Living the Dream

224 years ago, while others were trying to figure out what it meant to be an American, one man was already defining the American Dream.

Today’s blog post isn’t about a promising cure but it is most definitely about a promising life.

I’ve been collecting advertising trade cards for a solid 40 years now. There are some beauties in my collection and some rare ones too, but it had seemed almost impossible to add an Early American trade card to my personal trove of ephemeral treasures; it's been an unfulfilled dream.

American trade cards were in use at least as far back as 1722, but examples from before the end of the Civil War are almost exclusively found in museums and a small handful of private collections. They’re rarer than hen’s teeth – and far more desirable. Absolutely dream-worthy.

However, in the last few months I’ve been able to add the Dr. John Curtis trade card (New York, ca.1865) and the British trade card (ca.1825) of John Conquest, hatmaker. (I’ve shared their stories with you this past May 6th [Curtis] and June 10th [Conquest]). Please check them out!

This trade card of John E. Tyler dates back to 1801. To fully understand its significance, you need to know the detailed backstory. Yes, there’s a lot to read, but it’s the only way to discover the whole story this very special trade card is trying to tell. The past is still trying to talk to us.

J. E. Tyler trade card, ca.1801 - magnified. Rapoza collection.

A FIRM FOUNDATION (1766-1790)

In 1766, achy, weary travelers seven miles north of Rhode Island stopped in the town of Mendon in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The stagecoach rest stop was 37 miles from Boston, according to the ancient milestone marker that is still standing in the town's Founder's Park, by the side of the original Middle Post Road. The rugged, undulating dirt road was jarring and tiring (George Washington complained about it) but nonetheless the vital artery connecting Mendon to Boston; it was the difference between going nowhere and going to the hub of their colony’s universe.

Riding another mile up the road towards Boston, travelers passed the south edge of the 600-plus acre Tyler property. The Tylers had been a prominent family in Mendon for generations since it had become a town a century earlier. John and Anna Tyler farmed their large property and had two children within a few years of their marriage: daughter Anna in 1764 and then son John in 1766.

Let me put this in perspective: 1766 was 259 years ago; slavery was still legal in Massachusetts and a decade before the 13 Colonies became the United States; the Boston Massacre wouldn’t happen for another four years and the Boston Tea Party three more years after that. Before dealing with wartime turmoil, however, the Tylers’ world was tossed upside-down when farmer John’s wife died in 1772; a few weeks later, the newly motherless John junior turned six years old. Despite the devastating personal loss and the challenge of suddenly becoming the single parent of two small children, John Tyler senior risked everything by participating on a committee of six Mendon men who drafted a formal protest to the various acts of Parliament that violated colonial rights and privileges, imposing duties or taxation on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At a town meeting in March 1773, the committee of six drafted nineteen resolutions, starting with “… all Men have naturally an equal Right to Life, Liberty, and Property”; it was the first time such sentiments were put in writing in the American Colonies. The protest and refusal to accept the Crown’s impositions and seizures of liberties put every man who signed them at great personal risk, but they bravely voted nonetheless:

… that the foregoing Resolves be entered in the Town Book that our Children, in years to come, may know the sentiments of their Fathers in Regard to our Invaluable Rights and Liberties. [emphasis added]

John Tyler probably wondered whether putting his name to those words was sharing his patriotic values with his two motherless children or leaving them his farewell address.

In 1774 Britain closed the port of Boston, prompting Mendon citizens to write new resolves, urging the colony to “suspend all trade with the island of Great Britain until said act of blocking Boston Harbor be repealed and restoration of our charter rights be obtained.”

In response to the British attacks against the colonists in Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775, Mendon's soldiers mustered at Founders' Park and marched on to Boston by way of Middle Post Road; Private John Tyler was one of those soldiers, marching past his farm and probably his sobbing 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son as he headed to an uncertain future.

Magnified view of a map of the Massachusetts Bay Colony showing the three Boston Post Road routes. The Middle Post Road connected Mendon to Boston, both highlighted in red. From S. Jenkins, The old Boston Post Road, (G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York and London, 1914). Public Domain; courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Private Tyler’s first tour of duty was nine days, stationed in Roxbury to prevent an advance of British troops by land into the colony from Boston. Eleven months later, Tyler had raised a company in Mendon and neighboring towns, was named its captain, and reported to Roxbury again, to join the ongoing siege of Boston. Captain Tyler and his company also spent the winter of 1777-1778 with General Washington at Valley Forge, but in March he was back in Mendon; the 47-year-old married a second time to a woman 21 years younger – she was just 11 and 13 years older, respectively, than her new stepdaughter, Anna, and stepson, John junior.

With the exception of some skirmishes in the South and the western frontier, the war was decisively concluded by the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. At the cost of many valiant lives, the colonists’ liberties and property had been restored and their independence from Britain gained.The formal peace treaty was signed in 1783 by which time Captain Tyler’s little boy had become a young man and a student at Harvard University. At 20 years old he was one of 45 graduates in 1786, gaining his Bachelor of Arts degree.

Back home from the war, John senior was able to build the value of his estate to £1,990 – over a half-million dollars (in 2024 USD) and to enlarge his family through his second marriage. He fathered five more children between 1779 and 1788; then, just two months after his last child’s birth, the vigorous father and husband, wealthy farmer, and valiant veteran of war suddenly died. With his future seeming far more promising than when he had marched off to war 13 years earlier, he was killed in a moment of cruel irony by the falling of a large limb off a tree that he was in the process of cutting down.

From his father’s death through 1790, John the son was now being recognized by the courts as John Tyler, Gentleman of Mendon, a title typically reserved for those of high social standing, education, and wealth (usually inherited wealth). And he was single.

BUILDING BLOCKS (1791-1793)

The 57-year-old John senior didn’t anticipate his untimely accidental death, so he hadn’t prepared a will. In 1791 the court made his oldest son and namesake the administrator of his father’s estate, but even in his role as the first-born male, and the most educationally accomplished in his small family, he did nothing to pad his portion of the inheritance; he neither pushed to gain the entire estate or the double portion often accorded to the eldest son. His stepmother was given the widow’s third of the estate and the remainder was divided equally between him, his sister, and their five stepbrothers and stepsisters. The seven children of Captain John Tyler, ranging from 24 to 3 years old, each received exactly £119-3-8 (about $30,040 in 2024 USD) – equal to the penny. In another episode of brutal irony, John’s older sister Anna died while the court was in the process of distributing their father’s estate to the family; John was made the executor of her estate as well.

John’s education and ambition were steering him away from farming. A few months after his father’s estate was settled, “John Tyler, Gentleman” began showing up in records as “Dr. John Tyler,” a physician in Westborough, Massachusetts, 13 miles north of Mendon. He was listed as a physician there from August 1791 to November 1793. During that time he was awarded a courtesy (ad eundem) Master of Arts degree from Yale University in September 1792 and eight days later he received payment from Westborough for his attendance and medicines provided to one of its paupers.

