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Sample Minnesota's rich history, courtesy of a microfilm archive of newspaper articles, photos and ads dating back more than 140 years. Fresh items are posted once or twice a week. Go here for tips on how to track down old newspaper articles on your own. Or visit the Yesterday's News archives, a searchable library of more than 300 articles.
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Posts about Minnesota History
April 4, 1920: To doff or not to doff?
Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: April 9, 2013 - 3:11 PM
An enterprising Minneapolis Tribune reporter scoured downtown elevators to blow the lid off an unfortunate trend.
“If He Doffs Hat When Woman
Enters Elevator He’s Single”
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| These hatless bellhops rode the elevators at the Nicollet Hotel in about 1924. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org) |
Lift Elevators Say Most Minneapolis Men Are Negligent About This Courtesy; Easterners More Punctilious; Women Don’t Expect It, Say Business Men.
Is there any real test to determine whether a man is married or single? Can this important fact about a stranger be discovered without the embarrassment of asking him? Hiram N. Wadleigh, veteran elevator operator in the Federal building, says there is.
If a man takes off his hat with precision and definiteness the minute a woman enters his car, Mr. Wadleigh says that man is certainly single. But if the male passenger hesitates and only removes his hat when he has made sure the woman is pretty, then, Wadleigh insists, in 99 cases out of 100 the man is married.
“Sometimes the married men have a good excuse for hesitating when there’s no hair on the top of their heads,” explains Mr. Wadleigh. “But usually those with heavy locks act just about the same way.”
However good this test may be, elevator operators in Minneapolis agree that most men here do not remove their hats in public elevators when women are fellow passengers.
In hotels the average is considerably higher than in public buildings, but even in the hotels men tend to retain their headgear.
Hat removers and those who don’t are split about fifty-fifty at the Hotel Dyckman, according to Donald Hartz, elevator operator. “Eastern men usually take off their hats automatically when they come in, whether a woman is present or not,” he said.
The only man the elevator operator has real contempt for, according to Mr. Hartz, is he who vacillates between removing his hat or not and finally sheepishly decides to take it off.
Hattie Malick, elevator starter at the Radisson, thinks she encounters the highest average of polite men in the city, but many are negligent even there, she says. In public elevators, men may do as they please, she believes, but a hotel elevator to her is the same as a drawing room, and men should remove their hats. She can’t just explain the difference between a hotel lobby and an elevator, but thinks there is one, nevertheless.
Matt Demand, courteous operator of the postoffice elevator, believes there is a difference between hotel elevators and those in public buildings, and that women do not expect men to remove their hats in the latter case.
“Most men pay no attention to women in this elevator,” he declared. “And the women don’t seem to expect any. They are usually here on business, and expect to be treated in a business and not in a social way.”
Women prominent in Minneapolis are sharply divided on the question of whether men should remove their hats in public elevators. They agree that in a hotel elevator hats should always come off.
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| This is Mrs. Manley Fosseen -- Carrie to her friends and family -- in 1936. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org) |
Mrs. Manley Fosseen, newly elected Republican delegate at large, thinks that woman, having attained political equality with man, should expect only business-like treatment from him in business places. The elevator, she thinks, is like a hotel lobby or a street car.
The one discourtesy which woman cannot forgive a man in an elevator is smoke, says Mrs. Fosseen.
Mrs. Carolyn B. Kinney, woman member of the Board of Education, holds a brief for the group of women with the opposite opinion.
“I like very much to see men remove their hats in any kind of elevator,” declared Mrs. Kinney. “And no matter how much political and business equality woman attain, I shall continue to derive pleasure from display of the little courtesy. It would be a shame if we should lose the old spirit of chivalry which has done much for both men and women.”
Men, asked about their opinion of the matter, unanimously decided that in business elevators doffing of hats is rather silly.
“When I am with my wife, of course I take mine off,” explained Postmaster Purdy, “partly because she is there to nudge me if I don’t. But in strictly business elevators I can’t see a great deal of advantage in following the custom. I don’t believe most women expect it.”
From a matter of space economy, Mr. Purdy said, it might be to advantage for women to take off their hats.
