Letters to Santa

 

The jolly version of Santa, 1881

Once upon a time, Santa Claus wrote letters to children. Actually, it was parents, posing as Santa, who wrote the letters, admonishing their children for misbehaving, and recommending areas for improvement--or else! Santa was a strict disciplinarian in those days, not the jolly fellow we know now. In early 19th century illustrations, he usually carried a birch rod, and, not surprisingly, any children pictured nearby were crying.

Around the mid-19th century, Santa stopped sending letters, and instead began receiving letters from children. The history of letters to Santa doesn't explain why this change occurred, but it coincided with the advent of direct mail delivery to homes in urban areas, mailboxes, and a drop in postage costs. Children were probably relieved to have the opportunity to tell Santa their version of the behavior issue, as well as to put in a request for that special gift on Christmas Day. 

For years, the postal service directed letters to Santa to the Dead Letter Office. Some charitable organizations sought permission to respond to the letters, but the requests were denied, since opening mail to another individual, even a mythical one, is against the law. In 1913, the Postmaster General made an exception to that law, and charitable organizations took on the task of reading the letters, and seeing that some wishes came true. This practice continues, but today, organizations can only access letters addressed explicitly to "Santa Claus", not "Kris Kringle", "St. Nicholas", or any other variant which could result in mail to families surnamed "Nicholas" or "Kringle" being misdirected.

Around the turn of the 20th century, children were encouraged to send their Santa letters to the local newspaper for publication. Newspapers even offered prizes for the best letter. If you have a subscription to Newspapers.com or Ancestry.com, you can access Zanesville newspapers. Search by December dates, and you'll find dozens and dozens of short letters to Santa from Muskingum County children. To my delight, I stumbled on some letters written by Daisy and Charles Melick, my great-aunt Xema (Armstrong) Melick's children.

Thanksgiving Day Preparations

Thanksgiving Day is much-loved day celebrated by all kinds, colors, and creeds of Americans. Thanksgiving is the day we enjoy--and give thanks--for the opportunity to share a giant meal with family and friends. And for many of us, Thanksgiving means there will be price-slashing sales on just about everything, both before and after the celebratory day. This has been true for at least 100 years, as these Zanesville Times Recorder advertisements from the first half of the 20th century show.

On November 28, 1905, two days before Thanksgiving, the H. H. Sturtevant Co. ran a full page ad, headed with the banner above, offering sales on a wide variety of merchandise. Get your Thanksgiving garments and table linens here! The "dry goods" store was located at 3rd and Main.

The above ad and the three following appeared in the November 21, 1910 edition of the Times Recorder, three days before Thanksgiving. The Bailey Drug company was a family-owned business that had been around since 1836. William H. Slack began as a meat wholesaler around 1880. His success allowed him to invest in real estate in downtown Zanesville. He owned a building at Sixth and Main, and the Sharpe Building on Fifth. His retail market might have been located in one of those buildings. George Harvey Geist's shoe store was located at Seventh and Main. He later took over the Zane Shoe Co., which manufactured children's shoes. In 1925, Geist was robbed and murdered while working at his office. I could not find any information about the "Pure Food" store.

The Bon-Ton was a department store chain founded in York, Pennsylvania in 1898. Throughout the first part of the 20th century, The Bon-Ton acquired a number of other retailers, such as Elder-Beerman, and operated under those names. The above ad and the two following appeared in the Times Recorder on November 22, 1920, three days before Thanksgiving. No information could be found on the Deacon or Watkins establishments.

The above and the following ads appeared in the Times Recorder on November 26, 1930, the day before Thanksgiving. W. R. Baker founded the company in 1885. It was owned and operated by four generations before being purchased by Nickles' Bakery in 1970. The bakery's bread was marketed throughout southeastern and central Ohio under the names Plezol, Butternut, and Miami Made. A J. W. Knapp operated the Shaw Furnishing and Carpet Co. in Zanesville in 1918. He might have established the business in the ad below.

J. W. Bonifield was a nationally known hardware retailer, very active in civic and business associations. This ad and the one below ran in the Times Recorder on November 15, 1940, six days before Thanksgiving.