Receipt for medicines and services to John Scudmore, signed by John Tayler, 1792. Tayler’s name is identified as “Dr. John Tayler on the other side of this receipt. From Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001. Courtesy of FamilySearch.org

Westborough was a small town – only 118 houses in 1791 – and there was already a popular physician named Hawes who had lived and practiced there for almost three decades, doctoring the town’s ill, making and dispensing his own medicines, and even pulling teeth. He had also become an influential leader there as its town meeting moderator, town clerk, and one of its selectmen. Money was obviously tight in the small town as Dr. Hawes often had to accept bartered goods in the absence of cash for his services – “everything from rum to pudding pans.” He also supplemented his income by hiring out horses and renting rooms in his home for lodging.

If John Tyler had real intentions to make the practice of medicine his career, Westborough seemed an unlikely location for an aspiring doctor to settle down. Clearly smart and well educated, it was incongruous for the new doctor to practice medicine in a very small town dominated for decades by a well-established physician (after all, there were only so many pudding pans a single guy needed!). Whatever his motivations were to go to Westborough, he left there with building blocks that would shape his future.

The few years John Tyler spent in Westborough were pivotal because of his association with the prominent Parkman family. Breck Parkman, a wealthy merchant, had a profound impact on the trajectory of John’s career. Three generations of the Parkman family had been tightly connected to Westborough’s Congregational Church where Breck’s father, the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman, served through much of the century as its first minister. There, on 10 November 1793, the church’s records reveal, “Doctor John Tyler[,] upon his public profession of Religion was baptized[,] it not having been done for him in his infancy.” The 27-year-old’s submersion in baptismal waters was most likely witnessed by his business mentor, Breck Parkman, and one of Breck’s children in particular – Hannah, who was just 13 when John had first arrived in town and 15 years old at the 27-year-old doctor’s baptism. In the years ahead, she would become his wife, her father would become his business partner, and John’s newfound religious faith would punctuate his path forward.

During his three years in Westborough, John Tyler’s life had undergone a personal revolution. He had arrived there as the lone surviving member of his birth family but he left Westborough with close ties to his new pseudo-family; he also gave up his career as a physician, became a merchant, was baptized a Christian, and went to Boston to start over. Like the new country around him, he was beginning life anew.

THE NEW NATION (1794-1800)

Charles Thomson's design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782. Reports of Committees of Congress; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360; National Archives.

The fact that John Tyler could choose to live, work, and have property in Boston was the fulfillment of a nation’s dream; the 13 British colonies in North America had won the right to unite as an independent nation. The port of Boston was once again wide open to ship and receive goods with the world. The patriotic dreams of Captain Tyler had come true: his son was able to enjoy his unfettered rights to life, liberty, and property, becoming a merchant and building his life in Boston. The city that had been embattled and blockaded to choke it into subservience was now alive with ambition and freedom. Like the rest of the citizenry throughout the United States, Bostonians could proudly identify with the bald eagle, a uniquely North American species; it had been chosen in 1782 as the Great Seal of the United States, the new nation’s symbol of strength, freedom, and courage; Paul Revere had it adorn his own trade card.

John Tyler staked his claim to American success by moving to Boston in early 1794; within a few months of the doctor being baptized in Westborough he had resurfaced as a merchant in Boston. In 1796 he was listed as a retailer on Cambridge Street in the heart of the city, down the street from Samuel Chamberlin’s “Medical Cordial Store … at the sign of the Blue Bottle.” Tyler’s shop was near the wharves, the heartbeat of the city. The entire east side of Boston bristled with shipping docks like the back of an agitated porcupine.

The most dramatic protrusion into Boston Harbor was Long Wharf, jutting a half mile into the bay’s deep water, allowing the biggest ships to dock there and unload their large cargoes. It was as long historically as it was spatially. Looking through a spyglass on a clear day in 1726 at the end of Long Wharf, the body of pirate William Fly might be seen hanging in a gibbet cage in the harbor. In 1761 the Boston Gazette advertised the sale of Negro slaves “just imported from Africa” at No.19 Long Wharf. During the Revolution, the British landed at and evacuated from Long Wharf. A long line of warehouses, shipping offices, merchant shops, sailmakers, and ship chandlers were built upon the long wooden tongue of deck and pilings that stuck out far into the harbor. Businesses at No.19 and No.44 were nearer the west end that was attached to the land.

Paul Revere, "A view of part of the town of Boston in New-England and Brittish [sic] ships of war landing their troops! 1768." In the left foreground is Long Wharf, starting in the city and jutting out into the harbor. The wharf extended into the harbor a half mile at one point, but this image shows landfill and Boston's buildings already surrounding some of the wharf. The wharf is surmounted by a long row of buildings that were the merchants' warehouses, counting houses, chandleries, etc. Map, Chicago, Ill: Alfred L. Sewell, [1870]. Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, https://collections.

Newspaper advertisements were used to announce the sale of goods unloaded by recently arrived ships. Addresses were listed for the shops and warehouses on and near the wharves where the particular goods could be purchased, usually along with the names of the business owners. In 1798, however, the building at No.44 Long Wharf was ownerless and identified simply by the number; whichever ship captains had docked on the other side of the wharf from the empty building mentioned their location at Long Wharf by simply stating it was “opposite No.44.” In 1799 the location remained vacant and just a reference point from which to find other things:

FOR SALE. / The schooner POWDER-POINT, 82 tons, one year old; now lying opposite No.44, South side Long Wharf. …(23 MAY 1799)

For CHARLESTON, (s.c.) / The brig CYRUS … will sail in a few days … For FREIGHT or PASSAGE, (having good accommodations) apply to the Master on board opposite No.44, Long-Wharf … (25 JUL 1799)

    In January 1798 the editor of Boston’s Columbian Centinel newspaper noted that the empty building had what amounted to early Federalist-era graffiti scrawled across the front:

KINGS ARE NUISANCES

Although the snarky message could have been the expression of a dated opinion about England’s King George III, it’s more likely to have been referring to the sitting president John Adams, who was viewed by some of the population as despotic, or even George Washington, the concern being that the creation of the office of president just allowed another monarch to rule.

