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.

More (too much?) about Henry R. Gering

Source: 1910 promotional booklet
published by the Omaha Commercial
Club

I know that a second post here in one week may be a little shocking to anyone who has gotten used to my posting schedule so far, but I have been inspired by a great presentation I saw yesterday about blogging family history, given by the talented Susan Petersen. And I dug up some more interesting information about good old Henry that I wanted to share.

As I mentioned, he was the managing trustee of the Western Medical Review, which was the official publication of the Nebraska State Medical Association, and in the very same volume containing the ads I discussed in my previous post, a report on the proceedings of the House of Delegates at the 46th Annual Meeting of said Medical Association revealed some friction on the subject of advertising in the Review. A complaint had been made by members of the Medical Association at the previous annual meeting that the Review, "in spite of the protests of the [Censoring Committee of the Association], continued to carry objectionable advertising," and a special committee (don't you love organizational life!) had been appointed to investigate.

Harsh words were said (actually, in today's political arena this would be considered pretty bland):  

Western Medical Review, Vol. XIX, #7 (July 1914), p. 351; accessed at Google Books

  I was naturally avidly curious to find out what they considered "objectionable" to the point of disgust, but even after wading through the dense prose of the report I am not really much wiser. It seems they objected principally to 19 "proprietaries" advertised in the January and February 1914 issues of the Review, which were apparently frowned upon by the American Medical Association. (One of them was Glyco-Heroin, but presumably cannabis-containing products were fine.) They included such popular remedies as Sal Hepatica, Iodum-Miller, Fagisota (isn't that a great name?), and Sabalol Spray, but it's not clear what exactly the objections were. Henry Gering spoke on behalf of the Western Medical Review Company (incidentally, I believe his company had in the past advertised some of these shady products, but no one mentioned that), and he and the board of the Review responded to the objections in a letter. The Coca Cola ad was to be discontinued, as were a number of other censored ads. The Henry R. Gering Co. would no longer list dosages in its ads (maybe that was it? Information that would allow the public to bypass doctors? Except that these ads were directed at doctors).  Mention was made of ads comparable to the disparaged ones that were still running in the august Journal of the A.M.A.  Those included the White Cross Electric Vibrator, as well as Rat and Roach Paste...just thought I'd mention these intriguing products. Anyway, tempers were calmed, the militants subsided, and harmony and dignity reigned. I think medical advertising might be a great topic for someone's doctoral dissertation--maybe it already has been.

Well, I've already spent WAY too much time on the Western Medical Review. Otherwise I would go ahead and post its column of medical jokes (Vol. 16, No. 7, July 1911, p. 392), "Some German Medical Jokes." Anyone who thinks doctors have no sense of humor...must have read this column.

Tempted? Go check this out on Google Books!

By the way, anyone with a Nebraska doctor in his or her ancestry would do well to have a look at these early issues of the Western Medical Review--they had a nice little gossip column about the doings of doctors around the state.

I've sort of gotten off the topic of Henry. Besides his activities in the various state medical and pharmaceutical operations, he liked cars; he was part-owner of the Des Moines Speedway until he sold his interest in 1916 (probably just in time, going by the history at the Des Moines Speedway Page), as I learned from The Automobile (Vol. 34, #19, May 11, 1916, p. 875)--another fascinating periodical digitized at Google Books, but I will NOT let myself be seduced.

Obviously he was doing pretty well financially. The July 11, 1918, issue of the same journal reported that ground had been broken in Omaha on Florence Blvd. for the first factory building of the United States Carburetor Company, the president of which was--Henry R. Gering!  The Atlantic News Telegraph of Aug. 28, 1913, reports that he was treasurer of the Rainey Mail Exchange Co. And on and on. The thought of all the committee meetings he must have attended gives me the horrors. Did the man ever stop to rest? I don't know how he had the time for any dalliance whatsoever with Mrs. Benjamin Redman--even just penning love notes. I guess he could have had his secretary do it....

And yet, amid all the wheelings and dealings, Henry still took the time to go home and carry out the somewhat unusual terms of his mother's will in 1920. I think this little article reflects so nicely on both Henry and his mother, I will close this rambling dissertation with it:

The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News (Lincoln, NE), March 23, 1920, p. 1.

In case you think $5 is chintzy, it was the equivalent of roughly $54.40 in 2010. (I got that amazing information at Measuring Worth). Wasn't that a nice thing to do? Though I wonder if her children and heirs might have been just a tiny bit annoyed.

No more hysterics

As so often happens, while researching my last post, I came upon something that distracted me from what I had originally planned to write about next. In fact, several somethings, but I'll start with one, the Henry R. Gering Company and the way drugs go in and out of fashion. 

I was perusing a 1914 (Vol. 19, #1) issue of the Western Medical Review on Google Books, which contained quite a few fascinating ads for companies or institutions operating or based in Omaha or other Nebraska cities (probably because the Review's founder was a Nebraska-based surgeon, George H. Simmons), most of them more or less medical-related. The Henry R. Gering Company in particular had numerous ads for different products (probably because Henry was a managing trustee for the Review). The one that first caught my eye was eye-catching indeed:

Get your deformities fixed! Actually, this outfit is quite appealing in a Goth kind of way...Although presumably in 1914 the wearer would have put a dress on over it. I'd like to see their other "deformity appliances." 

This ad had the best art (although the illustrations for some of the ads for abdominal supporters do inspire awe), but some of Henry Gering's other products were even more interesting, and recall a time when people would dose themselves with almost anything. (Actually, has anything changed?)

There was this mixture, for example, which looks interesting to begin with, and is probably even more interesting when you add heroin to it, as the advertisement suggests (with the sanction of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906):

Another popular remedy was cannabis. Yes, marijuana, pot, weed. Henry R. Gering was still advertising a cannabis concoction in 1921 (again in the Western Medical Review), although John Geluardi, in Cannabiz: The Explosive Rise of the Medical Marijuana Industry (available for check-out at Omaha Public Library), mentions that by the 1920s the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise, was beginning to worry a few people, and it was actually banned in California (of all places). Before that, however, cannabis extracts were widely available as over-the-counter remedies for everything from asthma (yep!) to "hysteria"; Queen Victoria used it for menstrual cramps. Ah, those were the days.....

J.P. Cooke building, address of Henry R. Gering & Co.

I was somewhat shocked to discover we had no biographical file in our Nebraska Reference department on Henry R. Gering, so I had to start from scratch. Henry was the son of German immigrants, Paul and Amelia Gering, and was born in 1868 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, although the family later moved to Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and seem to have done very well there. (Their house is on the National Register of Historic Places). Henry became a pharmacist and his brother Matthew a lawyer. The two girls, Mia and Barbara, never married (going by the census). Henry was a busy fellow--ran a pharmacy in Plattsmouth, was elected mayor there in 1904 after serving as city treasurer, was a member of the State Pharmacy Board, Chairman of the Democratic Central Committee, and Secretary of the Board of Trade (all this from the Semi-Centennial History of Nebraska [1904]); newspapers of the early 1900s indicate he was active in the Democratic Party. He was also quite busy in the Nebraska State Medical Association. In 1909, Henry is in the Omaha city directory as president of the Porter-Ryerson-Hoobler Co. (a drug company that replaced the Mercer Chemical Company of Omaha in 1902). By 1910, the company had become The Henry R. Gering Company, at 1315 Howard Street (which local readers may recognize as the J.P. Cooke Building).

In both 1909 and 1910, Mila U. Gering was listed as the company's secretary-treasurer. Both Henry and Mila boarded at the Rome Hotel (Henry was still there in the 1920 and 1930 censuses). I'm pretty sure that "Mila" was Henry's older sister, Mia U. Gering--although the 1910 census listed her at home with her mother, brother Matthew, and sister Barbara in Plattsmouth, where she worked as clerk in the county treasurer's office--an office where she may have started out working under brother Henry. Did big sister ever get annoyed at always playing second fiddle--I mean secretary--to her little brother?

It doesn't look as though Henry married, though I'm coming up short on his later life. That's not to say he didn't like women--he was involved in a court case that arose as a result of his romantic indiscretion, and was defended by his brother, the lawyer.

From Lincoln Daily News, 21 May 1912.

There is much more we could say about Henry and his family, but I've strayed pretty far from the weird ads in the Western Medical Review. I'll save the genealogy for another day.