Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor:

From its earliest days, The Republican sought to elevate the denizens of Danville and county society, from laborer, farmer, stockman, lawyer, doctor, craftsman, shopkeeper and merchant, often in league with ministers, some distant and famous, some dead wrong.

A Baptist missionary, the Reverend William Washington Colley, returned from labors in Liberia, declared in 1881 that the Sahara was not a vast desert wasteland.

Colley claimed the Sahara was “fertile and densely populated.” He put forth such a demonstrably false statement because, “The wily Arabs started the lie, he explained, in order to keep out competition in the ivory traffic.”

The paper apparently bought the story, declaring once again the “myths and illusions of our childhood are exploded.”

Fact-checkers were scarcer then, leaving me to wonder how long this and other planted whoppers were promptly bought, repeated and persistently resown, becoming entrenched into sundry minds’ reality.

Religious leaders held great sway in those times and Colley wasn’t alone. After all, preachers condemned roller skating as corruptive of morals.

Syndicated pulpit orator and anti-vice crusader Thomas DeWitt Talmage believed he knew in 1886 who to blame for much of society’s ills.

“Who are these people in society, light as froth, blown every whither of temptation and fashion – the peddlers of filthy stories, the dancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the man of low wink and filthy chuckle, and brass breastpins, and rotten associations?”

Mostly, they came “from mothers idle and disgusting – the scandal-mongers of society . . . attending to everybody’s business but their own, believing in witches and ghosts, and horseshoes to keep the devil out of the church . . .”

Would the reverend today dare to claim mothers were responsible for the foul crop of finger-to-the-wind politicians and weasel commentators currently plaguing us? Dear Editor, did you know three successive tabernacles where he preached all burned? A hornswoggled community demands fealty to swallowed disinformation and false propaganda. Stray from that and you are cast aside with the curse of twisted displeasure. “Society never forgives you if you disappoint it in its estimate of you.”

It is true in an advanced age of education, technology, wealth and comfort by every standard of the past. The newspaper back then strove to be a moral compass. It had no tolerance for liars in 1884. “A man who will willfully and maliciously concoct and put into circulation a slanderous lie against the character of another is so low down in the scale of human decency and moral depravity that there is no possible hope of giving him his just deserts in this life.”

People like that were “a menace to society, an obstruction in morals and a putrefying stench in the nostrils of honest men and women.” That judgment teeters on the brink of bellowing for violence. “Society regulates collectively the morals of its members,” the paper shared in 1885.

That was long before truth knelt before deceit. Danville and county business society was ailing in 1885. Townsfolk complained “at the dullness of the times and the general stagnation of business.”

Moralistic, The Republican faulted “an outgrowth of a bad and unwholesome policy” by businessmen, town officers and citizens. Instead of “friendly rivalry . . . a jealous and spiteful opposition” reigned.

The situation was not only “hurtful to society, but is destructive to prosperity and success.”

The paper urged Danville’s merchants to “join hands and work heartily and honestly for the interest of all.”

When a new editor assumed the reins in 1886, his predecessors declared him “a defender and promoter of good morals and social purity . . .

“A paper in its news-bearing capacity is but the reflex of the community in which it lives.” It mirrored the community.

Deviating from animal society’s norms also has consequences. In 1886, a prominent family packed up from its Park Avenue home to spend time at their Burlington, Vermont, farm. They took their 10 servants, horses and carriages, two shaved poodles and two donkeys.

All was well until the family shaved the donkeys to resemble the “ultra fashionable” poodles. The deed so enraged the dogs they killed the donkeys. “Who could bear to see their garments copied by a donkey?”

The dogs were dispatched “to the happy land of canine.” Paul Miner Lizton