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: “If you would thrive, be up by five: for there is wealth and certain health, when at the plow, or milking cow.” So saith The Republican in an 1879 poetry selection. Danville’s route ahead needed direction from time to time. Two years later, roads pointed to prosperity. Eight radiated from the town, but only two were without a toll. The paper intoned that “all future gravel roads” must be made free to travel, advising county commissioners to buy all the toll roads as soon as funds permitted.

With those free roads and “liberal advertising” by merchants and manufacturers, “and with the push characteristics of western towns, the population, wealth, industry and happiness of our county and her citizens might be increased an hundred fold.”

Later that season, sandwiched between items that McCurdy’s had mince meat, and Frank Pierson sold Bandaline, “a new preparation for dressing the hair,” came counsel from former Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner that “true greatness of nations” came not from wealth but from individual greatness.

Greatness came not from “the triumph of the intellect alone,” or the arts, literature and science, as that served only to “enlarge the sphere of its influence.” No, “moral elevation” that was “sustained by the intellect of man” was the path to pursue.

Come November, the No Name Club put on “the recherché affair of the day” – a ball – at the Mansion House.

“The beauty, youth and grace” of Danville were there, and “the accumulated wealth of years” was seen “in the rich and costly array and the jewels which glittered on the necks of snow.” Clearly, sun-browned napes were not invited. The reporter left before the orchestra led guests through “the elf-like waltz,” followed by the 10 o’clock dinner. The affair broke up only as dawn approached.

The Republican dispensed Buddhist scripture in March 1882: “Though the good may have little wealth, yet it is useful to all, like the water of a well. The selfish may have much wealth, but like the water of the sea, it quenches the thirst of none.”

A “doctor” who relied on Nervine in May 1882 for a host of cures stalking all walks of life possessed a photographic gallery of restored customers, from laborers to “the haughty children of wealth.”

Readers that month learned of a “recently deceased” St. Louis spaniel which possessed an estate left by its departed master. Wealth had not gone to the pooch’s head; it consorted with “common dogs.” The dead dog slept in a costly coffin at the family cemetery.

“Idleness lies in bed sick of the mulligrubs, where industry finds health and wealth.” That’s what Victorian minister C.H. Spurgeon had to say.

I discovered someone had arbitrarily substituted “mulligrubs” for “doldrums.” I much prefer mulligrubs.

I am convinced Danville’s elite in 1882 were interested in the widowed Mrs. Paran Stevens (nee Mariette Reed), society hostess of New York’s Gilded Age, holding court in her Manhattan Italianate marble mansion.

They might have chilled at the tale of a woman who hid her husband’s thousands and then died suddenly without telling him where the cash was secreted.

“The Widow Bardell,” Avon correspondent, shared success stories early in 1883. Enos Huron started out as a section hand, and he had become foreman. Doctor John Ragan arrived with no money, “but lots of grit.” He now had a nice house on a corner lot “in the most fashionable part of town, and a steady increasing bank account.”

Several farmers starting with nothing had worked their land to respectable levels. Will Reed had endured a farm foreclosure, but redeemed it, and now his net income from both farm and tile factory was “it is said, $1,300.”

As for Avon’s young women, “if they escape the wily arts of the sterner sex to lure them into the matrimonial net, soon show they are fully competent to take care of themselves.”

Cherry Grove correspondent Dick believed in August 1883 “the correspondent who strikes at a man because he may have to split rails for an honest living, is either a fool or a pampered son of wealth whose head is a gourd filled with putty.”

Dick did not reveal that correspondent’s identity. Perhaps he wrote for the Gazette.

Paul Miner Lizton ______________________________________________________________________