Mount Vernon pre-Civil War newspapers touted the end of the world

MOUNT VERNON — I do a lot of browsing of old newspapers in search of stories for this column, which can be anywhere from fun to deadly dull.

Once in a while it is downright perplexing, as in a recent jaunt I took through issues of the Mt. Vernon Democratic Banner from 1858.

The editor, Lecky Harper, was not afraid to be grossly racist in his attempts to undermine the local development of the recently created Republican party, which was closely associated with the anti-slavery movement.

Harper referred to the opposing party repeatedly as “Black Republicans” and “congoes,” the later apparently a slur meant to tie the Republicans to the central African nation of the Congo.

After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Harper toned down his blatant racism, which begs the question, is it better to see it plainly, or better to have it forced under a veneer of civility?

Some argue the former, but then again, that latter term of civility is derived right from what we’re all trying to participate in, which is civilization.

I think living together requires a little civility and perhaps people today might benefit a little from it, if they ever tried it.

That being said, there’s also an old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

I guess that’s how you keep track of what they say behind closed doors if they’re not shouting it in your face.

Less offensive, but potentially just as dangerous, are the endless ads in old papers for medicines that we today would dismiss as quackery. Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral will cure your dropsy, king’s evil, tetter, salt rheum, tumors, or partial blindness!

Right.

Other ads are perplexing, too.

It’s not even certain to me what local clothing store A. Wolff was selling when he advertised a new shipment of cassimeres.

An online search tells me that cassimere is a “fine-twilled woolen cloth of worsted warp and woolen weft in a diagonal twill weave.”

Ah. Glad that clears that up.

William Sanderson advertised his coach and carriage factory on Front Street (today Ohio Street) on April 6, 1858, by saying that he continues to manufacture, “Carriages, Barouches, Rockaways, Buggies, Wagons, Sleighs and Chariots,” made from “the very finest seasoned stuff.”

I also had to do some investigating of these terms.

A barouche is an open carriage with a retractable roof that can cover the back half, or be left down, like a convertible. A rockaway was a light carriage with a permanent roof, but open sides.

What really interests me are the chariots, because I of course picture the kind of Roman chariot you see in the movies.

It’s quite a picture if you imagine Ben Hur racing down Main Street.

The Mt. Vernon Music Company advertised new square pianos from the Boston manufacturer A. W. Ladd & Company, said to have won an international award for their pianos in 1855 in Paris.

A little research on that shows that this ad is telling the truth: The jury that gave the prize to Ladd pianos included no less a figure than the great French composer Hector Berlioz, and lesser figures like Jaques Halevy and Joseph Hellmesberger.

I wonder if any of these square pianos still survive in Mount Vernon. Square pianos started to fall out of fashion after 1860, and A. W. Ladd & Company eventually replaced them with grand pianos and uprights.

The company eventually went out of business during the Great Depression. Restored examples of their pre-Civil War square pianos can be found today selling for up to $45,000. Non-restored? Forget about it.

I recently saw someone on Facebook in Cleveland begging someone to come take a broken down Chickering square piano from their house for free. The ad was up for weeks.

Either someone finally went and took it, or the piano owner gave up. Not a big market for broken antique pianos.

James Hutchinson took a very interesting advertising approach in the paper’s following issue, referring to a major non-event, the Comet of 1857, known today as the Donati-Van Arsdale Comet.

It wasn’t an especially bright comet, but it did receive attention both because of its retrograde orbit around the sun and the fact that the earth would pass through the comet’s tail.

Whenever something like this happens, there are always those who try to provoke panic, claiming the end of the world is coming. The reality was rather underwhelming, as Hutchinson notes:

“The End of the World has not come, as many predicted it would, in the event of the Comet switching this mundane sphere with its tail.”

To celebrate, Hutchinson informed the public that he had gone to the cities on the East Coast and bought loads of the latest fashions, which were, of course, going to be on sale.

Turns out that the astronomer Dr. Donati had better luck with his next comet, which was discovered just a couple months after this newspaper was printed.

The Great Comet of 1858 was to be the first comet ever photographed, and the second brightest of the 19th century.

Looking ahead a few months to see if the new comet made much impact, I found only a single story giving a scientific explanation of why the new comet was visible in the evening and morning but not in the middle of the night (rotation of the earth, in case you’re wondering).

This at least proves the Great Comet was visible in Knox County. What with yet another comet, Mr. Hutchison was running the same ad.

His competitor A. Wolff must have felt a need to attack Hutchison bringing in big city fashions, for he made the following statement in one of his ads:

“Let it be remembered that Wolff is no dealer in the miserable, diabolical, outlandish, rip to pieces, Slop Shop work of the Eastern cities, but that his goods are manufactured here at home, by the industrious hands of the goodly citizens of Knox County.”

Mind you, these were by far the highlights of browsing these issues. At times when we get tired of the partisanship of modern media, it is instructive to remember that it’s nothing new.

For decades, Mount Vernon’s two main newspapers carried their party affiliations in their names.

The bulk of these pre-Civil War papers are blunt political screeds that don’t make for good reading today.

Indeed, it gets so bad in late 1858, that the Banner even has to run an article apologizing to its readers for the lack of coverage of local news because of how much it had been pushing its politics.

Perhaps editor Lecky Harper was finally starting to learn some lessons about how to get along in society.

And, even if he didn’t, within a couple of years, a massive war was about to pound the lesson home.