Online Ordering, the Catalogue Method

With everything online these days you don't see many catalogues anymore.  So, it was a real treat to find the T. Eaton Co. Limited 1901 Spring Summer Fall Winter catalogue!  This store sold everything from women's, men's, and children's clothing to horse equipment to furniture to groceries.  The catalogue itself is 10" long, 75" wide, and 1" thick.  The front and back covers are heavier cardstock and the pages are newsprint - with rather small font I might add!   The back shows the store as it was in Toronto.  If you look closely, you can see the street trollys, bicycles, and horses and buggies on the streets.












There is a small paragraph in French at the front of the catalogue addressed to "Our French Customers."  Eaton's advises they prefer to receive orders in English, however, if that isn't possible, they ask that you write in French very clearly.



Below are some pictures from the catalogue that give us a good idea of what people were wearing in this period.  Interesting that they have ladies' skirts for walking and bicycling.













Boots and shoes - can you tell the difference?

Horse equipment in a department store!  Long replaced now with automotive supplies.

Household furniture and appliances.

Hats and men's clothes.

The groceries section is introduced by saying "Our Grocery Department is very complete, and the highest standard of quality is maintained.  You will always receive carefully selected goods.  It is a good plan to make up an order once a month (or you and your neighbors together), and include what groceries you need.  We can then ship by freight, and the charges will be very low."  Usually the front page in a grocery flyer has the more commonly purchased items.  The list below is quite different than what we see today!  If anyone knows what the "blue" is, please leave a comment.

The list of groceries on the first page includes:

arrowroot (not the cookies)
baking powders
baking soda, etc.
barley
beans
blue
bird seed and gravel
bathbrick
butter "We guarantee this brand of butter as strictly first-class, and receive our supply daily"
biscuits
candied peel
capers
catsup "Our own make tomato catsup brand" (not ketchup)
chutney
cocoa
chocolates
cream and milk
cheese - clearly states "Prices subject to market fluctuations"

It's always interesting to take a quick walk back in time to see what people's daily lives looked like 100+ years ago; what they wore, what they bought, and how much everything cost.  (2011.040.01 H-591)

Chewey Ooey

Chewing the gum off spruce trees may sound kind of gross today, but it was very, very popular before the 1860s.  When spruce trees get damaged they release sap to help cover the injury.  Initially the the resin is soft and sticky, however, the resin you want to chew takes at least two years to harden.  You take the resin right off the spruce tree and chew it, however, because it’s quite hard, you have to roll it around in your mouth for a bit to soften it up. 

The little barrel in this picture was used to store pieces of the spruce gum resin.  These types of barrel were made by Kings Co. lumbermen. This little barrel is about 5.5” high and a little over 3” wide.  It is covered in a brown shellac finish and has 6 black wooden bands around it.   The top is cut open halfway.

Once the introduction of commercial chewing gum came along in the mid-1860s, chewing spruce gum became just another piece of history.  I’ve read some blogs from people who say once you become accustomed to this taste you never go back to commercial chewing gum.  I’ve never tried it – if you have please leave a comment and tell us what your experience was like!  (1968.013)

Manually Activated Human Powered Land Propelling Mobile Transport

Or snowshoes.  We just had a million feet of snow drop on us and we’re about to get more tonight, so I thought snowshoes might be an appropriate post this week!

We have a few pairs in our collection here at the museum.  The pair in this picture is a Beavertail style; the top is in a teardrop shape with a slightly upturned toe which makes it easier to walk through the snow.  It has leather bindings and has a very narrow tail at the end.  This particular pair was probably made around the early 1800s.  Most of the webbing is still intact.

It’s believed that the snowshoe was invented between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.  In fact, many anthropologists believe that an early style of snowshoe enabled our human ancestors to migrate from Central Asia to Canada where native groups continued to create and advance the technology of the snowshoe to suit their particular living areas. 

These snowshoes are made from ash.  Ash is a very soft wood which makes it perfect for bending and shaping to make snowshoes.  The whole process of making a snowshoe is a tremendous amount of work and requires precise craftsmanship in order for them to work properly.  Animal gut was generally used for the webbing.

Snowshoeing has become a very popular recreational activity and many of today’s snowshoes are made of metal.  The basic design really hasn’t changed much which speaks to what an amazing piece of technology it is! If you’ve never gone showshoeing give it a try.  It’s like floating across the snow and you can venture into places that just wouldn’t be possible without a pair on your feet.  

Maybe Famous

Whenever I come across artifacts like this, I wonder how many pieces of architecture in history have been designed using this little kit.  Maybe it helped design buildings we now regard as historical masterpieces. Oh if only it could talk!

This little drafting kit is missing most of its components but still has two of its sharp pointers and a ruler.  It was likely made in England in the late 18th / early 19th century.




The case is made of shagreen, which is a type of rawhide.  It's very tough, very hard, and not pliant at all.  It's about 7" long with individual compartments inside to store the different components.




The two pointers are still sharp!  They are made of brass and steel.  From the side view, you can see where the screw can be tightened or loosened.







The ruler is about 6" long and looks like it is made of ivory; this would have been common for these types of instruments during this time period. You can see different architect's scales on both sides.


One edge is straight, but the other edge is a bit fancy with curved edges.

Imagine the beautiful architecture that was designed using instruments like these!

Winder Me Up

What.  The.  Heck.  Is.  That.

For those of you who knit, you're likely laughing right now.  For the rest of us, this piece of metal equipment is a yarn winder.  It's purpose is to enable you to easily wrap your yarn into balls, which I'm told makes it easier to use.  Once the yarn was wrapped around the legs of this machine, it was attached to a bobbin, you turned a hand crank, and your yarn was turned into nice, neat, no-tangle balls.  The picture on the right shows what it looks like once the yarn is wrapped around the legs.




This one is approximately 23.5cm in diameter and 13.5cm high. You can adjust the size of how big you want your skein (ball) to be by loosening the wing nut (shown below) and sliding the arms closer together.

Some are large enough to be floor models but this particular one is portable with a "C" clamp base to attach it to a table.  It's solid metal and there is no washer under the wingnut.  Although there is no date or brand name on this machine, the patent for wingnuts first showed up in 1933 so it's origins are early to mid 20th century. Yarn winders come in all different sizes and materials.  Some are made of wood, some like this one are metal, and of course many modern day ones are plastic. 

It's always interesting to find artifacts that, although almost 100 years old, are still very similar to today's technology.  (1968.174)

Finem Respice

In David G. Keirstead's wonderful book Hampton Consolidated School:  A Story Worth Telling, he writes about how it was common for several graduating classes of this era to have their own class colours and motto in addition to the school's (p. 117).

So, imagine how incredible it was to have the Hampton High School Principal contact me to say they had found in their boiler room a number of crests from Hampton Consolidated School.  When he first mentioned this to me, I was thinking of those little cloth crests you buy when you're on vacation that get sewn on jackets.  When I saw the school crests he was talking about, I was blown away. These are huge, solid wood crests and many of them have signatures on the back!  The one I'm writing about today is from 1926.  

You can see the "HCS" painted in gold and outlined in black at the top, with the 1926 class moto "Finem Respice" in the middle, and "1926" in gold paint outlined in black at the bottom.  According to Merriam-Webster, this Latin expression is translated to "consider the end:  live so that your life will be approved after your death;, also: consider the consequences of your actions."

It's about 32" in height and 27" across.  It's made up of 4 pieces of board all different widths, about 3/4" thick with bevelled edges.  

On the back you can see the boards are held together with two pieces of wood screwed into the main boards.  There is also a lot of water damage visible that did not reach the front. 

In Hampton Consolidated School (p. 117), there is a listing of the graduates.  They are below and you can see that all 11 graduates signed the back of their crest:

-Elizabeth Roberts Ross
-Otta Bernice McAvity
-James Arthur Melick
-John Leonard Fowler
-John Henry Crabbe
-Phyllis Mary Kenney
-Mary Ethel Lena Dempster
-Mildred Irene Raymond
-Joseph Harvey Bell
-Ronald Suthard Spragg
-Paul Ewart McMulkin









Below the signatures of the graduating class, you also see where they wrote the class colours - gold and black, and the class motto - Finem Respice.

In this shot you can see that the crest was made by one of the graduates, John H. Crabbe, H.C.S., '26.















What a fabulous tradition:  each graduating class creating its own crest with its own motto and having everyone sign it!

No Love Lost on Laundry

Before I came to work today I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine.  It took me all of 2 minutes to put the clothes in, throw on some detergent, and press the start button.  When I walked into the museum, once of the first things I noticed was an old wooden, hand crank washing machine that probably dates from the mid to late 1800s. 

It’s made of wood and metal with two wooden wringers held in place by wooden dowels.  

You can see on one side where the washer can be attached to a pole or something sturdy to hold the washer still while cranking the clothes through the wringers.

There are metal springs on each side with a handle on one side to turn the wringers.  Often this was a 2 person job with one woman turning the crank and the other feeding the clothes through the wringers.  

You can also see in this picture where there is a metal screw in the wood that connects the two legs, and on the bottom is a wood peg.

The wooden peg connects the two legs on each side, just below the metal spring. 

There is no date on this washer, but on the bottom in black print letters is the following:

A1 Washer

J.A. Whelpley

Greenwich, NB

Patent Applied For

This is likely the same James Alfred Whelpley who was born in 1839 in Westfield, New Brunswick, Canada and invented the “Long Reach” ice skates. 

The rollers aren’t smooth – they are grooved to help remove more water from the clothes.  Many of the hand wringing washers have smooth rollers so this one is definitely different from most others.  I was unable to find any record that the inventor's patent was granted.

I can’t even begin to imagine the work that washing clothes with this machine would have involved!  Hauling water, heating water on a stove, wringing the clothes through this hand crank…it would not have been a 2 minute job.  I know we often yearn for what we think are the gentler times of yesteryear, however, especially on days like today where it’s around -15° I’m reminded once again of how lucky we are to live in the 21^st century. (1970.105)