Sunday Blue Laws prohibiting sales of certain items, most notably liquor but also non-necessities, were around for many years, prevalent even into the 1970s. Some cities/states still have them, and lives have to be planned around them, but they do give employees time off to worship (if they worship on a Sunday- not all religions do) and/or be with family.

Transcription of 1923 article above:

SUNDAY MOVIE LAW UPHELD BY COURT

preme court today again up-

held the constitutionality of the 

state law prohibiting Sunday motion

pictures, when it refused to hear

the appeal of Walter K. Richards

from the decision of the Hancock

county courts, prohibiting him from

operating his motion picture theater

in Findley on Sunday.

It was surprising to see that movie theaters were included in these type of laws. This newspaper article from Marion, Ohio indicates that a court appeal was brought to the State Supreme Court by a theater owner after he lost his case to stay open on Sunday in Findley, Hancock County, Ohio.  The income lost from not being open that one day was probably significant, especially since many persons would be off work on Sundays and have more time to see a movie. Despite the hardship to his business, the Ohio Supreme Court concurred with the opinion of the lower courts, and Walter K. Richards was not allowed even to appeal.

What was shown in a movie theater back then would have been silent films with an organist playing a soundtrack- ‘talkies’ didn’t come around until 1927.

It would be interesting to know if stage productions were allowed on Sundays in Ohio in 1923.

Some of our ancestors lived in Ohio in 1923- wonder how they felt about prohibiting theaters from opening on Sundays? We do know that many members of the Beerbower/Peters family were very religious, so it is likely they applauded the courts for upholding the law and Sunday as a day of rest. Although many of our then-young ancestors were very active in church groups, how likely was it that they would have wanted to go to the movies on a Sunday with their sweetheart or friends? Probably not all of our ancestors were religious enough to consider closing movie theaters on Sunday required by the church, and some likely worked six days a week- they would have liked a bit of entertainment on their day off. Don’t forget that there was no television or cable tv in 1923!

This court case also shows how judicial attitude changes over time as the pendulum swings back and forth. Today, our courts strongly uphold the rights of businesses, especially in cases that affect their bottom line.

So, were these “the good ole days,” or not?? Are you sentimental for a time when family and church were a societal focus, or more sentimental for the Sunday afternoons you may have spent at the movies with family or friends?

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) 1923 Prohibition on Sunday Movies, in Marion [OH] Daily Star, 17 Apr 1923, Vol. XLVII, No. 122, page 1. Used with kind permission of the Marion Daily Star.

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Springsteen Family (Click for Family Tree)

Checking through a run of city directories to confirm where Jefferson Springsteen and his wife Anna Connor Springsteen were living, I didn’t find the family in 1857 in Brooklyn but did find some delightful ads that gave me a chuckle.  Although the Springsteens had moved from Brooklyn, New York to Indianapolis, Indiana about 1853, it is possible that these plumbing companies had been in business when they were still in the city. (I believe they also had relatives still in the city then, but still have a lot more collateral kin research.) In the meantime, I thought I would share these ads as a plumber they may have called- with a young family of seven people in the household and no disposable diapers, they probably needed a plumber at some point!

The Springsteens lived only blocks from the East River and the Navy Pier. With shipping being such a huge industry in the port city of New York and environs, it seems logical to find the combination of house and ship plumber. After all, it’s all pipes, right?

Apparently there were some plumbers who only worked on residences and commercial buildings, or maybe it was a given that if  you were a plumber, you didn’t need to be specific as to whether the plumbing was located on land or water. It was just a job.

Our ancestors are more than names, dates, and places. Seeing images of the minutiae of their lives helps us to understand them better, and make connections to our lives today.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. See references with images.

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Labor Day officially became a federal holiday in the United States in 1894. “The Gilded Age” included the rise of big business, like the railroads and oil companies, but laborers fought- sometimes literally- for their rights in the workplace. Grover Cleveland signed the law to honor the work and contributions, both economic and for society, of the American laborer. Celebrated on the first Monday in September, ironically the holiday was a concession to appease the American worker after the government tried to break up a railroad strike but failed.

The Labor Day weekend is a good time to think about our ancestors and the work they did to help move our country and their own family forward.

Jefferson Springsteen was a mail carrier through the wilds of early Indiana, traveling for miles on horseback through spring freshets (full or flooding streams from snow melt), forest, and Indian villages. Samuel T. Beerbower, who would be a some-number-great uncle depending on your generation, was the Postmaster in Marion, Ohio, for many years. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Bad weather, gloom of night, ocean crossings in the mid 1800s, and the threat of disease or injury did not stay our minister, deacon, and missionary ancestors from their appointed rounds either- especially since the felt they were appointed by a higher power. We have quite a number of very spiritual men in the family. Henry Horn became a Methodist circuit rider after coming to America as a Hessian soldier, being captured by George Washington’s troops in Trenton, NJ, then taking an Oath of Allegiance to the United States, and serving in the Revolutionary Army. The family migrated from Virginia to the wilds of western Pennsylvania sometime between 1782 and 1786. A story is told of how he was riding home from a church meeting in the snow. The drifts piled up to the body of the horse, and they could barely proceed on, but Henry did, and was able to preach another day. He founded a church Pleasantville, Bedford Co., Pennsylvania that still stands, and has a congregation, even today. Edward B. Payne and his father, Joseph H. Payne, Kingsley A. Burnell and his brother Thomas Scott Burnell were all ministers, some with formal schooling, some without. Edward B. Payne gave up a lucrative pastorate because he thought the church members were wealthy and educated enough that they did not need him. He moved to a poor church in an industrial town, where he was needed much more, however, he may have acquired his tuberculosis there. He also risked his life, and that of his family, by sheltering a woman from the domestic violence of her husband, and he testified on her behalf.

Abraham Green was one of the best tailors in St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1900s, and many in the Broida family, such as John Broida and his son Phillip Broida, plus Phillip’s daughter Gertrude Broida Cooper, worked in the fine clothing industry.

Edgar Springsteen worked for the railroad, and was often gone from the family. Eleazer John “E.J.” Beerbower worked for the railroads making upholstered cars- he had been a buggy finisher previously, both highly skilled jobs.

The theater called a number of our collateral kin (not direct lines, but siblings to one of our ancestors): Max Broida was in vaudeville, and known in films as “Buster Brodie.” Elsie Janis, born Elsie Beerbower, was a comedienne, singer, child star in vaudeville, “Sweetheart of the A.E.F” as she entertained the troops overseas in World War I, and then she went on to write for films. Max Broida also did a stint in the circus, as did Jefferson Springsteen, who ran away from home as “a very small boy” to join the circus (per his obituary).

Collateral Lee family from Irthlingborough, England, included shoemakers, as that was the specialty of the town. They brought those skills to Illinois, and some of those tools have been handed down in the family- strange, unknown tools in an inherited tool chest turned out to be over 100 years old!

Will McMurray and his wife Lynette Payne McMurray owned a grocery store in Newton, Iowa. Ella V. Daniels Roberts sold eggs from her chickens, the butter she made from the cows she milked, and her delicious pies at the McMurray store. Franz Xavier Helbling and some of his brothers and sons were butchers in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and had their own stores.

Some of our ancestors kept hotels or taverns. Joseph Parsons (a Burnell ancestor) was issued a license to operate an ‘ordinary’ or “house of entertainment” in 1661 in Massachusetts, and Samuel Lenton Lee was listed as “Keeps hotel” and later as a saloon keeper in US Federal censuses. Jefferson Springsteen had a restaurant at the famous Fulton Market in Brooklyn, NY in the late 1840s.

Many of our family had multiple jobs. William Gerard Helbling (AKA Gerard William Helbling or “G.W.”) listed himself as working for a theater company, was an artist, then an undertaker, and finally a sign painter. George H. Alexander was artistic as well- he created paintings but also worked as a lighting designer to pay the bills.

Sometimes health problems forced a job change. Edward B. Payne was a Union soldier, librarian, and then a pastor until he was about 44 when his respiratory problems from tuberculosis forced him to resign the pulpit. For the rest of his life he did a little preaching, lecturing, and writing. He also became an editor for a number of publications including, “The Overland Monthly,” where he handed money over from his own pocket (per family story) to pay the young writer Jack London for his first published story. Edward B. Payne even founded a Utopian colony called Altruria in California! He and his second wife, Ninetta Wiley Eames Payne, later owned and conducted adult ‘summer camps’ that were intellectual as well as healthy physically while camping in the wild and wonderful northern California outdoors.

