When there were newpapers instead of social media

Imagine that you live during a time that there are no TVs, phones or radios. Where do you get your news? Newspapers! McCook was lucky to have newspapers and they sprang to life almost immediately when the town was born. Many issues of the Weekly McCook Tribune from 1883 are available to research online at www.chroniclingamerica.gov.

In those days, the news of the world was covered extensively by the local paper. Filling eight pages of a newspaper also required what I refer to as “fillers”, news items that help complete the columns when not enough news was available locally and were gleaned from other newspapers. They are fun to read and quite often have an editorial twist to them.

McCook Weekly Tribune, September 6, 1883: “Rhodes, the French swimmer, having announced his intention to send a dog over the whirlpool at Niagara first, and then follow himself when he sees the dog safely landed. A Boston paper pertinently that the best way would be for him to go over first himself and let the dog follow, if he thinks it’s worthwhile.”

From the same issue came the next two fillers: “ Mary Anderson has succeeded where Napoleon failed. She has captured England.” (Mary was a famous actress in theater. Although she settled in England, she donated land in Mount St. Francis, Indiana to the Catholic church.)

“Mr. Aristide Marie is probably the richest man of color in America. He was a large slave owner before the war, and his income from the rents of his property in New Orleans is not less than $50,000 a year. Besides this he has a large personal estate, consisting of first-class securities. Mr. Marie is a man of fine accomplishment, a graduate of one of the best institutions of France and lives abroad about half the year.”

I’m having a hard time picturing how someone would find this manner of train ride smart. “A man stealing his ride on a B & M train chose the most dangerous place of all, under the cow-catcher of the engine. His leg was broken by knocking against the track, and when discovered he had crawled on top of the pilot. He was taken back to Denver for treatment.” McCook Weekly Tribune, September 27, 1883.

McCook Weekly Tribune, November 1, 1883: “Upon the report of the commissioner of pensions, the Secretary of the Interior, today, suspended from practice before the interior department, Belva A. Lockwood, pension attorney of Washington. Belva’s only drawback was that she had become ‘too smart’ for her own good. ‘Cuteness’ sometimes kills.” Belva was America’s first female attorney after having started as a school teacher. Upon the death of her husband, she moved to D.C. and graduated from what is now the George Washington University Law School. She was the second woman to run for the presidency (Victoria Woodhull being the first) but actually the first whose name appeared on a ballot. Even after she had obtained her law degree, she was not allowed to practice law because of her gender. She lobbied Congress from 1874-1879 until a bill was passed that any woman qualified could practice law in any federal court. She was the first woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1880, and yet you still find this kind of tongue in cheek comment in 1883.

Finally, from the January 3, 1884 McCook Weekly Tribune: “An Iowa editor retires because, as he says in his valedictory, ‘ No true Christian can edit a newspaper.’”

Weather seems to have set in but who cannot be thankful for the moisture we have received these last few days! Our new library location is 322 Norris Ave (Temple Building) Rooms 2-7. Inclement weather can affect our open hours.