A mystery from Montana

Recently a library patron brought an interesting document to the reference desk.  He had found it among some of his own World War II military papers that had been mailed to him by an office in Nebraska—but it was not his, and it was not from World War II, and it was not from Nebraska. It was the somewhat tattered World War I military discharge for Thomas R. Ricketts, who had served from Montana. Very mysterious, and my patron wondered if perhaps Thomas was some relation to the current governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts.

A research project!  Just what I like!  It was fairly easy to establish that Thomas was no close relative of Pete. A search at the fabulous Montana Memory Project digital library quickly produced a World War I enlistment card for our mystery man, issued by the Montana Adjutant General’s Office. It showed that Thomas had been born in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and lived in Helena, Montana; the Nebraska Ricketts family (whose family tree has been traced by numerous researchers) apparently hails from Iowa, and from Ohio before that. 

World War I enlistment card, Montana Adjutant General's Office.
Digital image from Montana Memory Project.

So not one of the Nebraska Ricketts. Who was he, and how did his discharge paper end up in Nebraska? He enlisted in Miles City, Montana, which is in Custer County, but resided in Helena, Lewis and Clark County (other side of the state). Digging a little more at Montana Memory, I found ANOTHER enlistment card, this one specifically for the 2nd Montana Infantry Regiment. It included an exact date of birth (always useful) and a nice description. Thomas was not a large man! Five foot four, dark with brown eyes.

Now I tried googling (yes, I know, not serious research, but never overlook the obvious). I was rewarded with further insight into Thomas's military career, discovered on Google Books in a book called Yellowstone County, Montana in the World War 1917-1918-1919, edited and published by William W. Gail. (This sort of book, meant to honor the county's patriotic contributions, was not uncommon--I found other examples from other states and counties.) Even better than the handy little summary of Thomas's war years, which includes further information about where he served and what he did, was the portrait of him on the previous page. Unfortunately, as befits a man of mystery, his hat shades his features so all we can really see is the end of his nose and a nicely sculpted mouth and chin.

William W. Gail,  Yellowstone County, Montana,
in the World War, 1917-1918-1919 (Billings, 1919).

Thomas Ricketts

     

This also introduced yet another confusing detail about his origins. This book gives Thomas's residence as Billings, Yellowstone County, and his inclusion in a book about the Yellowstone County patriotic effort suggests he was a Yellowstone County boy; but his enlistment card shows his residence as Helena. 

Let's review what we know about him. He started out in the Montana National Guard, probably with no idea that he was going to end up in France. He was obviously comfortable with horses; he started as a corporal in Troop A of the First Montana Cavalry and would later serve as both a stable sergeant and a saddler. An article in the Butte Daily Post dated 10 Feb. 1917 indicates he and the rest of Troop A spent time in federal service guarding the southern border in Douglas, Arizona; from there he and 32 comrades were sent to Fort Harrison (near Helena, so perhaps that is where the Helena residence comes from) to be mustered out of government service. However, he was obviously not done with government service, since almost exactly one year later he was on his way to France. 

What became of him after the war? We have one possible sighting of him, in the 1920 census--and it's not in Yellowstone County, but in Prickly Pear, Lewis and Clark County. This Thomas Ricketts is three years younger, but otherwise a reasonably good fit--born in Pennsylvania, and working as a farm laborer in the household of Hugh and Ellen Rogan. Ellen was also born in Pennsylvania, and I got very excited, thinking she might be related to Thomas, but having followed that rabbit trail, I discovered that her maiden name was Lavery and she was from Philadelphia, not South Bethlehem. I have found no sign of this Thomas Ricketts (whether or not he is our man) in the 1930 census. Or the 1910, for that matter.

1920 Federal Census, Lewis & Clark Co., MT, Enumeration District 0093, p. 86A. Digital image, Ancestry.com.

These single male farm laborers with no apparent ties are terrible to trace...But I'm not giving up.

Serving the public at the Greater America Exposition

The Greater America Exposition is scarcely remembered today. It consisted of the leftovers of the highly successful Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, warmed up and served anew in July 1899. Like other leftover meals, it proved very so-so at best, and closed after three months (a month earlier than planned). Its organizers and promoters, hoping to squeeze a little more money out of the very popular Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, had bought up the buildings that had been constructed for that fair, and, with a bit of rearrangement and extra landscaping, reopened the new Exposition with the theme of colonial empire, celebrating the United States' recent acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, attendance was meager and the fair was a miserable failure financially. In fact, it eventually had to declare bankruptcy.

Omaha Daily Bee, 29 Nov. 1899, p. 5. (Digital image, Chronicling America)

Which is probably why the Greater America Exposition is usually mentioned merely as a footnote to discussion of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition.  Still, it presumably provided employment for some Omahans for a few months.

From the collections of Omaha Public Library

I have been looking at two of them lately: A. W. Logan and Frances Huston. He was a cook, she was a waitress, and they both worked in a department designated as "Bone #153." I know about them because Omaha Public Library has their worker passes in its extensive Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition collection (see what I mean? We don't even have a separate Greater America Exposition collection; it's just part of the Trans-Miss).

I looked for A.W. in the Omaha City Directory, and, sure enough, there he was in the 1900 directory, living at 623 N. 17th Street and working as a cook for Boyles & Bone, which (as I discovered by flipping to the relevant page of the directory) was a restaurant located at 318 S. 16th St. Clearly this restaurant had some kind of  concession at the fair. A.W. was also issued with a "sleeping permit," which allowed him to sleep on the fairgrounds, so obviously this was a pretty life-consuming job while it lasted.

What can we find out about A.W.? His actual first name would be a good start...But he was already gone in the 1901 city directory, and I couldn't find him in the 1900 census. No sign of him in the 1899 directory, either. He may have been just passing through? 

Omaha City Directory, 1900

More research required!

From the collections of Omaha Public Library

Next I looked for Frances Huston, and discovered there is a reason she looks about 10 years old in her picture--she WAS 10 years old. I am pretty certain I have identified Frances as the daughter of William J. Huston, described in the Omaha World Herald as "a well-known restauranteur in Omaha" (30 June 1906). The family appears in the 1900 census (see below) living at 1613 Chicago St., and William's occupation is listed as "Restaurant." 

Omaha's Prospect Hill Cemetery, by Louise Bloom Baumann (1990), provides more information (source not given, unfortunately):  William owned the Hotel Richelieu at 13th and Dodge, as well as four restaurants, including the Antlers at 15th and Dodge and the Climax at 307 N. 16th (which is the address given for his place of work in the 1900 directory). He and his wife, Rosetta, had a food stand at the Trans-Mississippi & International Exposition (according to Louise Baumann), so it makes sense that they might have had one at the Greater America Exposition. And child labor laws were still a vision rather than a reality.... 

1900 Census, Omaha, Douglas Co., Nebraska. Digital image, FamilySearch.org

Frances and her sister, Lillian Agnes, appear in the June, 1903, Register of Central High School, in the roster of the Class of 1906. It appears they may not have made it to graduation, though, since Vol. XVIII (1925) of the Journal of History published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints provides this little tidbit (p. 378) in an article on the Church in Omaha:

If you are wondering about the Mormon connection--it seems (once again, I'm looking at Omaha's Prospect Hill Cemetery) that the girls' maternal grandparents, John and Susanna (Klossner) Agenstein had joined the Mormon Church in their native Switzerland and gone out to Utah, only to be disappointed with the religion--possibly they were not keen on the polygamy aspect of Utah Mormonism. Leaving Utah "under military escort" (this is definitely a story to pursue!), they settled in Omaha around 1876 and joined the Reorganized Church of Latter-Day Saints (a breakaway group that was ideologically opposed to polygamy, as well as disagreeing with a few other tenets of the LDS Church. Read all about it!)  Another interesting note about Susanna is that she and her son John (not clear what happened to husband John) managed a restaurant on the north side of Dodge between 15th and 16th Streets, and she later owned the restaurant Denver at 16th and California Streets. Clearly we're looking at a restauranteur dynasty here....

