Today I sat in the Western Reserve Historical Society looking through ancient newspapers in German and realized I have oh so little time. The resources here are beyond compare.
I delved into a little of this, and a little of that. I get the feeling that the onset of advertising was an early and prevalent part of American life. One report said people heading west put signs on their wagons that said: “Pike’s Peak or Bust.” So people coming back from the west, their schemes and funds depleted, put signs on their wagons that said: “Busted.”
In the German newspaper Wachter am Erie, I read in an 1852 rag that German immigrants relished the slogan: “Europa ist ruhig, stören wir es nicht.” (Europe is quiet, we’re no longer there to disturb it.) I presume this slogan reflects the sentiment of the numerous political refugees who had to flee Germany because they called for a democratically elected government. (The Prussian monarch suppressed the rebellion in 1848-49.)
A Cleveland newspaper reported on May 17, 1844 that a visitor to see an elephant put a wad of tobacco in the elephant’s mouth. The elephant used his trunk to strike the man dead with a single blow.
And with permission, here’s an 1853 cookstove, about the only illustration in the whole German newspaper:
