To Be Quite Fair

Tis Customary at Christmas Time — For Each to Hang a Sock —
But Don’t You Think — to Be Quite Fair —
Since Yours is Whole — n’ Mine’s Just Half —
That I Should Hang —– — A Pair?

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 24, 1928

Gaiter Boots

Image from Laura Elizabeth on Pinterest

GAITER BOOTS.

O dainty foot!
O gaiter boot!
To piety you’re shocking;
I only know —
Of one thing worse,
And that a snow white stocking.

So neat and clean,
Together seen,
E’en stoics must agree
To you to vote
What Gray once wrote,
A handsome L – E – G.

The [lasting] theme
Of midnight dream,
The very [soul] of song,
Man wants you little
Here below,
And never wants you long.

By Plato ne’er
Sent tripping here;
By Pluto rather given,
To lead poor man
(An easy plan)
To any place but heaven.

Yet still I vow
There’s magic now
About a woman’s foot,
And cunning was
The wizard hand
That made a gaiter boot.

For while the knave
The gaiter gave
To mortals to ensnare them,
Mankind he hoaxed,
And even coaxed
The angels down to wear them.

The Hillsdale Standard (Hillsdale, Michigan) May 1, 1866

Letter to Santa

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 23, 1921

Letter to Santa.

Dear Santa Claus: My coal bill
Is ninety twenty-four,
If you will take it off my hands,
I shall not ask for more.
I don’t care how you fix it,
Just so you let me out —
O, that would be a Christmas gift
Beyond a doubt.

Dear Santa Claus, my grocer
Wants money very badly,
If you will see him when you come,
I’ll leave it to you gladly.
I don’t care what you give him,
Just so the trade is fair —
O, that would be a Christmas gift
Beyond compare.

Dear Santa Claus, my butcher —
But do I grow prolix?
What say I send them all to you,
With leave for you to fix?
I don’t care how you fix them,
So long as they are paid —
But I expect too much of you,
I am afraid.

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Dec 21, 1912

The Warmth of Perfection

Image from Etsy

Glowing Heat From Every Ounce of Fuel

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 24, 1907

Clean Dry Heat

The Gettysburg Times (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) Dec 9, 1911

Houses Without Chimneys

Olean Evening Times (Olean, New York) Dec 24, 1912

Baby’s Morning Dip

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 12, 1914

A Touch of a Match Brings a Touch of Spring

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 18, 1915

Emergency Heating

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 18, 1918

Don’t Waste Coal

The Gettysburg Times (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) Dec 18, 1918

Two Hundred Years Aloft

Two centuries are the aggregate ages of these flying oldsters, Mrs. Almatia Bennett, 101, of Chicopee Fallls, Mass., and Charles W. Bradley, 99. By way of celebrating Mrs. Bennett’s 101st anniversary, they flew from Boston to Old Orchard, Me. And after an hour in the air Grandma Bennett said she would fly again on her 102nd birthday.

The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio) Sep 14, 1927

Porker Delights in Chase

Image from Ebay – “Pig Roast 2” – 1911

PIG TAUGHT BY DOGS TO BE RABBIT HUNTER

Porker That Delights in Chase is Product of Delaware Village.

J.H. Lankford, of Lewes, a small village near Delmar, Del., has what he claims to be the original and only hunting pig in existence. Sir Grunter, who is a thoroughbred Chester White first made his appearance at the Lankford homestead last August and was allowed to run around the house the a pair of small rabbit dogs. At an early age he showed signs of being a hunter and would follow the dogs to the woods and remain until they returned. When the season was open for rabbit hunting Lankford tried to induce “Piggie” to stay at home, but he persisted in following and he allowed him to go with the dogs.

Several rabbits were chased and the pig was constantly following the dogs, but when he found they were running ahead of him he would cut across. When the gun was fired the pig was first to grunt his satisfaction. Lankford will not sell the pig, but says he thinks after careful training he will be able to hunt him without the dogs.

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 4, 1912

My Cellar

Image from flickr – millerm217

“MY CELLAR”

My cellar, ’tis of thee
Wondrous sub-treasury,
Of thee I sing;
Cave on your owner’s pride!
Hall where glad spirits hide!
To every bottle’s side,
Let cobwebs cling.

My sacred cellar, thee,
Pent-up perfumery
For lucky lungs!
I love thy flirting flasks,
Thy jugs, they jovial casks;
Heigh-ho, the tempting tasks
Of pulling bungs!
Let prohibition spread
Outside — above my head;
Down here all’s well!
Let mellow whisky flow!
Let neighbors come below!
This is the life, what-ho!
Who would rebel?

John Barleycorn, old boy,
They cannot kill they joy;
Hail, Nature’s pet!
Long last each home’s supply
— America’s gone dry?
Ho, what a jolly lie!
— We’re soaking wet!

Olean Evening Times (Olean, New York) Dec 3, 1919

Image from Leslie M.M. Blume

Everything Cranberry

All images of cranberry workers from cranlib’s photostream on flickr

THE WINTER BERRY.

In cooking cranberries it is well to remember that they should never be put into a tin dish. Either agate or porcelain dishes should be used.

Cranberry Conserve. — Extract the juice from an orange, then cover the peeling with cold water and cook slowly until tender. Scrape out the white bitter part and cut the peel into narrow strips with the scissors. Simmer one and a half cups of raisins until tender; add the orange peel and the juice and a quart of cranberries. If needed, add more water to make a cupful of liquid. Cover and cook for ten minutes or until the berries are done. Then add two cups of sugar and simmer until thick.

Cranberry Trifle. — Cook a quart of berries with one pint of water until the berries pop open; rub through a sieve, return to the fire and add one pound of sugar. Stir until it is dissolved, then let boil two minutes; cool and beat until light with a wire egg beater, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites of two eggs. Pile in a glass dish and serve. Cranberry shortcake and cranberry pie are old favorites for desserts..

Baked Apples With Cranberries. — Select large, perfect, sweet apples, remove the cores and fill the cavities with thick cranberry jelly. Set the apples in a pan of water in the oven, and bake until the apples are done. Put each apple in a glass sauce dish and serve with whipped cream.

Cranberry Roll. — Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter, add a cup of sugar, a half cup of cold water and two cups of flour sifted with a tablespoonful of baking powder and a dash of nutmeg.  Beat until perfectly smooth, then add another cup of flour and roll out the dough to an inch in thickness. Spread thickly with jam or jelly, roll up closely, pressing the ends together. Lay on a plate and steam for three hours. Cut in slices and serve with cream.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Dec 11, 1911

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CRANBERRY COFFEE CAKE

1/2 pound cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup flour (bread)
1 egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons milk

Inspect and wash 1/2 pound of cranberries. Make a think syrup by boiling the sugar and water for 10 minutes. Add the cranberries to the syrup and simmer until they are clear and transparent. Pour this into the bottom of a cake pan. Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Blend the butter with the dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the milk and add to mixture. Spread this batter on top of the cranberries and bake 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Cut in squares and serve with hard sauce. This amount will fill a pan 8 inches square.

HARD SAUCE

1/3 cup butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or lemon extract
2 tablespoons boiling water

Cream butter, add gradually while beating the sugar. Add vanilla or lemon extract. Beat gradually into the mixture the boiling water. This makes unusually fluffy and light hard sauce.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Dec 7, 1935

Magic Cranberry Pie

1 1/3 cups Borden’s Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup Eatmor cranberry pulp, drained
2 egg yolks
Baked 9-inch pie shell of Krusteaz

Blend together sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, cranberry pulp and egg yolks. Pour into baked shell. This pie may also be served with a meringue made of two egg whites beaten still and sweetened with two tablespoons of granulated sugar, browned in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 10 minutes.

Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Nov 20, 1936

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Cranberry Relish Right Complement To Turkey Dinner

By GAYNOR MADDOX
NEA Staff Writer

For brilliant color in the Thanksgiving menu serve this jellied cranberry molded salad:

Jellied Cranberry Relish Salad

Two cups fresh cranberries, 1 lemon, quartered and seeded; 1 apple, peeled, cored and quartered; 1 orange, quartered and seeded; 1 cup sugar, 1 package fruit-flavored gelatin.

Put cranberries and fruit through food chopper. Combine with sugar and let stand a few hours to blend. Prepare fruit-flavored gelatin as directed on package, reducing water by 1-4 cup; chill until syrupy. Stir into drained cranberry relish mixture. Fill mold and chill until firm. Unmold on lettuce or watercress and serve garnished with orange sections.

Or if you want your cranberries in the salad course, just combine pineapple and pears, bananas and walnuts, lettuce and watercress. top off with a generous handful of crunchy fresh cranberries for color and texture.

Finally — and what an old-fashioned and zestful end to the Big Meal of the Year — there’s cranberry pie.

Cranberry Pie

One recipe favorite pastry, 2 1-4 cups sugar, 1-2 cup water, 104 cup raisins, 2 cups apples slices, 4 cups fresh cranberries, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 2 tablespoons water.

Roll out half pastry and fit into 9-inch pan. Combine sugar, water, raisins, apple slices and cranberries in saucepan. Cook until cranberries pop — about 10 minutes. Make a paste of cornstarch and remaining water, stir into fruit and continue cooking until thick and clear — about 5 minutes. Cool and pour into pie shell. Roll out remaining pastry and cut in strips. Arrange criss-cross fashion over top. Bake in hot over (425 degrees F.) 25 minutes.

Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Texas) Nov 16, 1950

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Whittlesey’s Cranberry Marsh

The Tribune Rural Editor Visits Whittlesay’s Marsh

BY E.E. SCHROEDER

When one sits down to enjoy his dish of cranberry sauce or slice of cranberry pie at Thanksgiving time he is not reminded of the highly developed agriculture which is needed to produce the popular berry which has become famous along with roast turkey and mincemeat pie.

The writer recently enjoyed dinner at the S.N. Whittlesay cranberry marsh at Cranmoor and later was taken for a trip over the marshes and given an explanation of the methods used to produce high quality berries.

The Whittlesay marsh is among the oldest in Wisconsin and ranks as one of the three largest in the state in acreage and also production, per acre. According to the “History of Wood County” the marsh was started in 1871 when wild berries were first harvested. Later as scientific methods were discovered Mr. Whittlesay was quick to grasp their importance and applied them to his own marshes.

The writer knows little about the culture of cranberries and this story is not intended as a treatise on the subject. It is intended as a story of what he saw and learned in several hours jaunt over the marshes. Much of this may not be news at all to many readers and again some of it may be incorrectly stated. If the latter is true it is unintentional.

To begin with we learned that cranberry marshes must be scalped. That means that the rough surface soil must be removed in order that a level firm seed bed can be secured on which to plant the tame berry. We learned further that certain kinds of fertilizer are needed and provided which makes the berry develop to its fullest. Commercial fertilizers are applied in the middle of June.

It was further learned that the common variety of berry on the average marsh is known as the Bell and Cherry. The Late Howe berry is replacing the former variety as it is firmer and more pleasing in appearance to the purchaser. The Late Howe is an eastern variety and are shipped from the east not as seed but as the young plant which must be transplanted into the fresh, slightly moistened, and well prepared seed bed.

Require Attention

Cranberries require a great deal of attention through the blossoming, ripening and harvesting season. In fact they must be carefully watched the year around. Growing in lowlands means that frosts are more common visitors than to other crops on high ground. Flooding the marshes in the only means of combating this arch enemy of the cranberry grower. This process of flooding at once calls into play a highly developed system of engineering. Huge dependable reservoirs on higher ground than the marshes must be available to provide sufficient water on short notice. Heavy embankments are thrown up around these reservoirs to hold the water in check in flood season and prevent washouts. Gates are installed at the lower levels to control the water supply into the marshes as needed.

The marshes themselves must have ditches into which the water can drain when the danger period is over. These latter ditches must also be well constructed, with gates to hold the water on the marshes until no longer needed.

The Whittlesay marsh has more than a thousand acres within its limits, but a large part of it is used for water control. Harry, a son of S.N. Whittlesay, is in charge and is laying plans to increase the acreage until the marsh ranks as the largest in the west. Formerly connected with the Nekoosa-Edwards paper company, he has turned his energy toward the cranberry “game” and finds it fascinating, judging from his enthusiasm.

The elder Mr. Whittlesay has been in the business for many years and his election to the board of directors of the Wisconsin Cranberry Sales company is a compliment to the membership as well as to him. He has followed the growth of the industry and knows the advantages and shortcomings.

He can tell many interesting incidents of the time before men with rakes took the place of hand pickers. Many men and women were needed in those earlier days. A dance hall was a common part of the equipment on every farm. Every evening the pickers would enjoy themselves to the strains of old fashioned music. Mr. Whittlesay recalls the time when a wooden tramway with trucks carted the berries from the marshes in the Cranmoor district.

During the winter season the cranberry marsh does not present the busy scene common to harvesting time. But there is important work to be done. Many loads of sand are hauled over the surface to add to the porous condition of the soil. A special quality sand can only be used to advantage.

A visit to the packing house on the Whittlesay marsh was also of interest. The latest in grading devices simplified the sorting of pie berries from the others. Fanning mills blow the twigs and leaves and other rubbish from the harvested berries.

Though a story of this kind could be made to include many other interesting features lack of space prevents. A visit to any of the good marshes, of which the Whittlesay marsh is one, impresses the visitor of the extent of the work, the care, the experience and trials involved in successfully catering to the palate of the American consumer for this particular variety of kitchen delicacy.

Mr. Whittlesay ranks high among cranberry growers. His well kept marshes and buildings are ample proof of his success. His son is succeeding him as manager and should meet the continued success which the Whittlesay marshes have enjoyed. The visit to their home and the trip over the marshes will be an event not soon forgotten.

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) Feb 15, 1928

Image from CranLib photostream on flickr

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From the History of Wood County by George O. Jones (1923):

HISTORY OF WOOD COUNTY

…In 1855 Abner Whittlesey’and his family came west to Illinois, settling in Galesburg, where Mrs. Whittlesey died. Mr. Whittlesey soon after went to Lockport, Ill., and from there to Berlin, Wis., where he engaged in the cranberry business; this was in the late sixties. In 1870 he came to Wood County, and, together with his son, Sherman Newell Whittlesey, bought six 40-acre tracts of marsh land and established the Whittlesey Marsh, they and Theodore Bearss and Ralph S. Smith being the first cranberry growers in the township. In 1880 ….

…Sherman Newell Whittlesey, subject of this sketch, coming to Illinois with his parents in 1855, was reared in Galesburg and attended the grade schools there and the high school at Lockport, from which latter he was graduated in 1867. He then spent a year in Chicago, and while there took a course in the Chicago Business College, after which he came to Berlin, Wis., and in 1870, with his father bought the 240 acres of marsh land mentioned above and established the Whittlesey Marsh in Wood County, coming here to live in 1871; his first residence in Wood County was in Centralia.

He at once began the raising of cranberries, wild berries being the only ones grown here at that time and his first crop yielding 150 barrels of this variety. As the industry developed he applied scientific methods to the cultivation of his marsh, cutting ditches, scalping the land, and cultivating the berries by the most modern methods available, on which lines he has conducted all his subsequent operations.

From 1878 to 1884 he was engaged in the mercantile business with Frank Garrison at Centralia, under the firm name of Garrison & Whittlesey. In 1884 Mr. Whittlesey and family hired parties to run their marsh while they went to South Dakota. In that state they first took a tree claim of 160 acres, then a preemption claim of 160 acres, and, after proving up on this property, they took a homestead of 160 acres, building up one of the finest farms in Faulk County, S. D. They bought adjoining land until they owned 1,200 acres. At the same time they operated a farm of 320 acres in southeastern Nebraska, which they owned, alternating their residence between the two farms, and thus conducting, with the assistance of hired help, three separate enterprises at the same time, the third being their marsh in Wood County.

In 1892 they returned and took up their residence on the latter property, and here they have since made their home. They have been very successful in the industry and have become very prominent and popular residents of the community. They have increased their holdings to 1,100 acres, 67 acres of which are in cranberry vines. In 1921 they raised and sold 600 barrels of berries, getting as high as $17 per barrel for part of them. The place is well improved and is provided with adequate buildings for care of the crops. Mr. Whittlesey employs several men during the busy season. He has become an expert cultivator and has enjoyed a successful career in every way. He was formerly treasurer of the city of Centralia and of Port Edwards Township, and later of Cranmoor Township.

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Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) Nov 1, 1945

Eatmor Cranberries!

Dinner Time is Cranberry Time

Sheboygan Press — Oct 23, 1931

Ask Your Man if He Remembers Criss-Cross Cranberry Pie

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune —  Oct 30, 1931

Not Just a Holiday Treat — GOOD Every Day!

Try These Delightful Recipes

Wisconsin Rapids  Daily Tribune — Sep 23, 1936