Nevertheless, it seems a shame to leave school at the tender age of 16, with only a year left to go--especially since, according to the ever-informative Omaha's Prospect Hill Cemetery, Frances's marriage ended in divorce. (Sister Lillian was still a Wrenn at the time of Frances's death in 1972, according to Frances's obituary--8 Oct. 1972--in the Omaha World Herald). Frances married again, twice, but outlived both those husbands by many years. Did she tell her children stories about those weeks she spent waitressing at the Greater America Exposition?






 

A West Point cadet

While trawling through yet another long-stored box from the W. Dale Clark Library's "attic," I found something kind of neat: a copy of A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial, by Stephen Vincent Benét, published in 1868. Now, since Omaha Public Library is not an academic library, this work does not really fit into our collection very well (it is also a little the worse for wear--the cover is falling off, and over all it's a bit fragile) and I will probably have to send it to the Friends of the Library to sell. But first I wanted to gloat over it a little.

First of all, if the name Stephen Vincent Benét makes you wonder vaguely what military law and poetry have to do with each other, the answer is--not much. This is NOT the Stephen Vincent Benét who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his book-length narrative poem, John Brown's Body (all this can of course be verified at Wikipedia....), but rather the poet's grandfather and namesake, who was a brigadier-general and a graduate of the United States Military Academy. (It was a very military family--the poet's father was a career officer and young Stephen himself spent a year at Hitchcock Military Academy. But stop here, this post is NOT supposed to be about Stephen the younger. Or actually about Stephen the older, either, as you will see.)

If you'd like to actually read this book, it is available digitally from archive.org. But what actually interests me most about this particular volume is the person (or people) who owned it.  The original owner has inscribed his name, Fred A. Smith, a date (September 1872), and the words "Cadet U.S.M.A. West Point Ny."  Who was Fred Smith, and how did Omaha Public Library end up with his book?  (It might have something to do with the other name written on this frontispiece, which looks like "C.J. McCaffrey"--although the "C." looks as though it were crossed out, and the last name could be "McCalfrey.")

Well, one hopeless task at a time. "Smith" is a bad research prospect at best, and "Fred" is not much better, although it was kind of him to at least include a middle initial. But I think I've found our man. Although Ancestry.com (or Ancestry Library Edition, if you are using our library database) does have some of the West Point cadet registers, I discovered an even better source--the USMA Library Digital Collections. There I was able to download a pdf of The Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy (June 1873). Frederick A. Smith was a member of the graduating class that year, and he appears to be the only Fred A. Smith who was at West Point in September of 1872 (although a Fred E. Smith from Illinois was admitted in July, 1872).

Frederick A. Smith was born in New York and "appointed" from New York, having been nominated by the Honorable C.H. Van Wyck and accepted February 13, 1869, according to a cadet register in the Ancestry.com database U.S. Military and Naval Academies, Cadet Records and Applications, 1805-1908. C.H. Van Wyck was almost certainly Charles Henry Van Wyck (1824-1895), a New York Republican congressional representative from 1859 to 1863. Then, as now, West Point candidates needed a nomination for admission, usually from a U.S. senator or a representative. Interestingly, Congressman Van Wyck moved to Nebraska in 1874 and eventually served as U.S. senator from Nebraska (see The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress).

But back to good old Fred. The Official Register shows that he was admitted July 1, 1869, at the age of 20 years and one month (making his birth date around June 1849). The 1873 West Point registers in the Ancestry.com database give Frederick's hometown as Newburgh, New York, which is right by West Point. There was a Frederick of the right age in the 1850 and 1860 censuses living with his parents F.B. and Sarah Smith in Blooming Grove, New York, which is just southwest of Newburgh, and the same family, minus Frederick (though "F.B." is now "Frederick"), was listed in Newburgh in the 1870 census. I felt certain of my identification when I discovered this family in Newburgh in the 1875 New York state census, available at FamilySearch--and what a splendid state census it is!  Lists relationships, occupations, AND location of absent members. Frederick A. is listed with his family, but is described as a lieutenant in the 12th Infantry, usually employed "in California." The book published in 1885 on the occasion of the 16th Annual Reunion of the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy provides further confirmation by identifying the Frederick A. Smith who graduated in 1873 as the same Frederick A. Smith who was a first lieutenant and adjutant in the 12th Infantry (p. 18).

The Official Register shows that our Fred was ranked a respectable 22 out of the 41 graduating members of his class, and had only 40 demerits for the year (as compared to the record holder, Joseph F. Huston, with 193. Of course, Joseph also graduated at the very bottom of the class). 

So, our book, published in 1868, was probably a brand-new textbook when it came into Frederick Smith's hands. Someone, probably Fred himself (since mention is made of "Lt. Reilly instructor" in "3rd Section Law Mch 28th 1873," and the Official Register confirms that 1st Lt. James W. Reilly was the law and ethics professor in 1873), took some serious notes:

As a librarian I can't really approve of this vandalism, but maybe composition books were in short supply. And after all, it was not a library book yet.

Anyway, if it was Fred, his work paid off. He eventually became a brigadier-general, after serving in the Indian wars, in the Columbian Guard at the World's Fair in Chicago (for which he was commended), in Cuba, and the Philippines. In 1910 he was given command of the Department of Missouri, the second largest in the army, "with station at Omaha, Nebraska." Is that when his old book came into our city? Just before he retired in 1913, he was again stationed in Omaha, having been assigned to the command of the Second Division of the Fifth Brigade, which was headquartered there. He is indeed in the 1911 Omaha city directory, p. 1113.

Living at the Hotel Loyal (211 N. 16th Street), which seems the perfect place for a loyal officer of the U.S. Army, and very fortunately we have a picture of what it looked like just about the time he was living there.


You may wonder how I suddenly know so much about Fred.  Now that I knew he was
 the 12th Infantry Fred Smith, I hit paydirt with a Google search which unearthed a tribute to him that appeared after his death on February 4, 1922, in that year's Annual Report of the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy (p. 138). Not much personal information, unlike some of the other tributes to deceased members, which were apparently written by close friends. Fred's was written by the Secretary of the Association. It does divulge that his middle initial stood for "Appleton," and that he was born May 15, 1849, in Craigville, New York. AND there is a portrait (the same that is housed at the Library of Congress). He was a distinguished-looking man. But I'd love to see what he looked like as a young cadet.

There is quite a bit more to find about Brigadier General Frederick A. Smith--because my obscure Fred Smith, humble cadet, turned out to be famous! Now, however, I'm a little curious about C.J. McCaffrey (if that is the right name), who apparently had possession of our book on April 4, 1914.

Famous librarians who have passed through Omaha

Mildred Batchelder, Mount Holyoke
College Yearbook
(Llamarada), 1922, p. 132.

I recently discovered something I feel I should have known all along (and I feel sure that EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD already knew this!): Mildred Batchelder, famous librarian in whose honor the American Library Association's Mildred L. Batchelder Award for children's books in English translation was established, began her professional life as a children's librarian at Omaha Public Library, though she spent only three years there. I have a specially warm feeling about Mildred--since I was a translator myself in my previous life.

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1901, she was awarded a Bachelor of Library Science degree from the New York State Library School in Albany, New York, in 1924. She then, at the age of 23, 

with no experience, became Supervisor of Children's Services in Omaha, Nebraska, a job that included the main library, four branches, and 34 grade schools. In Omaha she developed a training class for her staff, published a periodical on buying books for children, and used her personal savings to take staff members with her to her second American Library Association (ALA) conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey.¹

This part of her career is lightly touched on in various accounts of her life--see Barbara Bader's depiction in The Horn Book, for example.  What did she do in Omaha?

Strangely enough, we did not have a biography file on her at the library, so I had to start from scratch. I began by trawling through Library Notes for the relevant years. Library Notes was Omaha Public Library's periodic bulletin covering library news and, primarily, lists of new books. Staff were seldom mentioned by name in this publication (except for the head librarian), but I did find this:

She was already showing her strong belief in the importance of library training.

At that time, the Omaha Public Library System consisted of the Main Library, 4 branches, 4 high school libraries, 37 class room libraries, and 11 businesses, clubs, and hospitals. The Main Library, where Mildred worked, was on the southeast corner of 19th and Harney Streets (it is now an office building), and was one of the first libraries in the country to set up a separate children's department.  Here it is--very spacious! And the children look very well-behaved.

Children's room, Main Library



Omaha Public Library, 1898

I found Mildred in the 1925 and 1926 Omaha city directories. No directory was published in 1927, and she doesn't appear in 1928, having presumably moved on to her next position, as children's librarian at the Minnesota State Teacher's College in St. Cloud (where she did not last long--according to both Bader and Davis, her energetic outspokenness quickly got her fired). In both 1925 and 1926, she lived at 308 S. 38th St., in a building that also housed C.J. Palmer and Mrs. Bertha Palmquist. That address no longer exists, but it would be between Farnam and Harney.

 

I'd like to say I planned this post to coincide with Children's Book Week, which would be so appropriate, since Mildred Batchelder orchestrated OPL's Children's Book Week celebrations for three years (back then, it was celebrated in November; in 2008 it moved to May); however, I must confess my post has been stagnating for two months already, and I'm now pretty much desperate to get it out.  Nevertheless, Children's Book Week is the perfect occasion. Children's Book Week was Mildred's first major event as the new supervisor of the Omaha Public Library's children's department:

Evening World-Herald, 29 Oct. 1924, p. 14

The following year, 1925, Mildred presided over "the largest party ever given" in honor of Children's Book Week at Omaha Public Library:

Omaha World Herald, 14 Nov. 1925, p. 17.

That's what I call a party! I'm not sure we will be able to top it this year....



1. Davis, Donald G., Dictionary of American Library Biography, Vol. 3 (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003), p. 22.

The art of cake decorating

Rummaging through a box of library discards that for some reason had been in storage for the last 30 years, I came across an apparently self-published work that aroused my ever-arousable curiosity:

Who is (was?) Hildegard Schulte? Why do we have this book? (This is a question that I find myself asking quite often when roaming through some of the library's uncataloged historical treasures.)

The title page offers further illumination:

The Schulte School of Cake Decorating, right here in Omaha!  I wanted to know more. A quick Google search indicated that a revised edition--probably a bit more slick than this, since it contained 108 pages and photographs--was published in 1958; this edition can be found on a few used-book sites.  Ours seems to be an earlier first version, possibly produced in the early years of Hildegard's career as a cake decorator--although her obituary, published in the Omaha World Herald on December 8, 1981, says that already in the 1940s she was known as "the cake lady" because of her skills as a cake baker and decorator, and that even then she was teaching in Omaha and abroad. She had actually graduated from pharmacy school, but confined her concoctions to the kitchen. An Omaha World Herald article published May 1, 1949, remarked that she had "a frosting idea for practically every occasion" and had even made a set of sugar earrings and brooch to match (I like the idea of edible accessories--perhaps nostalgia for those candy necklaces we had when I was a kid). I wish I had a good picture of some of those cakes (or better yet, the sugar earrings!) but the best I can do is post a couple of her cake designs here.

 

The 1951 Omaha city directory does not have a listing for the Schulte School of Cake Decorating (or any Schulte school), though it does give separate listings for Hildegard M. Schulte and her husband, Ellwin R., both living at 2542 Chicago St. Ellwin was a pharmacist at O'Brien Drugs (they had met at pharmacy school). Not until 1954 is there any mention of the Schulte culinary entreprises, and even then it is merely appended to Mrs. Hildegard Schulte's directory entry: "cooking school" as an occupation. Finally, in 1955, the Schulte School of Cake Decorating & Fancy Cookery rated its own separate directory entry. By 1956 it was the Schulte School of Cake Decorating & Candy Making, and in no time its entry was in bold font.

1961 was the last year the school was listed with Hildegard as the proprietor; in 1962 it was not listed at all, although Ellwin and Hildegard were listed. By 1965 Ellwin had retired, the house on Chicago St. had fallen victim to the new freeway, and the couple were living on Keystone Dr. In 1967, the Schulte School of Cake Decorating reappeared at 7002 Grant St., under the management of Ellwin and Hildegard's son, John J. Schulte, and operated there until at least the early 1970s.

Ellwin passed away in  1967 (Omaha World Herald obituary, 26 July 1967), but Hildegard carried on with her creative pursuits. She was interviewed by the Omaha World Herald in 1972 (OWH, 2 April 1972, p. 85), and although she claimed to be retired (her obituary, in contrast, says she retired in 1977, the same year she was presented with a life membership in the International Cake Exploration Société), she obviously never stopped learning, teaching, creating. She had learned tole painting, taught classes, took organ lessons, and made huge quantities of pastry treats and panoramic sugar Easter eggs for family, friends, and nursing homes.

Hildegard passed away at the age of 82 on December 4, 1981. The nature of her art was more transitory than most, but we still have The Art of Cake Decorating....

Post offices and places that are not post offices

This is not uniquely Nebraska-related, but might be useful to researchers anywhere in North America. Someone recently asked me about a well-known but nameless (to her) directory of obscure or now non-existent places in the United States. I love a challenge!  Actually, this turned out to be easier than expected. I think what she was referring to was Bullinger's Postal and Shippers Guide for the United States and Canada, Containing Every Post Office, Railroad Station and United States Fort, with the Railroad or Steamer Line on which Every Place, or the Nearest Communicating Point, Is Located, and the Delivering Expresses for Every Place. Also a List of Railroads and Water Lines, with Their Terminal Point. How's that for a comprehensive title?  You know exactly what you're getting! Forts and all.

Anyway, this guide was published on a more or less yearly basis from 1871 up into the 1990s or so, although the title has varied over the years--it has also appeared as the Monitor Guide to Post Offices and Railroad Stations. It is no longer in business, apparently since at least 2005, when its trademark ("Bullinger's") was cancelled. Its last owner was Alber Leland Publishing (thanks, Ulrichsweb!). Now, of course, we have the United States Postal Service website, and RailRoutes.US (basically Amtrak), but these are such a palid shadow of what we once had...(sob).

FamilySearch has microfilmed a few of the Bullinger's Guides, and they can be ordered in for viewing at the W. Dale Clark Library in Omaha.  Even nicer, the 1922 edition is available online at Google Books--which was the last year it was published by its founder, Edwin W. Bullinger. That year, at the age of 79, he transferred ownership to the New England Railway Publishing Co., the publisher of the ABC Pathfinder Shipping and Mailing Guides--which, if possible, have an even more explicit subtitle than Bullinger's: Containing All Railroads and Railroad Stations, Water Routes, Express Offices, Telegraph Offices, Post Offices, and Places That Are Not Post Offices, in the United States And Canada, Together with the Location of Every Place, Whether or Not Upon a Railroad or Water Route; If Not, the Nearest Point from which It Can Be Reached. Freight, Express, Postal, and Telegraph Information, Court-Houses, List of Places Where Records, Mortgages, and Deeds Are Filed, Etc., Etc. Does that sound handy or what?
 

La Platte metropolis, seen from railway station.
Source: Nebraska Memories

Now, why am I excited enough about this to write one of my increasingly rare blog posts about it? Well, if you've ever tried to track down an ancestral stomping ground that apparently no-one has stomped for these many moons, your trials are over. This guide lists just about every mud puddle that existed in the year of its publication. Of course, now hometownlocator.com seems to do that as well....but still. Hometownlocator.com does not tell you that La Platte, Nebraska, was a railway stop, as Bullinger's does, or what a town's nearest railway station or post office was. You can see that La Platte was not really a boom city.....

La Platte railway station. Source: Nebraska Memories

Source: Bullinger's Guide (1922), p. 808.

One handy aspect of these guides is that the towns (or mud puddles) are all listed alphabetically together, regardless of what county or state they were in, so if you are looking for a place called Peach Bottom but have no idea of its location, you can easily discover that, at least in 1922, there were two Peach Bottoms, one in Lancaster Co., PA, and one in Grayson Co., VA, and that the one in Pennsylvania was a money order post office. You can also see what railway lines these places were on. The ABC Pathfinder even tells you where to look for county and town records.

 As a bit of trivia--Agatha Christie used the British version of the ABC Pathfinder to plot one of her mysteries, which was, of course, entitled The ABC Murders (get it at Omaha Public Library! You can even download it instantly to your Nook, Sony, or Kindle).

And, of course, it goes without saying that if you are a railroad buff, you will have a BALL with these guides!

Early clairvoyants

I know I promised to write about Eugene Konecky, and I WILL--but something else came up. Again. In the course of doing a bit of research for someone, I came across this ad in the May 27, 1906, issue of the Omaha World-Herald for a clairvoyant named Madame Brown (you will hear more of her in future posts):

In case you're wondering, the "G" is for Gertrude, although her name actually seems to have been Susie. Glamorous though "Gertrude" may be, there were a few more flamboyant-sounding clairvoyants advertising in the same issue: Madame Buddha, Zora (Mysterious Powers, Psychic Force), Mirze, and K-A-R-M-E-R the Mastermind. More prosaically, there was also "Mrs. O'Neal, colored palmist [and] card reader." Not to mention the supremely business-like

Stock tips? Looking at the city directory, I discovered that this medium was Mrs. C.E. Stockman (no, I did not mean this to be a pun!), married to Charles E. Stockman, a clerk at the Fairmont Creamery Co.

Mme Brown's ad was pretty low-key (she may have been mindful of the rate-per-word) compared with, say, the eighth of a newspaper page commanded by Armonde Leveaux, the clairvoyant sensation from France, "a man of strange powers," who was both a psychic palmist and a trance medium. His ad included drawings (of himself, presumably, and his extended hands), and urged readers to "consult this wonderful man at once" (adding rather ominously "it may be too late tomorrow"). After enumerating his many skills (including the ability to deliver readings in English, French, Swedish, or German) the ad copy asserted, "his powers are beyond belief" (Omaha World Herald, April 7, 1907, p. 5). I bet they were! 

Mme Brown was one of only two practitioners listed in the Clairvoyants column that day to post a price. Fifty cents does not sound much--even today, according to MeasuringWorth.com, this would be the equivalent of $12.50, based on the Consumer Price Index. But it was clearly a living, since the number of clairvoyants advertising in the paper seemed to grow month by month. You had to make enough to make a profit after paying your license fees. Yes, clairvoyants were supposed to be licensed. Thomas' Revised Ordinances of the City of Omaha, Nebraska (1905) says

 Either the city was trying to put a few hurdles in the way of scam artists or--more likely--it was looking to cash in on what was apparently a growing interest in supernatural or psychic phenomena of all kinds--fortune-telling, palmistry, card-reading, or communicating with the dead via mediums (should that be media? No, probably not...). I personally like the term "occult scientist," which appears in some newspaper ads. Spiritualism (the aforementioned communicating with the dead) in particular had a great vogue in the US, peaking just after World War I, according to Mary Roach's superbly informative and entertaining book Spook (check it out of the library), and enjoying validation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Victoria, William James, and a host of other celebrities of the age. You can see the increase in people advertising paranormal services in the city directory--there were no clairvoyants, mediums, or palmists listed in the business section before 1903, but the number had grown to 9 by 1918. For the most part they saved the splashier ads for the newspaper; here's the clairvoyant section for 1914:

Obviously mostly respectable married women....

Notably, no less a person than John G. Neihardt, Nebraska's poet laureate for many years, reportedly visited a clairvoyant in Omaha in 1912 and was much impressed (according to his biographer, Julius Temple House). Other evidence for the enthusiasm for psychic phenomena around that time is provided by the national New Thought convention held for eight days in Omaha, beginning June 18, 1911.

All of this goes to show that what we think of as New Age is actually pretty Old Age, although the terminology does change; "clairvoyant" isn't as common as it used to be. And "fortune teller" sounds like a Halloween costume. The trendier term now seems to be "psychic reader"--I pass one every time I go to the supermarket.