Vandalism had not been limited to the docks; other business locations in the city were being hit in 1799 and the business owners were getting fed up:

One Hundred Dollars Reward

is offered for the discovery of the infamous Villains, who on Saturday Night last defaced the Sign-Boards and Shops through Cornhill, Market Square and Union street. Whoever will bring to light the perpetrators of that work of Darkness so that they may be convicted thereof, shalt receive the above reward, on application to SAMUEL WHITWELL. N.B. The sum of near Six Hundred Dollars is subscribed, for the purpose of bringing the offenders to condign punishment. ... [emphasis added]

Perhaps the anti-royalty scrawling at No.44 Long Wharf was evidence the empty building had some elements of undesirability that kept it vacant for so long and encouraged visual vandalism; if so, the price may have been adjusted to make it attractive for the right enterprising business to make a try at the location. By at least 16 October 1800, John Tyler had set himself up at No.44 Long Wharf; there he offered for sale 25 large barrels of “Cogniac & Bourdeaux Brandy … 5 yrs old of the best flavour” and 50 barrels of “elegant white sugar.” He may have been there as early as February 1800, when someone at No.44 offered “A Few boxes of old Havannah Segars, manufactured from genuine Cuba Tobacco …” and again in April 1800 when 44 Long Wharf  advertised, “WANTED, A BRIG FROM 130 to 160 tons, to take a freight to Holland.” 

The fact that the busy city of 25,000 had other men also being identified in the newspapers as John Tyler may have been the reason that Boston’s new 35-year-old merchant sought out a legal change of name in March 1801:

John Tyler, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk, son of John Tyler, late of Mendon, in the county of Worcester, deceased, shall be allowed to take the name of John Eugene Tyler. [emphasis added]

As soon as the court approved his request, he immediately began using his new middle name and initial to single himself out to his customers. It was a simple but important change: John Tyler (no middle name) was selling goods at No.44 Long Wharf from 1800 to March 1801, but starting in April 1801, newspaper advertisements were identifying the proprietor as John E. Tyler, J. E. Tyler, and John Eugene Tyler – every possible version other than just his two birthnames. Bursting at the seams with enthusiastic determination to succeed in the new nation, the man with a new name, new business address, and new career was ready to shout it to the world.

THE NEW AMERICAN (1801-1803) 

The same exultant spirit of eagerness and patriotic nationalism floated through Boston at the dawn of the new century, especially among the docks of the merchant trade. They vividly remembered the economic suffocation of the blockade during the war and were determined to reverse the pains of the past into a future full of promise. The city-wide exuberance was reflected in Boston’s 1801 Independence Day festivities. The jubilant and patriotic celebration was marked by church bells ringing throughout the city, the red, white, and blue Stars and Stripes waving everywhere, and salutes being fired from the frigates Constitution and Boston in the harbor and Fort Independence on Castle Island. An orator exhorted a large gathering of his fellow citizens “to feel, and to be AMERICANS,” and many toasts were offered to the new nation; the American eagle finding its way into several:

May every savage beast and bird of prey that shall dare to infest this happy country, or to attempt any depredations either by sea or land, be caught and held fast in the talons of the American Eagle.

May it bring the Barbarians to a sense of their duty … and make them crouch to the American Eagle.

Boston's shop and tavern signs often echoed their owners' newfound postwar patriotism. In addition to the Golden Eagle Tavern (1784) on Brattle Street and the"Sign of the Eagle" (1798) on Fore Street where the Frigate Constitution tried to recruit its crew, there was the "Sign of the Yankey Hero" (1783) in Wing's Lane, the "Sign of the Boston Frigate" (1800) on Fish Street, and the "Sign of the Golden Ball" (1799) on Wing's Lane. While the latter doesn't speak clearly to our modern sensibilities as a sign of patriotism, the owner of the liquor business it marked explained his customers were invited:

... to the Golden Ball - where he hopes the gratification they will receive, will be as great, as was that of the gallant tars of America, when they were told what effect another AMERICAN BALL [i.e., the cannonball] which well deserves to be GOLDEN, had on a foreign insurgent [i.e., England]. [emphases as in original]

     There can be little doubt that the advertising trade card John E. Tyler commissioned (the engraver is unidentified) reflected the same patriotic fervor from the son of patriot Captain John Tyler, Harvard graduate, and doctor-turned-merchant. The pride he felt in the promise of both the new country and his new business were illustrated symbolically by the bald eagle – bold, strong, majestic, independent, and free; its broad wings stretched out into spread-eagle position, ready to soar at any moment of its choosing, yet controlled enough to display the commission merchant’s business banner. The eagle’s head is haloed by glory rays, classic symbols of a divine origin, suggesting the sacred nature of its mission. When the J. E. Tyler trade card was created in 1801, it must have felt like Heaven was in his corner.

J. E. Tyler, Commission Merchant. Advertising Trade Card, ca.1801. John Tyler did not add a middle initial to his name until 7 March 1801, therefore this card was produced sometime during J. E. Tyler’s proprietorship at No.44 Long Wharf, between 1801-1803. While the card could have been produced in 1802 or 1803, it seems highly unlikely.  His business had fallen off precipitously subsequent to its inaugural year. Commissioning the trade card’s design, engraving, and printing at the start of the business was feeding an opportunity, but doing so in 1802 or even worse, in 1803, would have made it an unwelcome expense and represented much less of an opportunity, given the depression that was beginning to descend on the American economy and commerce because of Europe's ongoing Napoleanic Wars (1803-1815). Relocation of his business in 1804 and realigning it into a partnership for much-needed support were probably in the planning stages long before the end of his tenancy in 1803. Rapoza collection.

     Palm fronds tied to the bottom of the eagle’s oval perch represented John Tyler’s new Christian resolve. The branches from the common desert tree were used to honor the Messiah's ultimate triumph over life's most severe obstacles – sin and death.  The overall card design may also have intended to subliminally project the eagle in the role of a phoenix, resurrected as Jesus had been and as John Tyler was trying to become in his new occupation and city.

It's possible but unlikely that the image on John E. Tyler's trade card was a copy of a sign over his business. The various shops and warehouses on Long Wharf during the first decade of the 1800s were identified by a street number - like John E. Tyler's No.44 Long Wharf location - and none, including Tyler, identified their location additionally as "at the Sign of ...". When Tyler was starting his business on Long Wharf, building numbers were just beginning to replace expensive building signs as business locators and trade cards were increasingly becoming the preferred means to promote the business and impress the customers.

One thing that is quite clear from 18th and early 19th century advertising trade cards is that the designs were purposeful, symbolic, and well planned out to communicate a lot and make a strong, memorable impression about the business in a small space. There was nothing haphazard and accidental in the symbolism and design of the J. E. Tyler trade card; it was left to the viewer of 1801 and 2025 to intuitively figure out what those messages were. But the bald eagle was the new symbol of America and as such would have resonated strongly in Boston at the beginning of the 19th century. Having the trade card at home or tucked in a pocket made it an ideal memory aid to find Tyler’s business for the first time or to remember where it was when standing among the clatter and clamor of people, horses, carriages, oxen, and cargo-mounded wagons on the docks in busy Boston. The back of the card was blank, as most early cards were, so that the proprietor could record notes of pending or completed sales before handing it to the customer. This example has no writing on the reverse; it remains blank

The challenge for 21st century viewers is to overlook the inaccurate, almost cartoonish rendering of the bald eagle and the palm branches. The bird’s “bald” head is depicted as little more than an eye mask; the secondary feathers are entirely missing from most of both wings; and the head seems too large for a body that is far too short. Even the palm branches were likely created from the imagination rather than a Bostonian engraver's first-hand observation of Middle Eastern palms. The engraver was not trying to reproduce museum-worthy, ornithologically and botanically accurate illustrations.