The ads above and below appeared in the November 21, 1950 edition of the Times Recorder, two days before Thanksgiving. Both ads are for "chain" stores, which by mid-20th century were replacing independent and family-owned retail establishments. The ad below is part of a larger National Brands Store advertisement.

 

MCCOGS' Upcoming Publication

The Licking River feeds into the Muskingum River at Zanesville, Ohio, and like most rivers, it will flood at least once a year, usually in the spring. But there were times in history when the river produced large-scale floods that could be destructive to life and property, especially when the flood waters reached a heavily populated area.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rendering of proposed dam

At least twice in the 20^th century, in 1913 and 1937, the Licking River brought devastating floods to the city of Zanesville. Throughout human history, the solution to minimizing flood damage has been to build a dam to control the waters. The Dillon reservoir and dam, authorized under the federal Flood Control Act of 1938, was part of a network of reservoirs throughout the Muskingum Valley meant to provide flood control for the Ohio River Basin, but Dillon’s primary purpose was to reduce the threat of serious flooding of a major city.

What seemed good for Zanesville and points south, however, was literally devastating to those whose homes and livelihoods were within the construction zone; their needs were deemed insignificant in the face of what officials perceived to be the  greater need. The reality is that in a face-off between a David and a Goliath, David usually gets trampled. In the case of the construction of Dillon Dam, Irville, Nashport, and Pleasant Valley, tragically, didn’t have a chance.

Eight years after the passage of the flood control legislation—in 1946—the Dillon Dam project got underway, with the relocation of 19 miles of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track. Funding problems and the Korean War halted work. In the mid-1950’s, the Zanesville, McConnelsville, and Marietta Chambers of Commerce, in conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, launched a campaign to push construction with headlines such as: “After 40 years—Ohio’s Licking River still threatens rich Muskingum Valley”.  In August, 1956, President Eisenhower authorized the funds needed to resume work, and the project went forward to its completion in 1960.

Early stages of Dillon Dam construction

Dillon Dam cost the federal government $33,000,000; it cost the 700 inhabitants of three hamlets along the Licking River—Irville, Nashport, and Pleasant Valley—their homes, their communities, and for many, their generational roots. The 10,000 acres required by the Dillon Dam project encompassed these tiny communities; the people who lived in them were forced to abandon or move their homes, stores, churches, schools, and even their cemeteries. Although several families relocated in an area called “new” Nashport, the sense of community once found in these places could never be fully replicated.

Irville church

Irville was founded in 1814, along the stage coach route between Columbus and Zanesville. It was granted a post office in 1816. There was a tavern to serve travelers, two churches, a couple of stores, a medical services provider, a brick manufacturer, and two fraternal lodges.

Nashport, west of Irville, was laid out in 1827 and became a tiny but thriving waystation on the Ohio Canal. In addition to providing accommodations for travelers and warehouses for goods being transported on the canal, Nashport had two general stores, a mill, two blacksmith shops, and several churches. There were two fruit orchard businesses. In the latter part of the 19^th-early 20^th century, Nashport was a stop on the Inter-Urban Railroad that ran along the Licking River between Newark and Zanesville.

Main Street, Nashport, about 1910

Settles General Store, Nashport

Pleasant Valley, which was granted its own post office in 1855, consisted primarily of large family farms, but still boasted, in addition to a post office, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a pottery manufacturer, a grist mill, and a saw mill.

Pleasant Valley's Too Slick School, about 1905. Names listed below.

Sixty years have passed since the inhabitants of these communities were dispersed and their buildings removed or demolished. These places are gone completely. For those who once lived in these communities, and for their descendants, memories—and some photos—are all that remain. Before long, all memory of these places will have vanished as completely as the physical structures.

MCCOGS’ mission is to preserve family history. Place is critical to that history, and so members of MCCOGS have been gathering photos and conducting interviews during the past several months. These memories are being compiled into a book, Before Dillon: Memories of the Lost Villages of Irville, Nashport, and Pleasant Valley. We hope to have this book available for purchase by the end of this year.

