“Sears, Roebuck and Company is a retail giant with 19th-century roots as a mail-order business operating in rural America. Sears grew into one of the nation’s largest corporations, redefining the American shopping experience in the process. Its 130-year history embodies the rise and fall of American consumer culture” from the History Channel article SEARS
Engine, tender with coal and water, mail cars, freight cars, baggage cars, passenger cars. Basic second-class cars might have slightly padded seats, windows at each seat that could open, fresh paint, monthly cleaning; passengers were usually local businessmen and middle-class families.
Today’s Pinch of the Past … started as a look at traditions in raising children and somehow morphed into the practices of children in relation to schools throughout history.
This Pinch of the Past was first share in Episode 31: You can access it here. The idea of this Pinch of the Past developed in a rather curious way yesterday when I was wrapping up the final tests of the year for my second graders. One reading passage was a nonfiction piece on the origins of Peanut Butter. Did you know the inventor and developer of this great nutty paste was also responsible for a famous cereal brand? He developed the supplement not as a snack food but as a health product?
Peanut Butter
“It’s the Great Depression that makes the PB&J the core of childhood food,” food historian Andrew F. Smith has said. Buyenlarge / Getty Images
As we are recording today, KyLee isn’t feeling well, so I hope you won’t mind joining me as I try not to nerd out too much about one of the coolest places in the United States – the Castillo de San Marcos.
History and Construction
Photo by Darcy Fornier
In 1513, Ponce de Leon claimed the land he named Florida for Spain. It became an important holding to protect the Spanish ships bearing gold and silver from Central and South America back to Spain. As the French started encroaching on Florida, King Phillip II sent Pedro Menéndez in 1565 who founded the town of St. Augustine.
St. Augustine is the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America. It was defended by nine wooden forts which either rotted away, or were burned down by attacking armies.
Coquina stone wall (photo by Darcy Fornier)
Finally, in 1672 – over 100 years after the founding of St. Augustine – construction began on a stone fort. It was built of locally quarried coquina stone and took 23 years to complete. Coquina is a sedimentary rock made of tiny shells that is actually soft and porous, but hardens when it’s exposed to air. So it’s easy to cut and shape.
Possibly the coolest thing about this stone is it maintains some of its flexibility after it hardens. When the British assaulted the fort with cannon fire, the stone didn’t crack and crumble. The cannonballs simply sank into the stone. During the night, Spanish soldiers would dig out the lodged cannonballs and patch the walls with fresh coquina. Next morning, the fort appeared to have suffered no damage at all.
If you ever watched National Treasure 2 you probably know that Great Britain was rumored to be sympathetic to the Confederate States of America. Canada did not exist as a federated nation at the time but was under British rule. Even though Canadians largely apposed slavery–with Canada serving as a terminus for the Underground Railroad–there was talk in London that the Union might move against the Crown and invade Canada.
The actual origin of April Fool’s Day is uncertain. Some speculate it dates back to 1582 when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. If you’d somehow missed the memo, you’d be celebrating New Year’s Day on April 1st rather than January 1st, making you an “April Fool.” Some think it might be tied to the Roman holiday Hilaria, during which participants dressed in disguise and went around mocking people. At any rate, it has survived in different parts of Europe for centuries, and television companies have often used it to pull pranks on their viewers!
Women typically responded to advertisements for mail-order brides more out of necessity, and even desperation, than actual romance. Many women answered the call to marry men in different regions to escape hardship, emigrate to another country, and sometimes to seek adventure.
The imagined arrival of brides-to-be at Jamestown. New York Public Library
James Town
In the early colonial days, male settlers would return to England to marry or they would marry Native American women and leave the colony to live with their wives. In 1620 the Virginia Colony sponsored 140 brides for James town. The average age of these ladies was 20 years old. They were sometimes referred to as “tobacco wives” because the men who married them were required pay for their passage by way of reimbursing up to 120 lbs. of leave tobacco. These women had the right to choose who they married, even if that man was too poor to pay the full amount of the passage.
A romanticized depiction of the King’s daughters arriving at Quebec in the mid-seventeenth century. Before Louis XIV brought New France under direct control, it was a poorly administered commercial branch operation whose private interests preferred male indentured servants. National Archives of Canada / C-20126
The French
In the mid-1600s, 800 brides emigrated toNew France which is now a part of the United States and Canada. These mail-order brides were sponsored by the government and known as theKing’s Daughters. In addition to paying for the passage and recruitment of these wives, the government also paid each woman a dowry of at least 50livres.
When New France started their Louisiana Colony in 1699, they requested brides. However, this venture was less successful than the Kings’ Daughter. These women, called Pelican girls, were misled about the conditions of the colony and when word reached France, French ladies refused to go to the Louisiana Colony. At this time France resorted to raiding the streets for undesirables to send. Houses of correction were emptied, and in some instances, women who had been convicted with their debtor husbands were sent. In 1719, 209 women felons were sent to the colony.
These women were known as Correction Girls. Fortunately, this practice was discontinued in the mid-18th-century.
The visa and marriage documents of Tomeno Hamade. Intrigued with the possibility of living in North America, she consented to correspond with a young Japanese Canadian man, Risuke Hamade. They married by proxy on May 2,1927; she emigrated in October of that year, age nineteen. Photos and documents courtesy Tomeno Hamade
Picture Brides
Asian men working in America in the 1800s often worked with agencies to attain mail-order brides from home. Settlements were mostly male and so the demand for wives grew. A system of Picture Brides developed in the early 20th century with theJapanese-American Passport Agreement of 1907. The US barred unmarried Japanese ladies from immigrating. Working with a matchmaker, the men and women developed a system of communication that included the exchange of pictures and ended with a recommendation to marry or not.
These four men in Montana (near Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park) at the turn of the 20th century advertised their want for wives on the side of a cabin. From left-to-right they were: Bill Daucks, Frank Geduhn, Esli Apgar, and Dimon Apgar. Frank, and Dimon eventually married, but not mail-order brides. (Courtesy of Glacier National Park Photo Archives)
Mail order Brides in American
In the 1800s many young men who traveled west found they were want for female companionship. After settling land and making homes, they didn’t have anyone to share them with. Many wrote home back east asking friends and family for help. Others advertised in newspapers and would then begin a correspondence with the intention of leading to an offer of marriage.
Some quotes from Mail order bride advertisements from woman to men and men to women.
Each edition of The Matrimonial News opened with the same positive affirmation for both sexes: “Women need a man’s strong arm to support her in life’s struggle, and men need a woman’s love.”
Here is are actual ads that ran in the paper:
282—A widower, merchant and stockman lives in Kansas, 46 years old, height 6 feet, weight 210 pounds, brunette, black hair and eyes, wishes to correspond with ladies of same age, without encumbrances and with means, must move in the best society and be fully qualified to help make a happy home: object, matrimony.
233—Answer to 82—There is a lad in Missouri with a foot that’s flat, with seeds in his pocket and a brick in his hat, with an eye that is blue and a No. 10 shoe—he’s the “Bull of the Woods” and the boy for you.
266—I want to know some pretty girl of 17 to 20 years. I am 29, 5 feet 9 inches tall, a blonde: I can laugh for 15 minutes, and I want some pretty girl to laugh with me.
214—Respectable young man, with good position in city, 20 years old, desires the acquaintance of a modest young lady, between the ages of 17 and 21, with home nearby. Object: to attend operas and church; perhaps more.
The mothod of connecting marital parties through mail correspondence of some fashion or other have been used throughout the centuries in many different countries. Australia, Belarus, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Japan, and the United States to name a few. While unconventional to a modern way of thinking, it this was an acceptable and popular method of connecting in the past. A modern study of French Canadians that shows that the King’s Daughters and their husbands were “responsible for two-thirds of the genetic makeup of over six million people”.
If you enjoy a good Mail Order Bride read, here are some Christian titles that might suit your fancy.
The Bride Ship Series byJody Hedlund is one of my favorites. In fact, Jody is a lead author for Sunrise Publishing with Suzy May Warren, so we can expect three more books in that series.
When I asked on our Facebook listeners group, one of our listeners, Christy said she just finished A Bride for Keeps and A Bride in Store, both by Melissa Jagears.
Do you enjoy a good spy thriller? I know I do, movie or book. We often see spy thrillers set in a modern-day, Cold War, and both World Wars. For this Pinch of the Past, we are going to look even further back into history, all the way back to the Revolutionary War.
Did you know that there were female spies for George Washington? Yep. One, in particular, is referred to so briefly in code that she is known simply as Agent 355.
Artist tribute to Agent 355
It is believed she was part of the Culper Spy Ring–a ring of spies established by General Washington and Major Benjamin Tallmadge. She was tasked with finding information about the British Army’s operations in New York City.
Likely, a lady of some class who had privy to the inner circles of British Military higher-ups.
Some believe Agent 355 was Ms. Anna Strong, a neighbor of Abraham Woodhull– a leading member of the Culper Spy Ring in New York during the American Revolutionary War.
According to oral history, Anna relayed messages regarding a whaleboat courier that smuggled across the Long Island Sound by hanging a black pettie coat and colored handkerchiefs on her clothesline, signaling which of the coves the boat would dock.
Lydia Darrah Giving Warning: From an engraving in Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1845
Another possible candidate for the role of this female spy is Lydia Darrah, a wife in Philadelphia who eavesdropped on a secret meeting while British soldiers met in her house.
She was able to warn George Washington about an impending attack, thereby preventing much blood shed.
Later when the chief of British Intelligence, Major John Andre investigated the leak, Lydia (whose husband had hosted the meeting) was never suspected since being a woman she would naturally have the same political views as her husband.
Another theory is that Agent 355 was a relative of Robert Townsend, an operative in the Culper spy.
Some believe she was arrested in 1780 when Benedict Arnold betrayed the Patriots. She was said to be imprisoned on the HMS Jersey where she gave birth to a boy, and then later died aboard a prison ship. However, there are no records to support the birth and women were also not held on prison ships at that time.
One truth that may have given birth to the alleged imprisonment of Agent 355 on a ship is that Anna Strong was said to bring her husband food while he was imprisoned on the Jersey.
Portion of the Cupler Spy Ring Code. Talmadge, 1793, Codes from George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799: Series 4. General Correspondence. 1697-18-99. Library of congress.
We see remnants of Agent 355 in fiction today. In real life, the Culper Spy Ring was so secret, their existence to the public did not become known until the 1930s. That’s 150 years of anonymity.
One piece of evidence we do have is a message written by Abraham Woodhull which says he would be visiting New York again and, “by the assistance of a [lady] of my acquaintance, shall be able to outwit them all.” In two months, a steady stream of headquarters-level intelligence on the British Army entail poured to Washington.
Agent 355, as depicted in an 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly
Some believe the code 355 which, when the cryptography system the Culper Ring used was decrypted meant simply “lady,” might have alluded to female spies that worked for the Patriots in the Culper Ring.
Well, there you have it–a tiny glimpse at espionage in the Revolutionary War.