Four examples of the signature of John Tyler showing experienced ease of penmanship and occasional calligraphic flourishes. All four examples appear on legal and business documents that predate his legal name change in 1801.

What the card illustration lacked in scientific accuracy, it made up for in engraved elegance. Calligraphic flourishes and embellishments framed and highlighted the proprietor’s new name and the all-important address of his business, No.44 Long Wharf, Boston. The engraver’s linework was rendered in great detail, giving curving depth to the palm fronds, motion to the banner, scales on the feet, and finesse to the shafts and vanes of each feather. The high-quality paper stock was stiffer and smoother than the era's standard rag writing paper and, combined with the finely engraved linework printed on it by copperplate, the result intentionally conveyed the quality of the card, the new business, and the esteemed customer.

The card was almost certainly produced in a small print run, perhaps about 100 cards, and therefore strategically intended for the most preferred clients – the big-quantity and repeat-purchasing business customer. It was not a mass-produced piece of ephemera arbitrarily handed out to any man, woman, or child who happened to stroll by No.44 Long Wharf – that's what trade cards would become after the American Civil War, but John Tyler's world was long before the dramatic improvements in printing technology that allowed for much larger and cheaper print runs.

John Tyler’s own signature sometimes showed the same flair for calligraphic flourishes as those that were engraved on his trade card and he always demonstrated a refined skill and ease with a quill pen in his hand as it lightly scratched along the paper. There was no more hesitation in John E. Tyler’s command of his merchant business than he had shown in using a pen. With his name changed, his business established at No.44 Long Wharf, and his trade card printed, he aggressively engaged in the business of negotiating the receipt and sale of a seller’s goods to other businesses and sometimes the public. He did so on a commission basis, receiving a percentage fee for finding a buyer and selling the seller’s goods to the buyer. It was a business that relied on connections, establishing good business relationships, and conducting it in a good economic environment; any problem with the seller, buyer, or economy spelled trouble for the commission merchant. It was nothing like farming or doctoring, but he was boldly determined to make it work.

1801 printing services advertisement for the Columbian Centinel office in Boston, just a few blocks down the street from J. E. Tyler's business on Long Wharf. Note especially "Merchant's Address CARDS," referring to Tyler's type of card featured in this post. Years later the terminology was standardized to "advertising trade card." The printer is not listed on Tyler's card but it is interesting to note that he advertised in the Centinel in the same year as this ad; it was certainly possible that he had them print up his "Merchants' Address Cards" as well. Columbian Centinel, 12 August 1801.

He promoted his clients’ ship cargoes ambitiously in several Boston newspapers throughout 1801, his first year in the commission merchant business at No.44 Long Wharf as John E. Tyler; his advertisements served as newsprint fanfare to announce that the world was coming to Boston in ships. He sold cotton and cheese, glassware and anchors, bushels of beans and boxes of spermaceti candles; German Steel and Swedish Iron; coffee from Port au Prince and Trinidad; a bunch of sugar from Hispaniola and St. Croix, and lots of rum from Jamaica and Tobago; superfine flour from Baltimore and Philadelphia; and coarse salt from Lisbon and Liverpool. While he sold to families, shopkeepers, and country traders, his focus was selling in large lots to businesses, even trying to advance-sell cargo loads he had contracted for that were still making their way across the ocean. He sold loads by large 18th century barrel measures: hogsheads, pipes, and quintals. Some of his largest lots included 4,400 gallons of Havanna molasses, 6,000 pounds of green coffee, 12,000 pounds of cocoa from Caraccas, almost 50,000 pounds (225 quintals) of codfish, 70,000 boards of lumber, and 10 tons of Swedish iron. He sometimes took the risk on time-sensitive merchandise like a load of fish, trying to find buyers for a quick sale before the deal stank.

To be successful, there were greater risks he would take than selling fish or glassware: he sometimes extended unsecured credit to his customers, letting them pay months later for a load of coffee, sugar, or rum today, and he sometimes advanced his consigners cash on the goods they consigned to him, on the expectation that he would be able to sell the load and recover his money and still make his profit. It was risky business. In March 1802 a fire spread late at night up Long Wharf, threatening all its businesses, including J. E. Tyler’s, as well as the wharf itself. It destroyed eight buildings, Nos. 2 through 8 Long Wharf, and headed up the wharf towards No.44. Buildings 9 and 10 were partially pulled down to arrest the progress of the flames. Tyler’s building was among those spared but he was also feeling the heat from other pressures.

J. E. Tyler, No. 44 Long Wharf. Columbian Centinel, 28 October 1801. Copy at top right reads, “Has for sale, now landing,” meaning the ship was soon to dock and have the cargo unloaded, ready for purchase. While Tyler's trade card was designed as a business announcement and locator, newspaper ads had the advantage of immediacy, calling attention to fresh merchandise that could be purchased as soon as the advertisement caught the reader's eye.

Newspaper advertisements were a critical means to quickly broadcast what merchandise he was trying to flip. In 1801, his first full year of business, he ran sixteen ads (plus each ad usually ran for several issues); but his advertising frequency dropped in 1802 by more than half. In 1803 Tyler’s newspaper advertising dropped steeply again; he was running only a quarter of the ads he had placed in 1801. England and France were at war and although the U.S. tried to maintain its neutrality, both countries attacked American shipping, seizing the ships and their cargoes. To add to the uncertainty of the future, the Tylers gave birth to their first child in September 1803: Hannah Parkman Tyler. John’s business was struggling at the same time that his family was growing – he needed an ally.

WARTIME ALLIANCE (1804-1810) 

In January 1804, the records of Westborough’s Congregational church noted, “Mr. John Eugene Tyler & Hannah Breck his wife were dismissed from us & recommended to the church in Boston, commonly styled the Old South.” The Tylers were determined to live in Boston but they needed help to make it all work. By April of that year, No.44 was vacant again and in May, Breck Parkman had a nephew who was running his own commission merchant business out of the same location, while John E. Tyler showed up at No.41 Long Wharf in August, perhaps a more affordable location than his former business a few doors down the wharf. In October, John’s father-in-law intervened, either to help John fix his business, or out of concern for his daughter Hannah and his grandbaby Hannah, or perhaps genuinely to help all three. The co-partnership took second-floor rooms at 83 State Street, a few blocks away from  where Long Wharf attached to the city. The announcement stated that Breck Parkman, “the senior partner,” would continue to run his store in Westborough while Tyler and a third partner named Parker would work out of Boston, a few blocks from Long Wharf. In promotional literature for Chamberlin's Patent Bilious Cordial, the medicine’s newest agents weren’t listed as based in Boston but as “Parkman, Tyler & Parker, Westborough” – father-in-law Parkman was the company decision-maker and clearly in control, even from his home thirty miles away.