Observing Decoration/Memorial Day

Advertisement run by a local store in
the Zanesville Times Recorder, 1887 

On Monday, May 25, at 3:00 P.M. local time, Americans are asked to remember those men and women who gave their lives to the defense of the nation. During Memorial Day weekends, many Americans will decorate graves with flowers, and some readers will recall when this observance was known as Decoration Day.

Gen. John A. Logan

General John A. Logan, a retired Union army general and commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), issued a proclamation on May 5, 1868:

The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the last rebellion and whose bodies now lie in almost every city village and hamlet churchyard in the land.

Logan's proclamation was meant, of course, for the northern states. The general is said to have got the idea from the southern states, where the mothers, daughters, wives, and sweethearts of the Confederate dead had been decorating their loved ones graves annually since 1865, usually between April and June. (Some southern states still observe Confederate Memorial Day.) In another version of where Logan's inspiration originated, newly freed slaves in South Carolina re-interred hastily buried Union soldiers and covered the graves with flowers in April 1865. In 1966, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution naming Waterloo, New York as the official site of the first Decoration/Memorial Day observance. Waterloo druggist Henry C. Welles and county clerk John B. Murray were credited with founding the holiday, however, researchers have shown this is entirely mythological. In fact, there are so many competing claims as to how, when, and where America's Decoration Day began, there is actually a research center devoted to resolving these questions at Columbus (Georgia) State University. To date, there apparently are no definitive answers, except for the acknowledgement that placing flowers on military graves is a practice observed throughout time and across cultures.

Zanesville Times Recorder memorial to Union soldiers

The Decoration Day called for by Logan was observed in twenty-seven states and 127 cemeteries that first year, and each observance was entirely local and individual. In 1871, Michigan declared Decoration Day a state holiday, and other northern states followed suit over the next twenty years. Decoration Day officially became Memorial Day in 1967, and was declared a federal holiday in 1971, although throughout its (northern) history, the names were used interchangeably.

On May 30, 1884, in West Virginia and Maryland, both Union and Confederate veterans participated in the ceremonies of remembrance. As time moved on, more and more Decoration Day observances became joint ventures. It wasn't until World War I, however, that Decoration Day was expanded to honor those Americans who had fallen in any war. Up to that time, the day focused exclusively on the American Civil War.

Memorial Day tributes left at G.A.R. statue in Fultonham Cemetery

The Pandemic of 1918-1920

Zanesville Times Recorder, October 4, 1919

We're in the midst of a pandemic, a global health crisis that requires us to think and act in different, often new ways. Covid-19 confounds us, inconveniences us, frightens us, and at its worst, kills us.

One hundred years ago, in March 1920, the dreaded (and misnamed) Spanish Influenza pandemic, that began in autumn 1918, came to an end. The flu ravaged every part of the globe for a year and a half, infecting 500 million people (one-third of the world's population) and killing at least 50 million. It came in three waves, with the second one (1919) being the deadliest.

We've seen a lot of images, and heard many news stories of the personal toll taken by today's novel coronavirus. Below are photos from around the world, and headlines from the Zanesville Times-Recorder, all from the period of the Great Influenza (a more accurate name than "Spanish Flu"), that are hauntingly familiar.

Police officers in Seattle, Washington, 1918

U.S. Navy corpsmen ready to receive influenza patients at U.S. Naval Hospital,
Mare Island, California, 1918

October 7, 1918

Japanese school girls wearing protective masks

Seattle streetcar conductor orders man to don mask
before boarding, 1918

October 10, 1918

While schools were closed, American schoolchildren made toys for war refugees

Serbian soldiers in an influenza ward in the Netherlands, 1918

February 11, 1920

Oakland, California Municipal Auditorium turned into
temporary influenza hospital, 1918

Office worker wears protective mask, 1918

Australian quarantine camp, 1919

Physic class at the University of Montana being held outside, 1919.
 The open-air was believed to prevent the spread of the disease.

March 3, 1920

Emergency hospital set up in Brookline, Massachusetts to
care for influenza patients, 1918

Street cleaner in New York City, 1918. The NY Dept. of
Health's motto for city workers: "Better ridiculous than dead"

Red Cross Motor Corps transport an influenza victim in St. Louis, Missouri, 1918

December 11, 1918

Boston nurses in protective gear, spring 1919