Old News

One of my hobbies has been exploring the genealogy of my family. For nearly 30 years, I’ve read dusty records, examined old pictures, and unraveled a mystery or two. Since the advent of the internet, this has been made somewhat easier, but there are still lots of records that have not yet been digitized.

One of the things you run across in this hobby are old newspapers. I love reading them. The whole approach to news 100 years ago or more was completely different than today.

Take for example the front page of the Stevens Point (Wisconsin) Daily Journal from April 2, 1912. 25% of the front page is devoted to “Men’s Furnishing”. The term alone has no meaning in our world, and no self-respecting newspaper would devote so much front page space to an advertisement.

Despite the fact that 1912, like 2012 was an election year, the citizens of Stevens Point were informed about an upcoming lecture on horticulture, a gunfight between Deputy Marshalls and some criminals in Illinois, the death of a long time citizen, an accounting of the finances at the local post office, a description of past or upcoming services at two of the local churches, and a few more advertisements for everything from Ipswich Black Hose to canned fish.

This sort of news wasn’t unique to small town newspapers. The Washington Post from the same date has no political news on the front page, but does mention terrible flooding along the Mississippi River, and stirrings of war talk and a Mexican crisis. There were no ads on the front page,

I enjoy reading old newspapers to see how events of the day were reported. The Davenport Sunday Leader from November 4th, 1898 has a story of a spanish ship lost off the coast of San Salvador in a storm, but most of the front page has a paragraph devoted to elections in each of the 45 states.

At one point I had my Great-Aunt Hazels National Geographic magazine collection, including some from the mid to late 1910’s. I used to love reading some of the very early ones. Unfortunately, in one of my cross-country or cross-continent moves, they disappeared. National Geographic was a very heavy magazine, even 100 years ago, and a large collection could grow quickly to a thousand pounds.

In todays world where there are fewer and fewer magazines, and newspapers are dropping like flies, and even books are now read on a screen instead of a page, looking at the old newspapers and magazines is exciting and fun and gives me a sense of time travel.

I also miss the sense of community that newspapers evoked 100 years ago, where you might find a story about a dinner party, a kid getting a good report card at school, or that the farm down the road had a great crop of wheat.

We are much busier today, although I often think we all could stand to eliminate a few things from our schedules and give ourselves some free time to just look out a window.