Both of the partnership’s two locations focused on “a great variety of English, India and West-India Goods, at inviting prices, by wholesale or retail.” The new partnership was broadening Tyler’s previous approach of selling large lots to substantial businesses; the new firm was now encouraging retail sales as well – selling “by the package or piece for cash or short approved credit” – especially to attract fashion-conscious female patronage.

The Napoleonic Wars continued to disrupt American shipping and trade. Engaged in a war for the control of Europe, Britain and France continued to impose trade restrictions, ship seizures and blockades. Despite the challenges, the new partnership of Parkman, Tyler & Parker was able to deliver on its promise to supply shiploads of foreign merchandise. Their seven newspaper ads over the span of two years, 1805-1806, announced a wide variety of goods from London and Liverpool including ladies’ purses, pearl buttons, and pocketbooks; opera glasses and Britannia tea pots, “bombazets, calamancos, ruffellets, and shalloons,” blue, brown, and “bottle-green broadcloths,” and a host of fashions for every season. In July 1806, during his busy efforts to make the partnership succeed, John Tyler became a father for the second time with another daughter.  

In March 1807 the partnership was dissolved and a new company was formed, substituting Parker with Breck’s oldest surviving son, Charles. The new firm was called Parkman, Tyler & Parkman: Breck was 58, John was 41, and Charles was the junior partner at 22, apparently being taught the merchant business by his father similar to how he had been mentoring his son-in-law John. Throughout the balance of the year, however, hard times for ship owners and merchants continued. In late December President Jefferson signed the Embargo Act into law, prohibiting American ships from undertaking voyages to foreign ports; the act proved devastating for the American economy, particularly for port cities like Boston, where ships lay idle at the docks.

Tyler and his business partners brought two customers to court in each of the two years preceding the embargo for nonpayment of their accounts, but in 1808, the year after the Embargo act was passed, he brought eight to court for the same offense – nonpayment of goods sold and delivered according to the terms and time frame in which they promised to pay – and he won every case. One of his delinquent customers was Samuel Chamberlain, maker of the Patent Bilious Cordial. In another law suit, the sheriff was instructed to put the two defendants in jail until their debt to Tyler’s partnership was paid off. The years of selling goods on credit were playing havoc with his balance sheets each time business conditions softened and after the Embargo Act, when Boston’s economy took a severe downturn. In 1808 John E. Tyler seemed to spend more time as a plaintiff chasing delinquent customers than as a commission merchant courting new ones.

In 1809 the law suits continued but the partnership’s newspaper advertising did not; the era of partnerships for Tyler was coming to an end. He needed to find a better solution; his business was on the decline but his family continued to increase – his third daughter was born earlier that year.  Starting in late 1810, Tyler went into business on his own at the same 83 State Street location where the Parkman, Tyler & Parkman partnership formally ended at the beginning of 1811; oh, and his fourth daughter was then born in June. More than ever, he needed to get control of his business and his balance sheet. Then in June 1812, the U.S. declared war on Great Britain.

THE LAST HOORAH (1811-1815)

During the war years, 1812-1815, John E. Tyler managed to post five newspaper ads, all of which were for goods from North and South Carolina – bushels of corn, hogsheads of hams, gallons of turpentine, varnish, and pitch, casks of rice, boxes of soap, and kegs of tobacco. This reveals he was relying on coastal trade; given the British blockade of American ports during the war, the goods he was able to sell were probably the result of smuggling, privateering, and other illicit methods of maritime skullduggery to sneak past the British ships. After a peace treaty ended the war in February 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo ended the Napoleanic Wars in June, Tyler and the other merchants of Boston were once again free to resurrect their businesses; by November, he was offering Russian iron from a ship from St. Petersburg, Russia, and “a few boxes of best Havanna Cigars”; the oceans were finally open for business.

Almost as if a symbol of celebration, in October of 1815, John E. Tyler became a father for the sixth time – to a fifth daughter; the fifth child, a son, had been born in 1813, a little less than a year after the war had been declared. Perhaps fatherhood had weighed into his decision to become a deacon in his church and the treasurer of the American Society for Educating Pious Youth for the Gospel Ministry in December 1815. John and Hannah begat two more children (eight in all) before they were done: a daughter in 1817 and finally a second son, John Eugene Tyler, in 1819, when his father and namesake was 53 years old.

TAPS (1816-1821) 

Despite the war, the blockades, the delinquent customers, and other obstacles to his career, the last five years of John E. Tyler’s life may have been the hardest on him. He had to endure the grief of losing three of his children in 1816 (14 months old), 1818 (4 years 10 months), and 1819 (16 months). His business had become quiet in the newspapers, advertising goods for sale just six times between 1816-1821, the most notable being a few hogsheads of apothecaries’ vials for sale in 1816 and a quantity of New Orleans cotton and patent silk hats from southwestern England in 1819. Similarly, he shifted his business location in Boston four times in those last five years for unknown reasons, though I suspect it amounted to reducing expenses to a bare-bones budget.

Headstone of Dea. J. E. Tyler, Pine Grove Cemetery, Westborough, MA. Note that the engraving lists him by the title of Deacon, no Doctor. Also note the birthyear is incorrect and should read 1766. Find-A-Grave. Photo courtesy of C.Kay.

John E. Tyler died on the morning of 25 January 1821 at age 55; none of the three newspapers announcing his death explained the cause. It does not appear to have been anticipated since he died intestate, but then there wasn’t much left to protect; after the creditors’ claims were resolved, his estate was declared insolvent. His wife and children moved back to her father’s house in Westborough and even their pews in Boston’s Park Street Church  were sold off to help pay off the creditors. To punctuate his story with a final sadness, his 15-year-old daughter died in Westborough before the year was over.

Having contemplated his entire life, I feel that his trade card reflects the high point of his life – at least the business portion of it. Newly married, moved into Boston, and ready to do business with the world, he commissioned the card – probably the only artwork he ever commissioned – to reflect his optimism, ambition, and excitement as a new Boston merchant in the new United States. It was a bold, proud, and free expression of his dream. His subsequent life does not seem to have lived up to this apex frozen in time, but we see it now, 224 years later, and are humbled at the thought that this country we enjoy so much was built on the backs of people who weren’t afraid to dream.

 

Lynn Massachusetts History – History of Medicine – 19th-Century Health Remedies – Vintage Medical Ephemera – 19th-century Medicine

A Yankee Peddler of Bitters & Baseballs

A rare little record reveals a forgotten profession.

     Frank Albert Kidder didn’t know he was making history. He thought he was just leaving an order with the printer to create a low-cost advertising card he could give to his customers or whoever would take a gander at it.

     Today, as I hold Frank’s card in my hand, I see not a small piece of quaint advertising, but an amazing window into the life of a country peddler in the late 19th century. Let’s look through it together and enjoy the view into a forgotten past.

     Frank Kidder drove his horse-drawn wagon chock-full of small goods and notions through the New England countryside; his range almost certainly covered the many farmlands north and west of Boston and probably into New Hampshire. Farmers were his target audience; they were very busy taking care of their livestock and crops every day, so traveling to cities to shop was an unwise  extravagance of time and money. The visit of a peddler with his wagonful of goods was a practical solution. 

Advertising Trade Card for Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon, ca.1876-1880. (Front). Rapoza collection.

Eye-Catching Messages

Frank had his business card made sometime between 1876-1880. Collecting what were called advertising trade cards was becoming a national obsession; children and women pasted them in large scrapbooks and even the smallest, one-man business like Frank Kidder could afford to have some basic trade cards printed. The least expensive cards were called stock cards, displaying preprinted images with a blank area reserved for the customized message of the advertiser; Frank’s card was one of this type.

  The card front that Frank Kidder selected was defined by a single-color illustration of an attractive young woman, fashionably dressed but revealing a low neckline and a bared shoulder. In rural New England, far from the salacious temptations of large cities, it was a rare, provocative image that probably found its way onto the walls of some barns, outhouses, and tool sheds or perhaps secreted away in a workbench drawer.

     The sultry beauty casually leans on an ivy-bordered signboard, the center of which was left blank by the designer so that advertisers like Frank could have the printer fill it in with their own message. Frank maximized the tiny space with as many pithy messages as could be fit:

BUY YOUR GOODS FROM FRANK KIDDER’S Grocery Wagon.

     As peddlers, traders, hucksters, and other traveling salesmen roamed the countryside selling their wares, Frank wanted to make sure that  people waited for his return for an honest deal on quality goods.

William Ayres Hurlbut, peddler, stands before his well-stocked wagon of goods for sale. Image taken in DeKalb, NY, ca.1870-1880. De Kalb Historian Bryan Thompson points out that Hurlbut [Thompson’s 3rd great uncle] was holding eggs in his hand, with a bowl of eggs next to him as well, “It was commonplace for peddlers to sell their wares for eggs while they were traveling, then bring the eggs back to town” and sell them for cash or more goods for their wagon. [Courtesy of Bryan Thompson and The Historian’s Office, Town of De Kalb, NY.]

“The Farmers’ Friend”

     Back then, this phrase was oft-repeated and full of connotation, from natural to political. Many things were called the farmer’s friend, from harvesting equipment and a newspaper to earthworms, rat snakes, and barn owls. Farming fed the country and farmers were a significant portion of the nation’s population; businesses large and small, like Frank’s, beat hasty paths to the farms, wanting to be favored with their business.

None but first-class GOODS. Everything Warranted.

     Itinerant peddlers and salesmen, here today and gone tomorrow, were distrusted as a class of business, so Frank Kidder’s promise of nothing but the best goods was his attempt to separate his grocery wagon from his competitors. He also warranted everything he sold with a bold promise – if the customer didn’t like it, he would take it back and refund the purchase price.

“Redwood Peddler on the Calaboga Road.” Image taken in Hammond, NY, ca.1900. [Courtesy of Donna Demick, Hammond Historian.]

The first in the Field; always Reliable.

     The first part of this phrase may have meant Kidder was the first to bring new goods to the farms or that he was claiming to be the best of peddlers in terms of quality and reputation, but either way it was read, he was setting himself up as the best of the bunch; then he ended the sentence with the reassurance that his customers would have no regrets – how could you if he’s always reliable?

     Between the strategic promises and the Victorian vixen displaying them and herself, the inexpensive advertising card was a powerful and enticing message being placed in the farmer’s hand as cows mooed nearby, chickens clucked underfoot, and the air stank from the unseen pigpen on the other side of the barn. Frank Kidder had their attention; taking a few minutes to look over all the stuff in his wagon became more of a break than a chore. It was a welcomed visiting store on wheels – a combination of convenience store and curiosity shop. 

The Punctilious Peddler

Advertising Trade Card for Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon, ca.1876-1880 (Reverse side). Rapoza collection.

     The text on the back is the historian’s heaven. Frank Kidder supplied a richly detailed inventory of his wagon, giving a very clear picture of what he was selling to the farmers and country folk to make his living. 

     Everything was small: he chose not to carry the brooms, shovels, scythes, dresses, fabrics, or jewelry often stocked by other peddlers, and certainly no fruits, vegetables, or meats – not for fear of spoilage but because farms were the source of such things.

     Instead, Frank Kidder loaded his wagon with small and less accessible ingredients for cooking, other necessities that couldn’t be conviently made at home, and a long list of medicines. Oh, and “Base Balls” (it didn’t become standardized as one word, “baseball,” until about 1884) for playing the game that was yet another passion sweeping the nation.

     Most of the food items, like coffee, tea, sugar, lemons, cinnamon, and coconut were not native New England crops but they packed and traveled well in the wagon. Lamp chimneys and bases, shirt collars, stationery, blank books for journaling and record keeping, pocket knives, hair pins, combs, and pencils were some of the practical and helpful whatnots that filled needs in almost every home. But by far, Frank Kidder packed more medicines into his wagon than anything else. He was most likely able to carry such a wide selection of remedies and sundries in small quantities and consistently enough to have them regularly stocked on his wagon and listed on his trade card because he was being supplied from the regular stock of a drugstore, grocer, or wholesaler. But make no mistake about it, he was no employee or underling for someone else's store back in Boston; Frank Kidder was an entrepreneur, proudly running and promoting his own business: “Frank Kidder’s Grocery Wagon.”

     The list of medicines on the back of his trade card was anything but a random jumble of remedies; it reveals a carefully planned stocking strategy. Looked at closely, it can be seen that the medicines were carefully selected to cover a broad range of illnesses and body complaints, and they were for everyone – not just for family members but for the whole farm.

     The extensive medicine list was deliberately started with two prominent selections from the bitters category. Walker’s Vinegar Bitters and Drake’s Plantation Bitters were brands with national reputations, an accomplishment that was happening among patent medicines moreso than any other category of consumer goods. Bitters were usually promoted for disorders associated with digestion, from weakness and indigestion to constipation and diarrhea. The Vinegar Bitters appealed to those committed to temperance, as it promised (falsely) that it was alcohol-free. The Plantation Bitters was well-known for its log cabin bottle, a distinctive shape with contents that were more than a third rum – a powerful punch for those who preferred alcohol in their bitters.

Goods from Frank Kidder's Grocery Wagon. A representative recreation of items he listed on his trade card inventory (left to right): lamp chimney and base; essence of peppermint; lemons; pocket books; flavoring extracts (essence of wintergreen in the foreground); elixir of paregoric, and a bottle of Drake's Plantation Bitters (Houston24 commemorative bottle). Rapoza collection.

     Kidder also carried Rush’s Medicines and Kennedy’s Medicines, two more widely popular lines, especially for their flagship cures like Rush’s Pills, a laxative so powerful that they had early on gained the nickname, “thunderbolts.” Then came the balsams and Dr. Pierce’s "Golden Medical Discovery,” all of which were primarily for lung diseases like consumption and colds. While the balsams worked on the lungs, the salves were for inflamed, sensitive skin, like piles and sunburn. The oil group – Wizard Oil, arnica oil, and Gargling Oil, were liniments for sore muscles and painful joints and some, like Merchant’s Gargling Oil, advertised themselves as being for “Man or Beast.” It’s not just a coincidence then, that “Condition Powders” were listed next to the Gargling Oil; they were medicinal supplements to be added to livestock food to make weak and sick animals strong, primarily horses, cattle, poultry, and swine. Frank Kidder was trying hard to prove he was “The Farmers’ Friend” in every way. Even more than a ratsnake.

     Kidder concluded his medicinal inventory with perhaps the most important category to farmers – pain killers. If such a medicine could make the pain go away, farmers could keep working. Most of the painkillers were effective but dangerous because it was the opium or morphine they contained that killed the pain. Many babies and teething toddlers died from the application Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup to their painful gums because of the morphine it contained. Babies crying from colic were often given opium-laden paregoric to calm them down.

     The entire list, from the powdered foodstuffs to the painkillers, was a Victorian shorthand that any New Englander could review quickly and recognize subconsciously the product categories it contained. The only thing that remained unclear was the assurance that there was much more, “&c., &c., &c., &c.,” – it was, I suspect, more hyperbole than reality; there probably wasn't much room left on the wagon – but it promised his customers there was more and the occasional new item, encouraging them to go look at Frank Kidder's wagon once again, even though they saw it just a month or two back.

Frank Kidder’s road to becoming a Yankee Peddler

     Frank Kidder became a Yankee peddler because life hadn’t prepared him for much else. He was born into a family that was falling apart from the start and never recovered. His parents were Dwight and Mary Kidder who had two boys in two years: Charles was born in 1849 and on 8 September 1850, 22-year-old Mary Kidder gave birth to baby Francis at her parents’ house in Dummerston, Vermont, while her husband, Dwight, 21, was boarding and working as a tailor in neighboring New Hampshire. The apparently fecund potential of their wedded bliss then abruptly stopped. There were no more children and surviving records struggle to find Dwight and Mary under the same roof. In 1855 when Francis (now called Franklin) was 5, the family had moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts; it was a pattern of frequent movement by Dwight, a tailor and fabric cutter who went wherever there was opportunity to make some money.

     In 1860 Dwight was boarding and working on the southeast side of bustling Boston while Mary and 10-year-old Frank were back at her parents and 11-year-old Charles was put up at another family in Dummerston, about twenty houses away from his mother and Frank. The Kidders were biologically but not geographically a family – and the strained bonds of family would soon break altogether. In 1863 Dwight had taken work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 500 miles away, leaving his wife and two boys at his in-laws in Dummerston. In 1864 he was adulterously and possibly bigamously starting a second family, having a son named after him by a woman named Catherine who was just 8 years older than his son Charles. Three years later in 1867, Mary Kidder died of consumption in Dummerston. At 17 years old, Frank Kidder had become an orphan for all intents and purposes. His mother was dead and his father was gone, building his second family. Frank had to follow his own path.

     In 1870, after three more years had passed, the remnants of the original Kidder family were spread in all directions: father Dwight had moved yet again, bringing Catharine and 6-year-old Dwight with him to New London, Connecticut; Charles, now 21, was a clerk in a Boston dry goods store, and Frank, 20, was boarding in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, working in a box-making shop. On 17 December 1873, at age 23, Frank finally found some stability, marrying Clara I. Howe in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their marriage record lists him as a trader, which in his case probably meant a peddler who accepted the farmer’s goods in exchange for his merchandise, like William Ayres Hurlbut who accepted eggs in payment then sold them in the city.

For the next 24 years, from 1874 until 1898, business directories listed him as a traveling salesman with his home base at his in-laws’ house in Somerville, just over the Charles River on the north side of Boston. From there he traveled to northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, peddling his goods from his horse-drawn wagon.

The distinctions between peddlers, traveling salesman, hucksters, hawkers, and traders were blurred back in the 19th century and are almost invisible today, since those professions have either metamorphosized into something else or disappeared altogether. But Frank Kidder, the traveling salesman, was practicing the trade of generations of Yankee peddlers who had preceded him. He roamed the landscape selling bitters, baseballs, and much more, while trying to build up his clientele, planning his inventory, and getting cards printed to promote his business.

Game box cover, “Ye Peculiar Game of Ye Yankee Peddler,” produced by Geo. S. Parker & Co., Publishers, Salem, MA, ca.1888. Country peddlers and their wares were such a colorful, ubiquitous oddity in the countryside, game makers sought to exploit the popular interest in the curious traders by making them the subject of a parlor game. Note the peddler’s wagon to the right, jam-packed with his wares. (Courtesy Rachel T. Van)

His career mimicked the peregrinations of his father in some significant respects, traveling afar wherever there was opportunity to make some money, while his wife stayed at home with her parents. The only life lessons he seemed to have inherited from his father was the legacy of his absence. Frank and Clara had no children.

     By 1880 father Dwight had moved his second family to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he would die in 1881 of a lingering illness, a month after his son Dwight, then 17, murdered his half-brother, Charles, 32, in the same city. Frank and his wife were better off living in Somerville on the other side of the state; besides, his father, mother, and brother were now all gone. Frank’s solitary wanderings in his grocery wagon probably helped prepare him emotionally to be the solitary survivor of his biological family.

President Kidder and Dr Daniels’ Horse Medicines

     Back in 1870, when Frank Kidder was working in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, he may have bumped into or even rubbed shoulders with another Vermonter, Albert Chester Daniels, a farmer who lived in Keene, a little over 30 miles from Frank. Albert shared Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit; had begun making and selling something he called the Excelsior Plant Protector, “for the protection of Squash, Melon and Cumber Vines from Hens, Bugs, Worms and Frosts.” He advertised his contraption and for “a few energetic young men” looking for “steady employment and large wages by acting as sub-agents, soliciting orders for an article that sells at sight.” Frank just might have added one of Albert’s plant protectors to his wagon and taken orders from interested farmers while selling them his medicines and sundries. If so, it was the extent of their relationship; Albert went on to become a coal dealer upstate in Lebanon, New Hampshire, then in 1884 he auctioned off everything – his farming tools, coal wagon, and household furniture – and moved to Boston, “having changed my business” once again.

