find so much UK-related items in Sarah's scrapbooks! Here are a few of the pieces that surfaced today, all related to UK sports. While I've found no evidence that any of Sarah's children played varsity sports, we know that at least one of the boys played football and basketball at Carrollton High, and the youngest played tennis for Henry Clay High after the family moved to Lexington.

The following picture of the UK marching band, probably clipped from the UK student newspaper The Kernal, has a caption that by today's standards is a little flowery. Note the comments about the female sponsor of the band.

The next clipping includes a photo of the band sponsor in a later year. (As you may remember from previous posts, Sarah too often neglected to put dates on items in her scrapbooks.) Note under the photo on the far right that only male students had a vote in naming the prom queen.

UK Sophomore Harrison Elliott composed a march for the UK band titled "Our Sponsor March," dedicated to band sponsor Elizabeth Jones (on far left in the clipping above). Elliott gained a fair degree of acclaim for his music. In Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, a book by Richard A Peterson, a promoter refers to 19-year-old Elliott as a "French-Huguenot-Scottish-Irish Kentucky mountaineer, [and] authentic mountain composer [of] America's first folk opera, "The Call of the Cumberlands." Newsweek reported that the opera was performed over the NBC radio network in August 1935.

The scrapbooks are full of tickets to football and basketball events. Below are a few samples. The first photo (which may also appear in a previous post) shows student ticket books for both semesters of 1932-1933. Below that is an image of a supplementary pass into the cheering section. Apparently, getting into a game didn't automatically include the right to sit in the cheering section.

Note the prices for reserved seats at UK football games in those days. For comparison: The 1932 dollar is comparable to $16.89.

People who know UK will recognize some familiar names in this 1930s clipping about the university's Athletic Council. Various campus facilities and programs still bear their names today.

People with Carrollton, Kentucky roots may recognize at least one of these players. Kipping was a prominent name there starting in the late 1800s – and perhaps still is. Sarah Eva Howe's sister Leonora Alice Howe married Charles Kipping.

 Also in the scrapbooks, many game programs. This is one of the more colorful. In spite of the listing of Kentucky first on the program (usually the visiting team is listed first) this was a UK homecoming game played at McLean Stadium in Lexington. UK lost the game 19-0, and Alabama continued on to post a perfect 10-0 season and win SEC and national championships.

While this image isn't specific to UK, it illustrates the public's enthusiasm for football in the 1930s. Notice that everyone wore their Sunday best to the games. I remember dressing up for athletic events when I was in college way back in the 1960s. I think today's sports fans take a more casual approach.

I include this image because it is part of a sports-focused scrapbook. Smoking was popular – even "stylish" – in the 1930s. I knew the Salyers men to be pipe smokers, but maybe they smoked cigarettes in those days. I can't even imagine Sarah or Mary Alice smoking! Maybe they just liked the dress in this ad, which probably appeared in a magazine or maybe in a football program.

The scrapbooks contain so many items related to UK sports that I could probably create a blog just on that topic. I'll include a few more in future posts. Let me know if you'd like me to watch for specific kinds of images or information about UK athletics in the 1930s. We have stacks of scrapbooks yet unexplored.




For UK football memories from the early 1890s, see the post dated Sept. 3, 2016: "Get Ready for Some Football! Sarah Remembers the Wildcats of 1893."

Bits & Pieces: Sports, Politics, Advertising, Groundhog Day – More Scrapbook Ephemera from the 1930s

As we would expect, the scrapbooks Sarah Eva Howe Salyers put together in the 1930s reflect her family's activities and interests. The Howe-Salyers clan was interested in just about everything, so the scrapbooks are full of bits and pieces about this and that.

Sports

The Salyers males participated in sports, all of them as fans and some of them as players. (I found proof in the letters they wrote to each other and in these bits of memorabilia in the scrapbooks.

Students used books of tickets to attend UK athletic events. 

One ticket from the first-semester student admission book

Fans who were not students could use this form to apply for reserved seats at home football games. They would have paid a whopping $9.90 per person, plus the 20-cent fee, to attend all five games.

In the fall of 1932, the Henry Clay Blue Devils traveled to Louisville to meet opponent Male High.  The Lexington Herald ran this story:

I've heard family stories about Sarah's son Jim playing football and basketball and son David playing tennis, but I'm still looking for verification in the scrapbooks.

Politics

If you've read posts about Sarah's childhood, you know that she, her parents, and her extended family paid close attention to political issues. Several of her relatives in Carrollton ran for public office. Her children continued the interest in local, state, and national politics. I rarely turn more than 10 pages in most scrapbooks before I come across a mention of political campaigns, platforms, speeches, or elections. 

These two items are from 1932. The first appears to be a clipping from a magazine (not identified in the scrapbook). I think the second is a leaflet.

Advertising

Sarah saved many ads. I don't know why she did that, but I'm glad she did. They provide insight into her life and times. 

Sarah did the household shopping, and I can picture her checking the grocery ads before venturing to the store. These prices seem low to us, of course, but consider that the average annual salary for those lucky enough to have jobs in Depression-era 1933 was (according to various online resources) about $1,370. Renting a 3-bedroom apartment cost $15 a month, on average. A gallon of gas cost about a dime. Also remember that in 1932-33 Sarah was buying groceries to feed a family of 3 adults, 2 college students, and one teen-age boy.

Notice the half-cent prices. The only references I've found to a U.S. half-penny say the coin was minted from 1793 to 1857. Maybe the half-cent amounts were totaled at the cash register and consolidated into the final price. Apparently, there was no half-penny coin, so I don't know how the clerk handled a single purchase priced with a half-cent amount. 

 This is one of several ads for retailers marketing to high school boys and college men. In the 1930s (and until not so long ago), men wore suits to athletic events. The Kaufman's store in Lexington ran an ad in the early fall of 1932, offering a Hart Schaffner & Marx suit for $25. 

Sarah's husband William Levi Salyers and her son Robert King Salyers worked for the Moore company. Will's job was to find retailers who would display and sell Moore products in their stores. This ad is a sample he showed to prospective sellers. Note the "Your Name and Address Here" near the bottom, with a space for a retailer to promote his own store.

The item at left was on the same scrapbook page as several others advertising an event at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington. The event brought several nationally-known radio stars to town to perform for a live audience. The event may have been broadcast live to the nation, but I'm hazy on that detail. 

The person in this ad appeared in small parts in a few Hollywood movies before he became a radio star at NBC. Jimmy Wallington  was the announcer or master of ceremonies for several popular radio shows in the 1930s through the 1950s. The Salyers clan no doubt found radio programs both entertaining and informative. Sarah probably kept this clipping because she often heard Wallington's voice – and possibly because he was part of that event at the Kentucky Theatre.

I speculate that Sarah saved the ad below not because of the product – I don't think she or her daughter ever smoked cigarettes and I saw her sons smoke only pipes and cigars – but because she liked the dress. Ultimate 1930s!

Last but not least, this tribute to Groundhog Day. The item below is a newspaper article clipped from a newspaper, probably published in an afternoon paper, the Lexington Leader, on Feb. 2, 1932. 

Based on current weather predictions, I'd say a groundhog who leaves his burrow in Lexington this Friday, Feb. 2, probably won't see his shadow. Will that mean the end of Winter 2018? We can only hope!

 

Bicycles! More Than Transportation for Women in the 1890s

This is the third consecutive post — and the last — focused, at least in part, on the bicycle. I couldn't leave the topic without sharing about the role bicycles played in the lives of American women in the 1890s and why having a bicycle in 1898 was so significant to Sarah Eva Howe of Carrollton.

A bit of history on the two-wheeler: Online sources give various dates for the beginning of the bicycle, but they seem to agree that the first versions of the modern bicycle came along in the early 1800s. A timeline reports that the word "bicycle" was coined in 1869, the same year solid rubber tires replaced iron ones. In 1889, air-filled rubber tires introduced a much smoother ride, which boosted cycling's popularity.

Five years later, as technical improvements evolved in bicycle design, fashion designers offered bicycle-riding attire for women, and that made all the difference.

From Edgefield Advertiser [1]

Women famous for leadership in women's rights and suffrage began riding and talking about bicycles, and they got publicity for doing so.

• In 1895, temperance leader and suffragette Frances Willard wrote in her book A Wheel Within a Wheel that the first time she felt personal freedom was when she learned to ride a bicycle. To her, mastering the bicycle was equal to mastering control of her own destiny.¹
• In the same year, Annie "Londonberry" pedaled around the globe when someone bet $10,000 that she couldn't do it.
• In 1896, Margaret Valentine Le Long, alone and armed with a pistol, rode her bicycle from Chicago to San Francisco.²
• Women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony claimed the bicycle gave women "a feeling of freedom and self-reliance" and said bicycling did "more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."³

I am amazed at the wealth of available information about the impact of the bicycle on the lives of women in the 1890s, the "golden age of bicycling." The points I listed here don't begin to cover the topic.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll understand why I am confident that Sarah knew about these famous women and their thoughts on the bicycle. No wonder she was excited to be given a "wheel" of her own. This item from her scrapbooks takes a comical view of women learning to ride bicycles. Sarah mentions riding in long skirts. Maybe the new cycling fashions hadn't reached Carrollton yet.

Yes, we cycled in long skirts!

About this time bicycles came in force to Carrollton, but I didn't get mine till 1898, which was also when I began seeing so much of Will Salyers as he had the bicycle shop.

Will says he remembers me as always having Solon [her dog] with me tho I was older than [the girl with pigtails in this picture].

I haven't found a photo of Sarah on a bicycle yet, but her clippings and comments have been catalysts for a lot of research about the impact bicycles had on the lives of women in the 1890s. If you're interested in learning how the craze may have changed things for women in your own ancestry, the links in this post could take you to some thought-provoking facts and images. Here is another excellent resource:
How the Bicycle Paved the Way for Women's Rights





ENDNOTES

¹ An illustrated article, Alone and Awheel From Chicago to San Francisco by Margaret Valentine Le Long, is online in PDF format at the Sports Library & Digital Collection website.

² Source: Two in the Wild: Tales of Adventure from Friends, Mothers, and Daughters,  compiled and edited in 1999 by Susan Fox Rogers; published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing. Accessed 10 September 2016 via Google Books. This book's section on the history of women and bicycles is both informative and delightful to read.

 ³ Wikipedia.com article "Bicycling and Feminism." Original source: Vivanco, Luis Antonio (2013). Reconsidering the Bicycle: An Anthropological Perspective on a New (old) Thing. Routledge. pp. 32–34.

Stylin' in the 1890s – Sarah Comments on Fashion

Was Sarah Eva Howe a fashionista of the 1890s? I'm sure she dressed stylishly. After all, her father and uncles owned the premier clothing store in Carrollton, Kentucky. They traveled to New York and other markets to select styles for fashion-conscious citizens of their town. Surely Sarah and others in her family dressed well to set the example.

Sarah's scrapbooks about the 1890s and early 1900s include many newspaper and magazine clippings about women's fashions of the day. I wish she had given us more photos of herself and her family in their favorite styles, but I've had to make some assumptions based on the clippings and Sarah's handwritten commentaries.

Sarah did sketches of favorite styles. This sketch, which she marked "a la Gainsborough," features a lady's hat and "fur boa." I think the phrase in parentheses says "not painted." Sarah did some paintings from her sketches, but apparently she did not paint from this one.

This clipping shows fashionable styles for little girls circa 1895. The caption says "for August." Imagine today's active children wearing them on hot, humid summer days!

This beautiful dress is made of "lawn," a lightweight fabric used for summer styles. The caption calls it a walking dress. "All walking skirts in the 1890s were designed to completely clear the ground," reports one of my favorite websites for estimating when certain styles were popular. This one appears to have a short train, so I'm confused between the image and the definition.
















I think Sarah must have been a big fan of walking dresses, because her scrapbook has many clippings of them. The sketch on the right, I think, meets the definition of a walking dress. The walking stick in the woman's hand is a clue. Judging from the sleeves, I'd date this style at 1896. The text under the drawing is part of an advice column published in the Ladies' Home Journal circa 1896.


The image below illustrates what a woman wore to work in an office. (Women who worked in the 1890s were probably single and self-supporting. I think it was rare for married women to work outside the home.) Note the sleeves. They are similar to examples I've seen dated 1895-96 on the website mentioned above and on another great fashion styles research site, a blog by Sara Elise.

In Sarah's handwriting below the image are her comments about sleeve styles and the trouble they caused, especially in summer.

This picture not only shows a desk like Papa used – his desk, a beautiful red cedar one with a roll top, sat in our parlor for many years (and we kept everything in it! besides papers, I mean)  – but shows the working clothes of the period 1895-96. Sleeves got much larger than this though, and were extended with patent linings. For summer, they presented a difficult problem – straps were sewed from arm hole to elbow, inside, and the full sleeves puffed out between them.

Sarah wasn't above poking fun at the absurdly puffy, "leg-of-mutton" sleeves of her day. She saved this cartoon in one of her scrapbooks.














Maybe the cape in the sketch on the right was an answer to staying warm during the puffed-sleeves era. Again, the magazine offers advice, this time cautioning against wearing a watch to a social function and recommending the proper veil to accent a riding habit.

 
An article published in the Journal in 1893 recommends the classic black serge bathing suit. I looked through Sarah's scrapbooks for images of swimwear from the period. Alas, no luck. I did find a great illustration online, though.



The drawing at the end of that article shows a woman shopping. Note that the sleeves are full from shoulder to elbow, but they are gathered – not puffed – at the shoulder. From my research, this appears to be typical of women's clothing between 1892 and 1895 or so. (Seems a lot more practical to me!)



Sarah's scrapbook mentions unmentionables. Apparently, she saw this Ladies' Home Journal clipping in one of the magazine's "flashback" columns in the mid-1940s, and it reminded her of a corset worn by her mother during the 1890s.






 . . . the corset – Mama  wore one, but without straps. Mama had some lovely summer clothes, but almost all in black and white; she was "in mourning" for someone almost my entire childhood, as was the custom in well regulated families, for in-laws, too. First for her baby who died in 1889, then for Grandpa Howe (1890) then Uncle John Howe in 1891, then her grandmother Cost died.


I haven't come across any photos of family members in mourning clothes, but the fashion blog I mentioned includes a photo of a mourning dress of the 1894-1896 period in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It also includes images of the strapless corset circa 1898, some outrageous red shoes dated 1892, an elegant wedding dress, a gym suit, and other fashions of that day.

The following quotes come from Ladies' Home Journal articles pasted into Sarah's scrapbooks. They revisit columns the magazine published between 1890 and 1902. Enjoy!

“Yellow and pink alone or together will be extremely chic this spring,” writes Isabel Mallon in Some Easter Hats and Bonnets, “while flowers of every variety, from orchids to huge chrysanthemums, tulips, lilies and green roses, top the new chapeaux.”

“Country cousin: The bicycle dress should be light and free and loosely fitted. A whalebone bodice and riding trousers are worn under a shirtwaist of flannel, with a plain round skirt sufficient weighted in the hem to keep it in place.”

“Do you wear your hat right? . . . It should be worn almost square on the head. Who has not seen a bonnet on the back of the head, giving to the wearer an air of absolute dissipation? And again, a bonnet perched well forward on the face gives a savage air, decidedly suggestive of an inclination to fight.”

Children’s furs: A neck scarf of chinchilla, beaver, mink or Russian ermine varies in price from $2.50 to $20.

“Black velvet and accordion pleats are in again. A touch of gold is absolutely indispensable, but one must be chary in its use or a tawdry effect is given.”   
[Merriam-Webster definition of chary: cautious about doing something.]

To Baby’s mother: You will find that physicians do not approve of short socks at any age.”

Celebrating a Cost Family Wedding in Cincinnati, 1897

Today, Sarah recalls a trip to Cincinnati for the wedding of "Aunt Lee,"  Ida Leonora Cost, sister of Sarah's mother Alice Ada Cost Howe. Sarah was two months shy of her 14th birthday when she went to the wedding.

Sarah begins with memories about the wedding site, the church where for years her mother and aunts played piano for Sunday School and church services.

The Cost home from Aunt Em's¹ then Mama's time, thru Aunt Jessie's² young days, then especially Aunt Momie³ was always filled with music and gay singing and talking and overflowing with young people. Also going to St. Paul’s Church Young Peoples and Sunday School, where Aunt Momie played for several years (Aunt Jessie had played six years after Mama left.) There they of course met many nice young men, and in 1897, on October 11th, Mama’s wedding day⁴, Aunt Lee married Earl Burdette Russell, a young railroad man whom she had met there at St. Paul’s. She was 24, and Mame about 29 or 30 at that time.

We went up to the wedding. It was the most fun and excitement of my young life “so far.” Leonora⁵ was not quite 10 months old, but already trying to say a few words and as Aunt Lee’s namesake (as well as Mama’s) she was of course an honor guest at the wedding, but I was the one who thrilled to the romance of it all. I was very much taken with Earl who was gay, handsome and friendly. He and Lee took me over to see their little two room apartment on Barr Street where Aunt Katie and Uncle John Smith had gone to housekeeping in ’88 but had moved to Carrollton when Grandpa Howe died. One thing that slightly shocked me with my “Southern” elaborate ideas was the casualness of Aunt Lee’s preparations for such a great event. Up to the afternoon of the wedding she had still not quite decided which of the new dresses she had gotten she would wear to be married in!! I believe she finally chose a blue cloth dress, and wore it also to go away in. Grandma Cost had gotten both Aunt Lee and Aunt Mame the latest thing in capes, black curly lamb quite long. She wanted to buy Mama one, but Mama had a good coat (and said to give her the money. With this and some various gifts of money which had been presented to me at various birthday occasions, she and Papa bought my beloved bicycle, the friend and comrade ... of the next three years for me. It was in the spring of '98, I think, that they bought it.)

A clipping in Sarah's scrapbooks refers to a hat similar to the one she wore to the wedding. I think the photo below is the one she mentions in her description.

. . . Lee and Earl went to Chicago on their wedding trip and Aunt Mame and Harry⁶ and I went to the station with them. We enjoyed so much staying in the spacious Grandpa Arnet home. It seemed so much changed tho to me, for as I remembered it the parlor was dark and still, and everyone was so quiet – but when the Cost family moved into a house, things began to hum. Harry was now 21, and working in a railroad office (but not the one he worked in most of his life). Morris⁷ was 19, and crazy about horses, he always had a job driving for some firm – Adams Express Company for awhile but that was later, and he had some thrilling adventures with them.

 Grandpa had always humored Morris, just as Grandma did Harry. Because of Harry’s long illness in 1890, and his trouble with a catarrhal⁸ infection as he got older, Grandma felt he was “delicate” so she never encouraged him to do any “hard” work, if indeed he was even inclined to do it. He wrote beautifully, was very intelligent, could play the piano by ear from an early age, and wore his clothes well. Grandpa on the other hand, indulged Morris by letting him leave school and get a job (as young boys could then) long before he should have done so. So when Grandma came into her legacy⁹, both the boys “relaxed” and thought they could take a vacation for awhile, look around for better jobs, and perhaps eventually buy a place in the country to farm, as both of them had always wanted to do (and as they did later on). In the meantime they were most charming and indulgent companions for their 14-year-old niece.



I chuckled aloud when I read Sarah's observations about her uncles Harry and Morris and their inclinations against hard work. Harry was only seven years older than Sarah, and Harry was three years younger than Harry. To Sarah, the boys were more like cousins than uncles.

This photo of Harry and Morris was not in the scrapbook but in a Cost family album. Of course, the boys were older at the time of the wedding, but I couldn't resist including this image here. Look at those faces! It's easy to imagine the Cost parents "humoring" these two sons.

Did you catch Sarah's comment about her joy in receiving her first bicycle? Stay tuned! That bicycle will play a major role in a future relationship.
















ENDNOTES
¹ Emma Cost, a paternal aunt to Sarah's mother Alice Ada Cost Howe. Emma was born about 1852, just seven years before Alice, so the girls probably grew up more like cousins than aunt-niece.
² Jessie Fremont Cost, born 1861; sister of Sarah's mother Alice Ada Cost Howe.
³ Mary Naomi Cost, born 1869; Sarah's mother's sister
⁴ This wedding was on Sarah's parent's 15th wedding anniversary. Alice Ada Cost and Robert James Howe married 11 October 1882.
⁵ Sarah's little sister Leonora Alice Howe, born 20 December 1896
⁶ Richard Henry Cost, Jr., born 1876; Sarah's mother's brother
⁷ Morris Elliott Cost, born 1879; Sarah's mother's brother
⁸ Related to copious discharge associated with inflammation of mucous membranes, especially of the nose and throat. Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/catarrhal
⁹ The inheritance received when Sarah's great-grandfather David Arnet died in January 1897

Howe Brothers, Inc. – THE Place to Shop in Carrollton

Today we focus on Howe Brothers, Inc., purveyors of household goods and fashionable clothing for men and women.

In this fading image, circa 1910, Robert J. Howe stands with three women who could be store employees or Howe family members.

The immigrant John Howe launched the store, possibly in the late 1870s, and his sons had a hand in management of day-to-day operations. While first-born son William Ficklin Howe was more focused on the family's woolen mill and pants factory, his younger brothers John Irvin Howe, Robert James Howe (father of Sarah, the scrapbooker), and Joseph Brown Howe were running the store. The youngest son, George Thompson Howe, apparently had a role at the store, too, before he died in 1881¹ at 21 years of age.

By 1900, brothers John and George had died, and only Robert's and Joseph's names were on the store's letterhead. On 4 May 1900, the immigrant's first-born son William used the store stationery to write to his son John Junior Howe about family news. In the letter, he mentions that business is going well:

We have had a fine trade at the store all the week. Were very busy yesterday.

Apparently, Robert and Joseph shared responsibility as buyers, traveling to wholesalers to select the goods that would be sold at the store. Clippings, letters, and Sarah's notes frequently mention her father's trips to markets in New York and other cities. One example is a society column from a Carrollton newspaper. Her father's name is indicated in the clipping by an arrow.

Joseph was the "veteran retailer" featured in a Carrollton Democrat article. While Sarah (as usual) did not record the date of this clipping, the article's content helps set the publication year as 1927. Joseph Brown Howe was born March 7, 1857;² the article appears to have been published a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. (The last line of the article's left column is missing from the scrapbook.)


Joseph, who died on Dec. 7, 1929,² said in the interview: "There were five boys in that store, and I'm the only one left." Joseph was in the middle of the birth order among the seven Howe siblings to reach adulthood. He outlived all four of his brothers and one of his sisters. His sister Sarah Varena "Sallie" Howe died in 1950 at 87 years of age.

















Robert and Joseph also wrote the Howe Brothers ads published in the Carrollton Democrat and possibly in other papers in the northern Kentucky and southern Ohio area. Sarah called her father's writing style "refined" and "sophisticated." She  preferred it over the "flamboyant" ads written by her Uncle Joe.
The two ads illustrate Sarah's point. Sarah proudly noted on one ad: "Papa wrote this one." Elsewhere on the page, she wrote, "One of Papa's advertisements, nothing sensational, just dignified statement."


The other ad was the work of Sarah's Uncle Joe, who perhaps was the more outgoing of the two and more prone to a "hard sell" approach.

In 1893, when Sarah was 10 years old, she tried her own hand at writing ads for Howe Brothers, taking liberties with popular nursery rhymes. She commented that she knew they weren't as good as her father's, and she expressed little hope they would be published.

Endnotes
¹ Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Memorial #22896462. Original source: Methodist Church Cemetery, Carrollton, Kentucky
² Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Memorial #31550928. Original source: Carrollton IOOF Cemetery, Carrollton, Carroll County, Kentucky