This was the scene in Knox County for the 1876 centennial

It’s fascinating to compare life in the earlier days of this county to our lives now.

Sometimes it is strangely different (as the old saying goes, “the past is a foreign country”), except for those times when it’s suddenly familiar.

Perusing the April 25, 1876 issue of the Mount Vernon Republican, I found plenty of examples of both.

That year was also a national anniversary year, and thus served as the leaping off point for Mount Vernon’s most visible monument, the Civil War soldier’s monument on public square, the cornerstone of which was to be laid on the Fourth of July that year.

Also relating to the national centennial, the Cleveland, Mt. Vernon (as it was always abbreviated in those days), and Columbus Railroad was offering special ticket packages for residents who might want to travel to Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

Speaking as a person currently struggling with a failing transmission in his car, I’d sure love to see the return of widespread rail travel. If I could accomplish all my research, concert reviews, and speaking gigs by railroad, I would gladly do so,.

Alas the politicians of Ohio seem more interested in grandstanding on hot-button issues than doing any real work to help residents.

In more smile-inducing matters, the paper quotes another newspaper, the Ohio Liberal, as claiming that they had heard about an usher in one of the churches in Mount Vernon who allegedly provided a very amusing service:

When a couple walked up to the door, this usher would ask if the couple was married. If the answer was in the affirmative, he’d seat them as far apart as he could possibly get them, preferably at opposite sides of the church.

If they answered that they were not married, he’d move heaven and earth to seat them together, even, the paper joked, “if he has to split someone in two to do it.” The local paper didn’t doubt it was true, just wondering which church it was.

Now, of course, this was a joke story written to fill up space in the newspaper. It is funny, though, to see that feuding married couples is one of the reliable sources of humor no matter where you look in history.

In an article that proves traffic accidents are also not a modern invention, we are informed that Mr. Z. E. Taylor and W. J. McFeeley were driving home from a prayer meeting in Clinton (now the northern edge of Mount Vernon), when their horse and buggy collided with another horse and buggy driven by William Bonar, who had been at the same meeting.

It isn’t clear exactly how they collided, but the end result was that McFeeley was flung forward from the first buggy, landing on his head in the roadway, where the buggy proceeded to run over him.

Fortunately, a wooden buggy was of considerably less weight than a modern automobile, so the sum total of McFeeley’s damage was some bruises and a destroyed silk top hat. The buggy sustained some damage, but the other people (and the horses) luckily escaped any injury at all.

In a surprisingly modern-sounding piece of information, it was noted that the prominent national political king-maker and Mount Vernon resident Columbus Delano was well into a shared project with Marion Welsh to expand greenhouse production of vegetables.

At this point, Delano and Welsh had a full acre (!) of vegetable greenhouse production in place, and were planning on adding more.

The newspaper editor noted this with approval, explaining that the early vegetables being produced for the community markets from these greenhouses kept a great deal of money local, instead of going to vegetable distributors in Cincinnati who would otherwise supply Knox County with fresh produce.

It shows that agricultural production systems were already advanced a hundred and fifty years ago, and that something as seemingly modern as mass greenhouse production was a part of that system long ago.

Last but not least, a different sort of entrepreneurship was demonstrated by David McGugin, Jasper R. Lybarger, and Francis M. Hibbitts, all of Knox County, who had just patented a new detergent for washing clothes.

The patent claimed “is warranted not to damage the garment in any way, at the same time is so powerful as to cleanse without the use of wash board or washing machine, in an incredibly short time, costing only six cents per gallon, and not requiring more than one-half the amount of water and labor usually employed in washing.”

The unusual part of their sales pitch for the American Cleaning Compound was that they wouldn’t even be selling the detergent to customers.

Instead, for $3 (whose equivalent in today’s money is almost $100), you would purchase the right to use the formula, which they would then tell you how to make yourself.

I suppose we can pretty fairly judge the success of this venture by the fact that American Cleaning Compound and its inventors are completely unknown today, and one such product graces the shelves today.