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| The wearing of hats was probably de riguere for well-heeled men passing through the lobby of the Dyckman Hotel in 1933, when this photo was taken. (Image courtesy of mnhs.org)
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April 4, 1920: Used-to-be-in-love shack
Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: April 4, 2013 - 6:55 PMFrom the Minneapolis Tribune:
Husband Sued By Wife
Asks Domicile on Lawn
(By Associated Press.)
Duluth, Minn., April 3. – Frank Kramer, 53, whose wife Louise is suing him for divorce, today petitioned the district court to permit him to erect a shack on the front lawn in which to live.
Kramer was ordered recently by the court upon petition of his wife to leave home during the progress of the suit. In his petition he asserts that living costs are so high that he was unable to support himself, to pay court costs and temporary alimony without some such arrangement. The court has taken his request under advisement.
Your 1880s neighbors: cupola tender, smutter, scavenger
Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: April 2, 2013 - 11:28 AMMinneapolis city directories from 1859 to 1917 are now online, thanks to the Hennepin County Library and a donation from the city's Professional Librarians Union. The address: http://box2.nmtvault.com/Hennepin2.
It's a powerful research tool and a great way to kill an hour or two. You can search or browse the database to track down famous residents of years past. I found listings for George D. Dayton, the department store founder; Theodore Wirth, the pioneering parks superintendent; and Ada L. Comstock, the University of Minnesota's first dean of women. Lillian M. Knott, the “penniless prima donna” who later taught at the Northwestern Conservatory of Music, turns up in the 1917 directory. You can look up your great-grandfather Gustav or your great-aunt Mabel or the family that lived in your house a century ago. Occupations, addresses and, in later years, phone numbers are listed for each resident. Dayton is listed as president, Dayton Dry Goods Company, residing at 2020 Blaisdell, telephone “T-S 4906.”
Many of the job titles are familiar: teacher, plumber, laborer, physician, reporter. Other titles are far less common or unknown more than a century later: maltster, milliner, horseshoer, smutter, cupola tender.
The directories are packed with ads. Here's one I stumbled across in the 1906 directory. While researching the business, the Northwestern Scavenger Company, I discovered that a blogger who works for the county library posted this very image in 2011. What are the odds? I hate duplication, but I've already spent 10 minutes reassembling multiple screen grabs in Photoshop, so here goes:
May 5, 1907: Report of Twain's death 'greatly exaggerated'
Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: March 27, 2013 - 3:51 PM“TWAIN AND YACHT DISAPPEAR AT SEA,” a New York Times headline blared on May 4, 1907. Trouble was, they hadn't. Samuel L. Clemens was at home that night, resting in his Fifth Avenue home in Manhattan after "a most pleasant" sea journey from Norfolk. The Minneapolis Tribune set the record straight:
MARK TWAIN PROBES
OWN DEATH REPORT
DOES NOT KNOW THAT HE IS DEAD FROM PRESENT FACTS.
Promises to Inform Anxiously Waiting Public After Thorough Investigation.
HUMORIST HUMOROUSLY HUMORS INQUISITIVE REPORTER ON RUMOR OF BEING AT SEA.
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| Mark Twain in 1907, perhaps waiting for a newsboy to deliver his morning paper. |
“However, you can assure all my friends that I will make any exhaustive and rigid investigation of the rumor, and, if there is any foundation for the story, I will at once apprise an anxious public of the facts.
“I sincerely hope that the report is not true and I suggest that all my friends suspend judgment until such time as I can ascertain the true state of affairs.”
THOUGHT TO BE LOST.
Visions of Mark Twain lashed to a raft and tossed about in the angry waves of the Atlantic had been affrighting all the admirers of the genial humorist, who had chanced to read a story in a morning newspaper to the effect that the Kanawha had left Norfolk, Va., Wednesday morning and had not been seen since. The harrowing details were to the effect that the humorist and others had gone to the Jamestown exposition as the guests of Mr. Rogers on the latter's palatial steam yacht, and that when the party was ready to return to New York last Monday the fog came on and prevented the boat starting. Mr. Rogers and his son, having important business engagements in New York, elected to return by train, but Mark Twain, having a horror of railroad travel, said he would stick to the ship.
The fog was good enough to clear away after a two days' visit, in which the humorist is said to have fretted about his long absence from Fifth avenue, and the yacht then headed for the battery.
SLIPS HOME QUIETLY.
The erstwhile pilot was so quiet on his arrival home that no one knew he was in the city and, as the yacht had not done any great amount of tooting, there seems to have been deep and widespread ignorance of her coming. Then came the story to the effect that the unfortunate Mississippi river navigator was adrift on the angry ocean, battling for his life in mountainous waves, while sharks and other ravenous fishes were nibbling at their prey.
As a matter of fact, however, the trip home was an uneventful one and most pleasant. Indeed, the skipper of the yacht had assured Mr. Clemens when they glided out of Hampton Roads, that he would have the boat under the Williamsburg bridge by 10 minutes to 9 o'clock that night, and he did.
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| Industrialist H.H. Rogers' steam-powered yacht Kanawha in 1899. The 200-foot vessel cost $350,000 to build and had a top speed of 22 knots. It later served in the U.S. Navy during World War I.
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March 19, 1903: Janitor collars young marble thieves
Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: March 20, 2013 - 10:17 AMAn above-average exercise in alliteration from the Minneapolis Tribune:
BOYS TURN BURGLARS
SIX YOUTHFUL DESPERADOES RECOVER MARBLES FROM THEIR TEACHER.
Six penitent desperadoes of the tender age of 12 or thereabouts are languishing in duress vile, prisoners of Hennepin county for a sufficient length of time to ponder over the fruitlessness of iniquity. The lads are Jesse Hall, Turner Tenneson, Carson Hendrickson, Norman Paul, Melvin Merrill and Harry Sorensen.
Legally the lads are burglars. In the light of the fact that they are very young amateurs, however, Judge Dickinson decided that twenty-four hours in the boobyhatch would be enough to squelch their buccaneering spirits.
Sunday the sextet of bold, bad bandits broke a window in the Greeley school building and entered. They turned up their collars in the most ferocious fashion, tip-toed and said “hist” just like the daring debonair dare devil Dicks in the books which incited them to adopt the profession of naughty boys.
Primarily their visit was for the purpose of recovering some canicks, and chinies, and falsies and flints – species of marbles, it developed in court – which a teacher had confiscated from one of the bad band. So far as the recovery of the marbles was concerned the expedition was a howling success. In addition one of the teacher’s desks was found to be treasure trove to the extent of 43 cents, and this was also appropriated by the lads.
Then there hove in sight the burly form of an interloper upon the chosen hunting ground of the piratical youngsters. It was that of Mr. Janitor, W.H. Adams, and he didn’t do a thing but collar the entire outfit and telephone for a policeman.
In court Judge Dickinson handed the boys a bunch of advice which made their eyes look as though they had been hit with peeled onions. Then to the dungeon they were hied.
And they are there yet.
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| These darling lads, shown playing marbles outside an Anoka elementary school in about 1904, wouldn't have lasted an hour in detention, let alone 24 hours in the county jail. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)
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recent posts
- Feb. 27, 1921: An electrifying infographic
- May 8, 1913: Lake Minnetonka’s nude ‘phantom’ captured
- May 7, 1963: The Guthrie opens
- April 15, 1886: St. Cloud, Sauk Rapids in ruins
- Aug. 22, 1909: City’s bravest woman outwits robber, wolves, ducks
- April 4, 1920: To doff or not to doff?
- April 4, 1920: Used-to-be-in-love shack
- Your 1880s neighbors: cupola tender, smutter, scavenger
- March 30, 1880: Speling reform moovment
- May 5, 1907: Report of Twain's death 'greatly exaggerated'
- March 19, 1903: Janitor collars young marble thieves
- Sept. 11, 1945: Sid Hartman’s first column
- March 14, 1913: Bassett Creek, the ‘Venice of Minneapolis’
- March 6, 1913: Vegetables, nuts ‘just as good’ as meat
- Feb. 18, 1936: My bloody valentine
- July 22, 1914: Police chief in pajamas chases thief
- Aug. 17, 1922: The Court of Cupid
- Jan. 21, 1917: How long does it take your wife to dress?
- Dec. 27, 1893: Down in Fish Alley
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