By 1886 Albert showed up as a traveling salesman out of Boston, selling his own line of “horse medicines” and he had styled himself, “Dr. A. C. Daniels.” He didn’t really have a veterinary degree but perhaps he felt qualified by what he had learned from having livestock on his farm. His product line for cattle and horses included Dr. Daniels’ Colic Cure and Fever Drops, a Horse Renovator and Cattle Invigorator, Hoof Grower and Flyene, “to protect horses from being tormented by flies,” and the Wonder Worker, which name carried all the bravado of the boldest patent medicines for people. Frank Kidder’s trade card was produced long before Dr. Daniels started selling his animal medicines; maybe they became part of Frank’s “&c., &c.,” in later years.

Dr. Daniels passed away in 1897 at about 50 years old, but his business was continued by investors. Probably road-worn and wearied by 25 years of living the nomadic lifestyle of a traveling salesman, the 49-year-old Frank Kidder ended his itinerant wagon driver days, trying instead to invest in some businesses that kept him in the Boston area, close to home and Clara in Somerville. In 1915 he became one of three investors in Dr. A. C. Daniels, Inc., and in 1923 he became president of the company. Dr. Daniels was alive only in the continued use of his name and facial image on the products and it was also time for President Kidder to join him in death. Frank Kidder passed in his 73rd year, just a few months after he had become the president of Dr. A. C. Daniels, Inc.

Whether or not Frank Albert Kidder and Albert Chester Daniels had done some business together in their younger days, the journeys of the two traveling salesmen, classic Yankee peddlers, had crossed at the end of life.

Dr. Daniel’s Veterinary Medicines cabinet with an embossed tin inset panel and an assortment of the company’s products arranged in the foreground, ca.1920-1930. (Courtesy of Bryan Ashley)

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Making Healthy, Happy Children

Shadow Cards in 1908

What Mr. Birtz held in his hands was clearly very special; the beauty and intricate craftsmanship of these paper amusements spoke for themselves. Each of these very delicate, die-cut advertising trade cards showed in amazing detail how to form one of ten different creatures in the shadows. There were lots of shadow cards on the market at the tail-end of the Victorian era, but none quite as fine as these. Fingers were articulated with artistic precision and anatomical accuracy, pointing and flexing in as many directions as necessary to form the fascinating shadow creatures. Across Europe and North America, little fingers struggled in delight to mimic the positions on each card that the beautiful tangle of ten digits quietly demonstrated.

No one could appreciate their artistry as much as Albert Birtz de Desmarteaux, a “temperer” in a knife works who strengthened and sharpened the cutting edges of knives and machine blades. He saw the card set while on a trip to his native Montreal, Quebec, in 1908; perhaps they were even evidence of his craftsmanship on the blades that had freed all those fingers and knuckles from the paper stock that had held them. The discriminating bladesmith instantly decided to bring the envelope of paper fingers to someone very special back in the U.S.A.

A Father's Gift to his Baby Girl. The complete set of 10 die-cut shadow cards and the envelope they came in. This ephemeral treasure has weathered 131 years of time without a single bent finger. Even in the best of circumstances, no human hand has fared so well for so long, proving perhaps, that we are more ephemeral than these delicate paper digits. (collection of the author)

Albert brought the extraordinary collection home to Southbridge, Massachusetts for his one-year-old daughter, Claire, as her very first birthday gift. When she was old enough to understand, she was told to take them out only once each year, on her birthday, to look at and enjoy them. Albert and Claire had a very close father-daughter relationship; she turned out to be an only child, making her treasured even more by her father, who died when she was only fourteen. Claire never married or had children of her own. As a remembrance and tribute to her beloved father, she kept her promise and looked at that first gift only on her birthday each year. She then carefully returned them to their envelope and tucked them away for safekeeping for another year.

In 1994, the 87-years-old Claire Birtz attended one of my talks on advertising trade cards and came up to me afterwards, saying there was something she wanted to give me because she could tell I would appreciate and take good care of the cherished items. I met her at her home later that week. There she told me the story about these treasured cards from her father. She entrusted them to me, instructing me to protect and to display them as I thought best – this was about thirty years ago. Early this past August, I showed them to the public for the first time in my display at the national expo of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) in Houston, Texas.

The expo concluded several weeks ago, but I still feel the need to share them in a more long-lasting manner. It then dawned on me that I should reach out to my long-time friend, Diane DeBlois, of the Ephemera Society of America. What better audience to admire and enjoy the enduring Birtz family story and legacy than the world’s largest group of ephemera enthusiasts?

The back of each card (translated from the French) explains the health benefits of adding Phoscao-Bébé, (a powder of phosphates and cocoa), to a child’s milk:

PHOSCAO-BABY

CHILDREN’S FOOD

MAKES TEETHING EASIER

HELPS WITH BONE FORMATION

 

On the other side are the detailed images and text instructions about how to make the shadow creatures. The French text on each card reads,

This cutting, exposed in front of a bright light, projected onto the wall in the image below. To get the same “animated” shadow, join your hands like the model.

Each card showed placement of the hand in front of a candle, since lightbulbs were a very new and uneconomical technology that still had a while to go before they would become the standard illumination across the land. The Phoscao-Bébé shadow cards probably suffered and disappeared in the hands of many children’s hands, their paper fingers getting bent, pulled, and eventually amputated from their ephemeral hands, and others probably were placed too close to real candles, going up in flames instead of shadows. Such is ephemera.

But not this set. Claire Birtz’s paper hands were treasured mementos from her dear father – her way of reaching out to him on every one of her birthdays for 87 of her 93 years, until she knew that her own end was near. Please join me in enjoying these cards and perpetuating the love for them that was never ephemeral, but eternal.

LA CHEVRE = THE GOAT

LE LOUP = THE WOLF

LE CYGNE = THE SWAN

LE LAPIN = THE RABBIT

LE GARDE = THE GUARD (but I suspect it was more figuratively referring to The Troll)

LE CANARD = THE DUCK

LE CHIEN = THE DOG

L'OISEAU = THE BIRD

LE CHAT = THE CAT

LE DIABLE = THE DEVIL. (Note to my daughter and other cat lover's out there: don't read anything into my choice to have The Cat followed by The Devil; it was just coincidence ... yeah, right.)

Claire's shadow cards on display at Houston24, the national exposition of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) at Houston, Texas, in August 2024.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine