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