History Knox
Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a column each Saturday reflecting on the community's history.
MOUNT VERNON — The Memories of Knox County group of Facebook is a treasure trove of historical information and images.
Tim Ashcraft recently posted this fantastic vintage postcard showing a fruit vendor’s wagon on the streets of Mount Vernon. The card is postmarked 1911. But who is the vendor?
His name is partially obscured by the wheel of the wagon, but appears to say “Toney Ray.”
A search of early 20th century city directories turned up Tony Ray, who lived on South Gay Street, and was a fruit vendor, but no address is listed for a shop in the business section of the directory. That sounds pretty clearly that this is our man.
Why would his name be misspelled on the wagon?
Probably because his full given name was most likely Antonio, because Tony Ray was born in Italy in 1881. By the time he came to the states and began working as a street vendor, he may have had some basic English under his belt, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily had English spelling conventions down.
In the 1910 census, Tony and his wife Rosa have an 18-month-old son named Lewis. Perhaps another one followed soon thereafter, because Tony has two children with him on the banana wagon.
It’s interesting to see that bananas were big business to Ray. While early importers occasionally brought bananas into the U.S. in the early 1800s, they didn’t become widely popular until they were featured at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.
After that, the fruit was in demand everywhere, and Ray probably did a pretty good business selling them.
On the back of the card, Russell Wagner has written to his friend Hazel K. Hill in Canal Dover, Ohio, that “Mt Vernon Ohio is a big town,” and added that he likes to buy there.
Maybe bananas were a favorite.