Other times, health problems- those of other people- are what gave our ancestors jobs:  Edward A. McMurray and his brother Herbert C. McMurray were both physicians, as was John H. O’Brien (a Helbling ancestor), who graduated from medical school in Dublin, Ireland, and came to America in 1832. He settled in western Pennsylvania, still wild and in the midst of a cholera epidemic that was also sweeping the nation; he had his work cut out for him. (It appears he did not get the same respect as other doctors because he was Irish, and this was pre-potato famine.) Lloyd Eugene “Gene” Lee and his father Samuel J. Lee owned a drugstore in St. Louis, as did Gene’s brother-in-law, Claude Aiken. Edith Roberts McMurray Luck worked as a nurse since she received a degree in biology in 1923.

We have had many soldiers who have helped protect our freedom, and we will honor some of those persons on Veterans Day.

We cannot forget the farmers, but they are too numerous to name them all! Even an urban family often had a large garden to supplement purchased groceries, but those who farmed on a larger scale included George Anthony Roberts, Robert Woodson Daniel, David Huston Hemphill, Amos Thomas, etc., etc. We even have a pecan farmer in the Lee family- William Hanford Aiken, in Waltham County, Mississippi, in the 1930s-40s.

We must also, “Remember the ladies” as Abigail Adams entreated her husband John Adams as he helped form our new nation. He/they did not, so 51% of the population-women- were not considered citizens except through their fathers or husbands. Many of these women, such as Lynette Payne McMurray, labored to get women the right to vote, equal pay, etc. (Lynette ‘walked the talk’ too- she was the first woman to ride a bicycle in Newton, Iowa! Not so easy when one thinks about the clothing involved.) Some men, like her father, Edward B. Payne, put their energy into the women’s suffrage movement as well. Many of our ancestors worked for the abolition movement too, including the Payne and Burnell families.

A woman worked beside her husband in many families, although she would get little credit for it. Who cooked the meals and cleaned the rooms for the Lee and Parsons innkeepers? Likely their wives, who also had to keep their own home clean, laundry washed, manage a garden and often livestock- many families kept chickens even if they didn’t have a farm. They raised and educated their many children too, sometimes 13 or more. Oh yes, let’s not forget that women truly ‘labored’ to bring all those children into the world that they had made from scratch. (Building a human from just two cells makes building a barn seem somewhat less impressive, doesn’t it?) Some of them even died from that labor.

Working alongside one’s husband could be frightening due to the dangers of the job. A noise in the Aiken family drugstore in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936 awoke Claude and Mildred Aiken since they lived in the back of the store. Claude look a gun and went into the store while Mildred called the police. Claude fired the gun high to frighten the intruder- Mildred must have been very scared if she was in the back, wondering who had fired the shot and if her husband was still alive. Thankfully he was, and the police were able to arrest the thief, who wanted to steal money to pay a lawyer to defend him in his three previous arrests for armed burglary and assault.

We applaud all of our ancestors who worked hard to support their family. Their work helped to make the US the largest economic power in the world, and a place immigrants would come to achieve their ‘American dream.’ We hope our generation, and the next, can labor to keep our country prosperous and strong.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. There are too many folks listed here to add references, but using the search box on the blog page can get you to any of the stories that have been posted about many of these persons. Of course, there is always more to come, so stay tuned!

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Springsteen Family (Click for Family Tree)

Well, maybe “not funny, hah ha” as my parents and grandparents would have said, but it does seem funny in this day to think that dentists would have needed a forge back in 1857. It makes sense though, when one realizes there are still metal fillings and gold inlays used in dental work. Having that wonderful power source called electricity makes it much easier for dentists in 2015.

Our Springsteen ancestors lived in Brooklyn just before this time- we know Jefferson Springsteen and Anna Connor Springsteen were there, and likely Jeff’s father and maybe siblings or cousins. (Anna’s family possibly too, though she was our immigrant ancestor in that line. She is very hard to trace because of her name and sex.) They may have visited a dentist with a forge out back!

Can you imagine sitting in the dentist’s chair, having him walk out, but instead of going to the next room to check on another patient, he goes out to the forge to create your new tooth or filling?? Think of the heat, smoke, noise, and fine dust of a forge, and the sulfur and other smells- no wonder people were afraid to go to the dentist!

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Smiths Brooklyn Directory for yr ending May 1 1857, page 18. via InternetArchive.

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Springsteen Family (Click for Family Tree)

In 1848 in Brooklyn, New York, Jeff Springsteen was a trunk maker, per the above city directory listing.

People in the mid 1800s did not have a stack of suitcases like we do today. They used a small valise or carpet bag for quick trips, or if they only had one set of clothes. (That is all some folks had.) If they were moving or going somewhere for a time- which they often did since travel took more time just to get to a place- they would use trunks. Women’s clothing was so big with the long skirts and hoops and other undergarments, etc.- they would never fit into today’s suitcases! Additionally, many persons dressed for dinner or the theatre, so would need multiple changes of clothes. All of a person’s worldly goods might be in one trunk as they migrated to a new town or state; large trunks were therefore essential.

Trunks were actually manufactured in a number of sizes, including the large ones we see today in antique shops. Smaller ones were important too, but all trunks were sturdy and provided protection for the goods inside- especially important when traveling by wagon or stagecoach.

Trunks often had elaborate interiors- some with lithographs pasted inside the lid. There would be many compartments in some trunks, so that hats would not be crushed, highly starched collars would stay round, contents would be organized since one might be living out of the trunk for a while, and the contents would not jostle as much over the bumpy roads of the mid-1800s.

Compartments could include hat and shirt boxes, a compartment for documents, a coin box, and even secret compartments for valuables.

Saratoga trunks were some of the most common pre-1870 trunks. Perhaps Jeff Springsteen helped to build them? And maybe this ad in a later city directory (1850) was the company Jeff worked for in 1848.

Jefferson Springsteen seems like a pretty down-to-earth man from what I know about him, and the city directory did use the simple term ‘trunk maker’ for his occupation. In fancier circles or on the continent (Europe), one who made trunks was known as a “malletier“- literally ‘trunk maker’ in French.

Above are some of the tools used in the late 1700s to make trunks, but they were likely the same used by Jeff Springsteen in his daily work. A pine box would have been constructed per the size of trunk needed, and then sturdy and/or decorative materials would have been glued or nailed to the outside and inside. Many types of hardware would have been used for hinges and handles, and hardwood or metal slats may have ringed the trunk to help hold it together. Just think of all the old westerns with trunks flying off the stagecoach when they hit a rock- obviously, trunks had to protect their contents well!

Prior to 1854, all trunks had rounded tops, so that water would run off of them when transported outside on a stagecoach or wagon. Unfortunately, this shape kept them from being stacked. Louis Vuitton, who some may have heard of, was the first malletier to make a flat-topped trunk, and it was lightweight as it was made of canvas; it was airtight too. Louis Vuitton has remained the most popular luggage maker in the world since this design debut in 1854. (LV is probably the most copied, as well.)

It would be interesting to know more about Jeff’s job as a trunk maker. Likely the workers only did one or a few parts of a trunk, repeating it for the next so they could specialize in that part of the manufacturing. Jeff worked later as a painter in Indianapolis, and although he made his living painting houses, he also painted landscapes, etc. for his family. This might be a clue as to his part of making a trunk- he may have applied the lithograph, painted borders, etc. to make the trunk as beautiful as it was useful.

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Jefferson Springsteen in 1848: Brooklyn City Directory and Annual Advertiser for the Years 1848-9, comp. by Thomas P. Teale, pub. by E.B. Spooner, Brooklyn, NY, 1848, via InternetAchive.org.

2) Trunk Manufacturer Advertisement in Hearnes Brooklyn City Directory for 1850-1851, Brooklyn, NY, pub by H.R. and W.J. Hearne; via InternetArchive.org.

3) Wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malletier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunk_(luggage)

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Original content copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.