On the Day of Charles Demuth’s Birthday

Charles Demuth’s birth at his family’s North Lime Street home, on 8 November 1883, was unlikely to draw anybody’s attention, other than that of his parents, and perhaps that of his relatives over on East King Street, where his father, Ferdinand, worked in the family tobacco shop. Lancaster’s Intelligencer Journal on that day, however, offers a fascinating look at the world into which Charles Demuth was born and would grow up.

The four-page Intelligencer Journal contained no illustrations, but — instead of the photographs and attention-grabbing headlines to which we have now become accustomed — Lancaster readers discovered an array of advertisements decorating page one. A full column of them on each side of the sheet flanked the news of the day.

Among the ads to the left, Bursk’s offered an impressive array of comestibles: Jamaica oranges, paper shell almonds, York County Buckwheat and Lancaster County honey, a "job lot of good solid cranberries, 2 quarts for 25¢," canned goods at "a reduction by the case," and an impressive number of kinds of grapes and raisins. Across the street from Bursk’s, George Fahnestock advertised "silk, and mohair plushes," either by the yard or "made up on short notice, and perfect fit and satisfaction guaranteed." These shops were just up the street from the Demuth Tobacco Shop on East King, toward the town square.

Two blocks west from the square on King Street, the Granger Fertilizer Company offered "Human Guano, composed of pure human excrement and urine, unrivalled for wheat, tobacco, grass, corn, &c." There was a large supply of school books and stationery in the first block of North Queen at John Baer’s Sons, "at low prices." In the first block of South Queen, John P. Schaum repaired furnaces and ranges.

Next on page one of the newspaper came a column of testimonials for Samaritan Nervine, guaranteed to cure "epilepsy, dispepsia, alcoholism, opium, eating, rheumatism, seminal weakness and fifty other complaints." At the foot of that column, in fine print, Hateman’s Yellow and J. Z. Stauffer from Goodville both offered fine cigars for sale.

Not quite two full columns in the center of the first page were given over to "RECENT NEWS": the price of steel rails; political unrest in Ireland; an explosion in a Reading coal and iron company’s repair shop that literally blew apart a young worker; a Philadelphia suicide; a coal mine explosion in England that killed eighty-five men.

The remainder of the second column advised "Delicate and Feeble Ladies" to take Hop Bitters to control "languid, tiresome sensations, causing you to feel scarcely able to be on your feet; that constant drain that is taking from your system its former elasticity, driving the bloom from your cheeks; that constant strain upon your vital forces, rendering you irritable and fretful." This admonition was followed by several testimonials.

Flanking the news, in the right columns of the page, H. Gerhart’s Fine Tailoring Establishment, just off Lancaster Square, offered a new fall and winter line of woolens for overcoating. D. B. Hostetter, located on the square itself, gave him some competition with all wool suits for ten dollars apiece and overcoats as low as six dollars. Shultz’s Old Stand on North Queen — the only "hat manufactory in Lancaster" — also offered caps and furs for sale. Edgerley & Company, "at the rear of Central Market," were "fine carriage builders and repairers." Phares W. Fry, farther up on North Queen, carried a full line of window shades and wall papers.

The second page of that November 8th Intelligencer Journal was given over entirely to news, including extensive coverage of the recent elections, although the editor observed that the local Republicans "have justification for their jubilation only as the condemned man joys in a reprieve. Their day of doom has been only postponed; they have not even received absolution or a pardon. The Democrats have not lost or failed to carry a single state which has ever been accounted as belonging to them or as necessary to their success in the impending presidential contest."

Not all of the news was local: El Madei, for instance, "the false prophet, is reported to be dead," and "Matthew Arnold [the English poet and critic] is improving in his delivery of his lectures, having adopted entirely new elocutionary methods." A tenor named Tobia Bertina was suing his manager for breach of contract. In Petersboro, Virginia, Senator Mahone’s son pulled a gun on some bystanders who tried to prevent an African American from voting Democratic.  (cont.)