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.

Mam-maw and Aunt No-No Write Home from the Sanitorium

In January 1912, our scrapbooker Sarah Eva Howe Salyers was a busy woman. She was caring for her family of five (including husband William Levi "Will" Salyers, 5-year-old Robert King Salyers, and twins James Richard and Mary Alice, who were a few months shy of 2 years old). Apparently, Sarah also was caring for two ailing relatives: her mother Alice Ada Cost Howe and 15-year-old sister Leonora Alice Howe. In the scrapbooks are references to Alice and Leonora having rooms upstairs at the Salyers house. At first I thought they were staying there because they were ill and needed Sarah's care, but various notes in the scrapbooks make me think they lived there with Sarah and her family.

(from left) Mary Alice, Bob, and Jim Salyers, 1911-1912

The children were sad when Daddy and big brother Bob took Alice (called both "Mam-maw" and "Grandma") and Leonora ("Aunt No-No") to the Carrollton depot to board a train bound for Louisville. From letters Sarah pasted or transcribed into her scrapbooks, we learn that the two women went to a sanitorium. References to "Dr. Pope" suggest that they checked in at the Pope Sanitorium, established in 1890 by Dr. Curran Pope on Chestnut Street in downtown Louisville. According to Louisville Encyclopedia by John E. Kleber (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), Page 785, "sanitoriums were popular in those days for treatment of chronic diseases and disorders such as tuberculosis and nervous/mental disorders." I have not yet discovered the ailment that sent them there.

Letters from Alice and Leonora to Sarah in Carrollton, and letters Sarah sent to them in response, offer insights into social customs, medical care, and transportation trials and tribulations of that time. There's also an amusing story or two.

 February 1 (Letter from Leonora to Sarah)
Dear Sister,
It is snowing "like pitchforks" here.  . . . We received your letter just a few minutes ago and were certainly glad to hear from you. I got the letter down at the office in the back of the building. Mr. Thruston Pope is just as fat as ever. [This statement makes me think that the Pope family had Carrollton ties and that the Howe and Salyers families were acquainted with them.] I had a pleasant time on the train coming up except that the train was too warm and I got the headache. When we got here, it still ached so I lay down and slept about two hours. About that time Dr. Pope sent for me. He looks about the same but his hair is a little grayer. Dr. Pope did not keep us so very long. I do not know anything about how long I shall have to stay.

February 1 (Letter from Alice to her daughter Sarah)
"We are rapidly getting acquainted and find the crowed very friendly and agreeable. One lady, Miss Tillie Baer of Owensboro, is one of the lively ones. She knew "Harry" McGinnis and knew "Artee" Griffith . . .  Haven't drunk cocoa but have had milk every meal. Doctor questioned us both closely yesterday, and I took the "mestatic" yesterday but Leonora's headache was so bad, she did not. . . . [I have searched for the term "mestatic" but have not found a meaning or explanation.]

February 2 (Letter from Alice to her daughter Sarah)
Dr. Pope says for us to take a morning walk for 20 minutes before our treatments, so we have just come in from our "braces" which felt very "tonic" as it was colder than I thought. Please send me 1 black silk waist [which I think is a blouse or under-blouse], 1 pr gray kid gloves no. 6, one gingham apron.

February 28 [Letter from Sarah to her sister Leonora]
. . . As for Madge [the Salyers family horse], we can't drive her yet on account of the terrible roads _ the hundreds – I was about to say thousands – of tobacco wagons that are constantly criss-crossing the streets into a hollow checkerboard of mud (if you can take in such a figure). The last time I had her out it was almost impossible for her to drag the

Sarah's transcription of her letter to Leonora. The scrapbooks contain some actual letters but many transcriptions of letters, possibly so the originals could be returned to the people who received them.

surrey through the streets, light as her load was (your humble servant was the sole passenger).  . . . Will said he had a fine time on his visit to you and a mighty good dinner at Doctor Pope's and could see a lot of improvement in "our" two patients. I must tell you the joke –– Bob wanted to go down with his daddy, and I suggested that maybe he could go and stay with you all while Will attended to business, as you did have two beds, and he could sleep with Grandma. Will said, "I wonder if I could stay one night at the Sanatorium, too," and Bob said readily, "Why yes, Daddy, you could sleep with Aunt No-No while I sleep with Grandma!" But his daddy blushed and said he was "afraid Aunt No-no would object!"

Several observations about this excerpt:

• The Salyers family of Carrollton was still using a horse and buggy for transportation in 1912. A previous post reports that only five automobiles were registered in Carrollton in 1910-1911.  
• Sarah's reference to dinner at Dr. Pope's reinforces my thinking that the Salyers family was connected at least socially with that family. 
• Little Bob's innocent suggestion that his daddy sleep with his mother's sister made his daddy blush, which I find endearing. Other scrapbook passages mention that Will stayed at the Seelbach hotel when he traveled to Louisville on business or to visit his mother-in-law and sister-in law. The hotel would have been within a few blocks of the sanitorium at 115 W. Chestnut Street.

March 25 [Letter from Leonora to Sarah]

Leonora Alice Howe without her glasses, circa 1918

By March 25, it appears, Leonora's health has improved. In a letter to Sarah, she speaks of going to
places beyond the sanitorium grounds:
I am going to see Girl of My Dreams [a play] Saturday with Miss June Walker at Macauley's. This morning we went downtown. We went to the New York Store and then to Dr. Ledeman's. . . . I just wanted to see if my glasses were all right. I wish you could see the doctor. He is attractive. He has a keen sense of humor and is fascinating because he is so funny. He is a man of almost thirty years, I suppose. Now you will think I am talking a great deal about him, but I assure you he is perfectly harmless and besides he is Hebrew and is married "already yet."

How typical of a 15-year-old girl to write home about her social engagements and the handsome doctor. Less typical, perhaps, is her frequent request that Sarah send butter:
Do tell me if you find any fresh butter, for you know my weakness for that article. Dr. Pope has good butter, but it is not quite so fresh as I like. I like the fresh country butter.

Sarah's letters from Carrollton reply that she was unable to get fresh butter at an affordable price. Research on why that was so will have to wait for another day.

The pages and papers in this scrapbook are loose and not in consecutive order. A look through the whole book failed to turn up evidence of how long Sarah's mother and sister stayed at Pope Sanitorium. We know they recovered from their ailments, because both lived decades beyond 1912.

Getting from Here to There in the 1890s

Sarah Eva Howe writes in her scrapbooks about various trips in the 1880s to the early 1900s. She traveled from Carrollton, Kentucky, to Cincinnati to visit relatives and to Louisville to visit friends. Her family went to events in nearby communities of Ghent, Vevay, Madison, and Worthville. Her father and uncles traveled to New York to select stock for the family's department store.

How did they get to those places? Clippings and comments in Sarah's scrapbooks tell the stories.

Montage from one of Sarah Eva Howe's scrapbooks

• Boats – from small rowboats and ferries to large steamships – carried people and goods across rivers, lakes, and oceans. 
• A railroad bridge crossing the Ohio River from Worthville, Kentucky, was completed before 1870, and train travel was apparently commonplace in the entire area before 1880.
• The omnibus (barely visible behind the trees near the lower right corner) was an enclosed, horse-drawn coach that could accommodate groups of people. The March 6, 1871 issue of Louisville's Courier-Journal  reported: “An omnibus line is to commence its daily trips this morning from Carrollton to Worthville.” That explains how Carrolltonians got to Worthville to catch the train! Stagecoaches were still in use as well. From a web site's clipping dated October 1872 (no newspaper named): “The Carrollton Station Stage is doing a thriving business, so is the Worthville Stage, and they are both well conducted. Travel from here, to the cities, is now almost entirely by the Short Line R R. The river is so low that there is no telling at what time the Mail-boats will be along. For instance: the Ben Franklin left Cincinnati, last Saturday evening, and did not reach here until Monday morning.”
• That contraption on the hillside at the top of the montage is an incline. There was at least one incline in Cincinnati, known as "The City of Seven Hills." Sarah commented about riding it when she traveled by riverboat and needed to get from the river up to Price Hill where her Cost grandparents lived. She saved this postcard in a scrapbook.

The horse and buggy was a popular mode of transportation for centuries and was still commonplace through the early 1900s. Sarah remembered cousins coming to visit by horse and buggy.

Aunt Sallie and Uncle Mack [Sarah Varena "Sallie" Howe and Herman M. "Mack" Froman] and their children made frequent trips to see us, and go shopping, from their farm home above Ghent. With their staid family horse it was an hour & a half time. I remember how in cold weather we used to heat bricks for their feet to put in the bottom of the buggy.

What did people do in those days when they needed to get a horse and buggy across the river? This ferry could do the job. Note the commentary above the drawing: "All the Hazards of an Ocean Voyage." I suppose the most important part for the ferryman was keeping the horse calm!

Sarah noted that this ferry operated between Carrollton and Prestonville (both in Kentucky), so these passengers were crossing the Kentucky River just south of where it meets the Ohio. Note their tense body language and apprehensive expressions on the woman's face.

A previous post includes a postcard image and Sarah's comments about Heath's Ferry, which took passengers across the Ohio from the foot of Carrollton's Main Street.

Bicycles became popular modes of short-distance transportation in Carrollton – and everywhere else – in the late 1890s. That was about the time the town's residents started hearing about the "horseless carriage." The first image of an automobile in the scrapbooks was this one, an 1898 Stanley Steamer. Sarah wrote no date or source of the newspaper clipping.

 Later in the scrapbook, Sarah pasted the next image and reminisced about the first time she saw a car.

I never saw a car till 1901, I believe, but of course we began to hear of them, talk of them and even to sing of them ("My Merry Oldsmobile") before that. But I remember the feather boa era like the one the girl is wearing at right.

The song "In My Merry Oldsmobile" was written and first recorded circa 1905, so Sarah's recollection of singing the song prior to 1901 may be a little off. It's fun to listen to the song recorded in 1906.

In 1910, cars were becoming popular enough that the state decided to tax them. Five people in or near Carrollton registered automobiles with the Commonwealth of Kentucky from June 14, 1910, through June 1911. As listed on the Northern Kentucky Views web site, those car owners were Oscar G. Kipping, E.A. Wood, Ida B. Fentress, someone named Schuerman, (probably Henry Berg Schuerman, husband of Sarah's cousin Ruth Louise Howe) and A.W. Shirley. The site lists what kind of car each person had, the horsepower of each car, and the amount of tax paid.
The same web site offers these and other Carrollton-related transportation tidbits:

• “The stage from Carrollton to Worthville, in connection with the Short-line railroad, now runs only when there are passengers.” Courier-Journal, April 17, 1871
• As reported in the New York Times, the first phone call ever made from a train occurred along the Carrollton and Worthville Railroad in 1906.
• Timetable for the L&N Railroad, 1879, listing Liberty (Sanders), Eagle, Worthville, and Carrollton.

The site is a treasure trove of information and images about transportation in north and north-central Kentucky during the late 1800s and early 1900s.