Insulated medical box, ca. 1890

Dr. Elisha Cornelius Etchison (1848-1916), who practiced in Gaithersburg, made himself this traveling medical case in the late 19th century.  It is lined with lambswool, designed to keep his medicines from freezing when he was out making housecalls in the winter.

Dr. Etchison was born in Claggetsville (one of those Montgomery County towns that most people haven’t heard of nowadays).  He taught in the public schools for a few years before attending the University of Maryland medical school; after graduating in 1874 he moved to Gaithersburg, where he was one of the first (possibly the first, although I have not confirmed that) doctors to live and practice in that city.  In addition to his medical career, he was also elected to three terms as the Mayor.  One of his sons, Dr. Neal Etchison, also practiced in Gaithersburg, and another son, Garnett Waters Etchison, was a long-time pharmacist in that city. 

The nice little painted box (I love people who paint or engrave their names on their things!) was donated by Dr. Etchison’s granddaughter, who added some details about her grandfather’s winter work.  “Inasmuch as there was no snow removal in the early days of Gaithersburg, Dr. Etchison drove a horse and sleigh at least six weeks in the winter.  [As he drove,] over his legs was a heavy bear rug and underneath was a hot soapstone to keep the medicines in the box warm and himself warm.”   I have a feeling a lot of people in the DC area are wishing they had a horse and sleigh right about now.

…An early post this week, partly to make up for last week’s delay and partly to cover my bases in case our power goes out tonight in Snowpocalypse 3: This Time It’s Personal.   (For more info on some historic storms in the DC area – including a great anecdote about the 1899 storm, when Montgomery County refused to do any snow removal because it had drifted into the county from Frederick (!) - check out our website.) I hope Dr. Etchison’s insulated box helps you think warm thoughts as we all weather the storm!

Toasty warm lambswool!

 

Patent medicine, 19th century

Sorry, folks, your otherwise dedicated blogger was out yesterday with a bad cold.  If only she’d had access to this fine medicinal liquid!

Chamberlain’s Pain Balm, manufactured in Des Moines, Iowa, would have cured what ailed me, and practically anything else wrong with me to boot.  According to the label, it is “The Great Household Remedy for rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, gout, sprains, swellings, lameness, cuts, bruises, wounds and lacerations, burns and scalds, chilblains and frostbite, sore throat, quinsey and glandular swelling, headache, toothache, earache, soreness in the chest, pain in the back, cramps in the muscles, and all deep-seated or muscular pains.”  And you can use it to cure your horses, too!

This bottle of cure-all came from R.W. Vinson’s Pharmacy in downtown Rockville.  Vinson prepared and sold legitimate medicines (including prescriptions), but like modern drug store owners he also supplied over-the-counter popular remedies.  Although the contents of Chamberlain’s balm are a mystery, its primary ingredient is most likely alcohol – so yeah, you’d probably feel pretty good for a while after drinking this down, even if your frost-bitten toes didn’t actually recover.

 

Pair of Argand lamps, ca. 1840

 

These two Argand lamps, which reside on the dining room mantel in the Beall-Dawson House, came to us from the Anderson family of Rockville. The lamps are made of patinated bronze, with glass shades (original, as far as I can tell). Swans decorate the prism ring, but otherwise the ornamentation is fairly restrained and refined.

The lamps are named for their inventor (and not, as I first thought when I came to work here, for the element argon… what can I say, I’m not a chemist, and if someone tells me a lamp runs on argon I’ll believe them. That’s not what they told me, as it happens, but it’s what I thought I heard.) M. Aime Argand, a Swiss chemist, developed this form of oil lamp in the 1780s. The improvement was the use of a tubular (hollow) wick, rather than a flat one, which allowed air to be drawn up through the center producing a brighter, steadier flame. A glass chimney (missing on our lamps here) further encourages the movement of air, as well as protecting the flame. Many Argand lamps (including these two) were constructed with the oil font or reservoir on the side; this caused a shadow when the lamp was lit. An “astral lamp” is an Argand lamp with the reservoir beneath the burner, allowing 360 degrees of light. Argand lamps – which used spermaceti (whale) oil – were extremely popular until the introduction of the kerosene lamp in the mid 19^th century. Some Argand lamps were retrofitted to burn kerosene; others were later wired and turned into electric lamps in the 20^th century. Our pair escaped this fate.

Each of our lamps is marked on the burner “R&A Campbell, Baltimore.” R&A Campbell was a jeweler and silversmith outfit, operating from 1835 until 1855. Lamps similar in style to ours are dated 1830s-1840s. (So that works out nicely!) Sometimes a pair of single-armed lamps is matched with a double-armed friend, but if our set originally had a third piece for the center of the mantel, it is long gone. A beautiful pair of lamps like this would have been expensive and valued – I’ll have to look through the various Anderson and Vinson family inventories and sale lists, to see if I can trace their origin to a specific family member. In the meantime, the pair adorns our mantel, although they sometimes go unnoticed.

 

Popcorn box, 2001

According to a friend’s Facebook status, yesterday (January 19^th) was National Popcorn Day. Oh good, thinks your creatively challenged blogger, I can put a popcorn popper on the blog today! The problem is that we don’t actually have one in the collection. (Five waffle irons, but no popcorn popper!) Unwilling to give up on the National Popcorn Day idea, I went to the closest thing we do have in the collections: a popcorn cup (unused) from the Bethesda Theatre Café, previously known as the Bethesda Cinema ‘n’ Drafthouse, originally known as the Boro Theater.

The Boro, one of two movie theaters in Montgomery County designed by architect John Eberson, opened in 1938. Eberson was a renowned theater designer, and the Boro and the Silver (in Silver Spring) were both stylish, luxurious “movie palaces.” The first movie to play there was “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. Thanks to impending development, the theater closed in April, 2001; the last movie shown was “The Wedding Planner.” Eberson’s theater is still standing, albeit with an modern apartment building built on top of it, and has been reconfigured as a live theater venue.

“Give me a break,” some of you are thinking, “that thing is not old.” Well, no, it isn’t. And I agree that it would be rather more exciting if this was an unused popcorn box from 1938. However, the Historical Society collects for the future, as well as collecting things from the past. This is not to say that I am going around to every theater in the county, grabbing empty popcorn boxes. This particular piece was collected because it is part of the larger story of the Boro Theater, which operated more or less continually for over 60 years; along with the popcorn box, the theater’s owner also gave us an old film take-up reel found in the projection booth (probably dating from the theater’s middle years), and pieces of the original 1930s carpeting and wall fabric. As well, it is sometimes advantageous to collect modern ephemera before it vanishes – thrown away, as I would imagine (hope) the vast majority of paper popcorn boxes are. My future counterpart, the Historical Society’s 100-years-in-the-future curator, may well be absolutely delighted to have a rare 2000s-era popcorn box to show his or her visitors, who by then will probably be watching 4-D movies in their own homes, eating astronaut ice cream (sorry, my vision of the future is not terribly imaginative today), having never set foot in that old-fashioned thing called a “movie theater.”

Don’t worry, historical artifact sticklers, I’ll go back to the more distant past next week.  But I think it is important for our audience to get at least a sense – possibly a somewhat garbled one today, but if you want more, email me! – of the whys and wherefores of historical museum collecting.

 

Hat, ca. 1910

In honor of National Hat Day (January 15^th), here is one of several fabulous hats donated by Eugenie LeMerle Riggs (1904-2003). It is a turban-style straw hat, black and tan, with an exuberant black velvet bow (it’s about eight inches tall) and a large metal-and-rhinestone pin on the front. The inside is lined with black silk. A label proclaims its origins as Zimmerman, 1111 G St, Washington.

Zimmerman was part of white Washington’s retail district, which in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries was situated generally (though not exclusively) on G and F Streets and Pennsylvania Avenue between 7^th and 14^th Streets. (African Americans, denied entrance to these stores, had their own commercial center along the U Street corridor.) Zimmerman appears to have been a small shop, specializing in millinery. A 1908 classified ad in the Washington Post seeks a “milliner – first class” for the establishment, and a 1911 Post advertisement announces the shop’s “Fall and Winter Showing of Millinery,” including “Tailored Hats – Correct Mourning – Novelty Veiling.” (Oh, if only “novelty veiling” was still an important part of life!) So far I haven’t found much else about the shop, but the style of the hat puts it in the early 1910s or so, matching the era of these two ads.

This hat probably belonged to Mrs. Riggs’ mother, Virginia Grace Norris LeMerle (1871-1961). The LeMerles lived in Washington, D.C.; Dr. LeMerle had a medical practice at his home, and also worked at Sibley Hospital. Judging from the clothing and accessories now in our collections, most of them stylish pieces purchased at the better Washington department and specialty stores, Mrs. LeMerle passed on to her daughter a fondness for fashion. We don’t have any photos of Mrs. LeMerle, least of all one of her wearing this hat, but Mrs. Riggs donated several photos of herself in equally fabulous (and tall) hats, with outfits to match; she also noted that several of her own hats include feathers or other decorative bits borrowed from her mother’s collection.

Want to see the LeMerle ladies’ hats in person? The Historical Society is planning a big exhibit on hats and headwear for 2011 – stay tuned!

 

Miniature table, 1874

Your illustrated cliche of the day: Sometimes things are not what they seem. This miniature table (it stands 9 ½ inches high), thought to be a piece of doll furniture or perhaps a salesman’s sample, actually began life as a kaleidoscope stand, designed and patented by Charles G. Bush in 1874.

This artifact was donated by Charles T. Jacobs, and it probably comes from either his own or his wife’s family, i.e. from upper Montgomery County. It’s a finely made piece, polished and shiny, and looks like it was meant for a well-bred family of dolls. The back of one leg is marked, “C.G. Bush, Patented Nov 17, 1874.” Now comes my weekly refrain of Thank Goodness for the Internet. Of all the possible origins for this table, “stand for a parlor kaleidoscope” was almost certainly not going to cross my mind as I looked through books on furniture or doll accessories. Yet a few searches on the Web revealed not only the history of Mr. Bush (an American designer of parlor kaleidoscopes, who helped create the fad for them in the late 19^th century), but also several examples of kaleidoscopes on identical stands, and even the patent for the stand itself. (It’s number 156,875, if you want to do a Google Patents search.) Bush’s design improved “the mode of constructing the stand and its legs, used for supporting a parlor-kaleidoscope and for similar purposes, the object being to facilitate the packing them in a small compact compass for transportation or storing away, and yet to readily put the same together firmly for use without the use of glue, nails, rivets or any fastening devices.”

As for the table top, that is not conveniently marked and we can only guess as to its maker. It seems likely that the actual kaleidoscope was broken or lost, but the little stand was too fine to be disposed of. It does make a very nice doll table! The donor’s grandfather, Jonathan Jacobs (1845-1919) of Browningsville, was a cabinetmaker; maybe he was the one who constructed the neat little top and attached it to the base, repurposing it for future generations.

 

Television, 1950

This week’s artifact: a Zenith black-and-white television set, 1950. The round viewing screen is 16 inches in diameter. The cabinet (or “chassis”) is mahogany veneer. 

This television was donated to the Historical Society in 1999 by J. Dorsey Howe of Germantown. According to Mr. Howe, it was “the first television delivered in Montgomery County.” While that point is perhaps debatable, it is certainly one of the oldest home television sets in the County, and was probably the first one purchased in Gaithersburg. The set was sent from a hardware distributing company in Frederick County to the Thomas Hardware Store in Gaithersburg, where it was purchased “almost immediately” by Garrison W. Bell, Sr., as a gift for his wife Janet. Later in her life Mrs. Bell lived with her daughter and son-in-law, the Howes, and brought the television with her.

Mr. Howe remembered this as happening in the early 1940s, but Zenith did not begin manufacturing black-and-white television sets for the home until 1948. The model number stamped on the back of the cabinet is a little smudged, but it probably reads G2441R. Some Google searching over the years (have I mentioned lately how much I love the internet?) showed that the G244-R series was produced in 1949-1950. (Mr. Bell died in September of 1950, which also narrows the timeframe.) This advertisement from 1950 shows a G2441R, the “Lexington,” which matches our tv almost exactly. The ad describes the Lexington as “a compact console television receiver with Zenith’s largest picture area – 165 sq inches! Beautifully crafted cabinet of genuine mahogany veneers, styled to complement any home.” It retailed for $419.95.

I thought our fabulous television, given by Mr. Bell (clearly a mid-century “early adopter” of technology) to his wife in 1950, would be a nice contrast to all the tiny music players and gigantic televisions given this holiday season. If your new flat-screen is giving you trouble, think about the Bells, who (according to Mr. Howe) had to call Thomas Hardware every eight months or so to fix their tv’s blown transformer.

 

Santa Claus pendant, ca. 1920

Happy holidays, my approximately ten loyal readers!  (And drop-in visitors too, of course!)

Today’s artifact is a small (about 1″ high) Santa Claus pendant or charm, probably from the 1910s, ’20s or ’30s.  Although he’s sterling silver, he was made in two pieces (front and back) and is hollow inside, so probably he was a relatively inexpensive little charm.  This Santa was found in an archaeological dig on the Beall-Dawson House grounds, and he did not escape his time underground unscathed; he’s a little squashed, and might be missing his bottom half (unless he’s actually meant to be a little jingle bell); but he looks pretty jolly nonetheless.  Did he belong to a Dawson grandchild, or to someone who lived in one of the 1930s houses built nearby?  Was someone distraught when he was lost?  …In the interest of keeping this holiday post brief, I won’t go into all the wonderful speculations that archaeology makes possible – I’ll let you all do your own speculating.  Enjoy!

 

Oil painting of a Rockville farm, 20th century

This oil painting of an “old barn on Rockville Pike,” signed by K.L. Beck, was donated to the Historical Society in 1986. The donor (who was not the artist) said that in the 1970s she attended a slide-show lecture by our then-Librarian, and a photo of this barn was included in the show. …The end. Did the donor have a friend paint the barn for her, after seeing it in the lecture? Did she think, Hey, that’s the same barn that I have hanging in my house? Or did she come across the painting in a sale some years later and think, Say, I’ve seen that barn in a slide-show lecture! Sometimes a little bit of information is almost more frustrating than no information at all.

Until a few years ago, we knew only that it was a barn somewhere along the Rockville Pike. The slide referenced by the donor, which is in our photograph collection, had no location given; it was simply an example of barn, and so far no one had recognized it. Our painting is somewhat distinctive both for its style and for the barn itself, with its square cupola, center dormer, and extra shed on the side. The painting hangs on the wall of our office, so I see the barn almost every day. My job sometimes feels like a giant game of Memory, trying to match up paperwork, photographs, artifacts and locations. I’m actually pretty bad at the card game Memory – I know I turned over another picture of a boot, but where was the card?? – but in this real life game I have a computer, card catalogs, and colleagues to help me find whatever it is that I KNOW I’ve seen somewhere. In this case, while doing research for an exhibit at Peerless Rockville I came across a photo of the William Scherner farm and thought, Hey, look at that square cupola and center dormer! (Well, that’s not really what went through my mind; it was more like, “Hey, isn’t that the same weird little falling-down barn that’s in our office?”) Aha! Of such small triumphs is my job made.

The Scherner farm was located along Rockville Pike between Old Georgetown and Montrose Roads, where Mid-Pike Plaza is today. If you happen to be braving the Pike (not to mention the current Montrose Parkway configuration) as you do your holiday shopping this season, spare a thought for Mr. Scherner’s little red barn.

 

Box of “Atlantic Sea Salt,” 1890

Well, I was going to lead off with a comment about today’s artifact relating to our ice storm… except, no ice storm.  (Salt, to put on the ice, get it?)  Uncooperative weather notwitshstanding, here is a little box of Atlantic Sea Salt, imported (and packaged) by Muth Brothers & Co., Baltimore.

This salt was for bathing, not for cooking.  Bathing in salt water was (and often still is) considered healthful and invigorating; as the box proclaims, this salt ”Produc[es] a Real Salt Water Bath.”  The wood box (7″ x 4″, and 4 1/4″ high) is covered on four sides with pink paper labels.  The short sides have directions and prices; a 3 pound box was 25 cents, a 7 pound box 50 cents, etc.  (As the box is empty, and I can’t fill it with sea salt to test the weight, I’m not sure if this was a 3 lb or 7 lb box.)   The instructions are as follows:

“To every gallon of water add four or five ounces of Sea Salt.  In order to thoroughly dissolve the Salt it will be well to put the Salt into the water, say one hour before using.” 

On the lid, in ink, is the inscription (mailing address?) “Miss Susie G. Jones, Olney, Md.”  Susan G. Jones (b. 1869) of The Briers, Olney, married George T. Barnsley in 1890.  As near as I can tell, Muth Bros. & Co. opened for business in Baltimore in 1889.  (For once, an undated artifact can be dated with relative ease!)  Perhaps the salt was a gift – or something she bought for herself – as part of the preparations for her wedding.