#12 – The Drums and their
Times Part 2: 1870’s – 1970.
[1],
[2]
I don’t know about you but I’ll hear of an event in a
person’s life or read a family’s history such as I am unfolding here, and, out
of context, find it meaningless. However, put it into an historical context and
suddenly things take on greater meaning, understanding. Isaac Drum was four
years old at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Nathan Drum was buying lumber
in 1873, three years before Custer’s Last Stand. In our last post we were putting
things in context for 1800 – 1870’s. In this post we are on the move again! We
pick it up where we left it off, in the 1870’s and run up to 1970.
By the 1870’s the country was certainly on the move. “Progress”
was everywhere. I don’t know if there is a record of when
the first telephone was installed in Drums but an advertisement in a special "Bicentennial" edition of the
Hazleton Standard-Speaker indicated that the first telephones in Hazleton were being placed in larger businesses in 1878.
[19] If true, that's pretty remarkable.
Alexander Graham Bell’s invention was only demonstrated for the first time in Salem, MA in 1877. I wonder if John Drum ever
saw one of those Hazleton telephones, or thought about having one put into the Drums Hotel, before he died in 1881.
John was probably thrilled, however, when his nephews,
Stephen and Josiah(Abraham, George, Jacob, Philip), got their new 1876 Centennial Coffee Grinder
for their store at Drums Corner. It must have been quite the attraction! They
should have gotten a new Edison Phonograph as well, another invention
demonstrated in 1877. Nathan A. did get one of those but his was the 1914 model
called the “Amberola D X.”
However, with progress came higher prices. In 1873 Nathan
S. Drum
(Philip, George, Jacob, Philip) paid $19.12 for 1,275 feet of
yellow pine; that’s $15.00 per 1,000 feet. A few other things he could have
bought included a strap of sleigh bells for $.65, a cross cut saw for $.35, a
hog for $9.00, or a cow for $20.50.
[3]
((as an aside, according to the
conversion calculator,
Nathan’s lumber would have cost him $385.84 today)). I wonder if he was buying
that lumber for the new Methodist Church they started to build that year. A
discussion of the building of this church will be included in a later post.
So, what did a pound of coffee cost that the Drum brothers
ground in their brand new 1876 Centennial Coffee Grinder? At least one source
said that in Drums two pounds of coffee cost $.53. Some other prices from that
time included: 1 gallon of molasses $.50; 1 lb. candles $.16; 1 doz. Eggs $.10;
1 ax $1.25; 1 carriage whip $1.87; 1 silk handkerchief $.65; a bushel of
potatoes $1.00; a pr. Shoes $1.41; and 1 pr. Boots $1.50.
[4]
Higher prices are never received well. Here’s a note that
was found among some papers stored in an attic in New York state that proves
it!
Otisville,
Mich. Oct. 29th, 1876
D. B. Lee, Sir
Which I suppose is
Dead Beat Lee. I hear that you charged me 75cts for straw enough to
fill a bed. Well I suppose that is all right as you are a follower of the meek
and lowly Jesus and do unto others as you would have others do unto you, you
contemptible low lived Son of bitch. I may yet live to meet you in the flesh
and if not if it is my lot to go to a theological Hell I shall be sure to find you
there and whichever place I find you I will try and make it warm for you, you
God damned Hypocrite. Please accept from yours truly,
Mark Wood
Garfield lingered on through the hot summer until he
finally died, probably from the infection caused by his doctors rather than
Guiteau’s bullet, on September 19. Then on November 21, John Drum died in Drums
at age 56.
These deaths were followed in 1885 by the passing of Gen.
George B. McClellan and President Ulysses S. Grant. McClellan was just 58 years
old. Grant, who died from throat cancer, was 63.
In March of 1888 “It” hit!
The Blizzard of 1888!
The East Coast of the U.S. was paralyzed. Sixty mile-per-hour winds made being
outside unbearable. Street cars jumped their tracks. The N.Y. Stock Exchange
suspended business. Over 200 people lost their lives to the storm. As work crews
emerged from their homes, once the storm had passed, to clear the roads, one
can be sure 20-year-old Nathan A. was among them!
Perhaps he borrowed Jacob Santee’s fur cap! In 1887,
Jacob Santee bought one for himself. We know this because Jacob kept an
Accounts Book. In it he listed various incomes and expenses. One he listed in
January was a fur cap he bought for $2.00. Some of his other expenses in 1887
included: overalls $1.95; Geography Book $.25; groceries and provisions $9.77;
a post hole digger $5.50; a complete harness $25.50; a saw $.50, a wrench $.25;
and a platform wagon $39.50.
 |
Here is the title page in case you couldn't
make out the cover. |
 |
Jacob Santee's Account Book of 1887
showing the fur hat and Geography Book purchases. |
The Geography Book is still in the Drum Library, although
a tad worse for the wear. If Jacob had bought it today, instead of $.25 he’d
have had to lay out $6.40.
[5]
Still not a bad price for a Geography Book. No word on what became of the fur
cap.
According to his Account Book, he made a round trip to Mauch Chunk that year and “car
fare” cost him $2.79. Mauch Chunk is a town known today as Jim Thorpe, about 25
miles Southeast of Drums. His car fare to Wilkes-Barre was $1.48 and to Drifton
$1.45. He had his horses shod numerous times throughout the year paying $.45 in
June, $.55 in July, and $.82 in December. He doesn’t say if the price
difference was for the same number of shoes or not.
Elmer Drum was born in 1895 and
Hawaii was annexed
by the United States in 1898. As far as we know, neither Elmer, nor his dad Nathan,
ever went there. There is no record of either of them ever going to Alaska,
either, even though gold was discovered there in 1897. As soon as word got out
on that find, the
Klondike Gold Rush
was on!
Nathan wasn’t in Cuba the next year, 1898, either, as far
as we know, when the
U.S.S. Maine blew up in
Havana Harbor. Some said it was an over-heated boiler that
caused the explosion. Others, with over-heated emotions, blamed it on Spanish
sabotage. Those were the ones who were believed, and the Spanish-American War
was on!
Theodore Roosevelt and his
Rough Riders became, perhaps, the most famous regiment to come
out of that war.
In 1801, the United States consisted of 16 states. As the
century moved forward, more states joined. Although there were a few that left around
1860, they returned along with some more new ones and the century ended in 1900
with the United States consisting of 45 states filled with 76,304,799 people.
One of those was a coal miner named Nathan A. Drum and another was his five-year-old
son, Elmer, both living in Drums, PA when the century closed.
1899 saw the 2
nd Boer War break out in South
Africa and then, in 1900, a bloody revolution called the
Boxer Rebellion
broke out in China. The 19
th Century was a century to be remembered.
War and violence brought it to a close.
However, education was also
developing, both in the classroom and out, as the 19th became the 20th
Century. Educators began experimenting with clubs for children outside of the
classroom where the students could “learn by doing”. Land-grant university
personnel began to see advantages to teaching new agricultural and homemaking methods,
developed through research, to young people through clubs.
The first such club to be documented was organized by
A.B. Graham in Ohio in 1902
[6]
when Elmer was just seven years old. Soon Young Farmer Clubs and Boys’ Clubs
and Girls’ Clubs and Corn Clubs and Tomato Clubs began to form all across the
country. Here is a
1915
guide book for Extension Girls’ Club Members in Maine.
Under the direction, support, and leadership of The
Extension Service, USDA, the program became known nationally as
4-H Clubs by
1924
[7],
the year after Elmer’s son Harry Nathan
(Elmer, Nathan A., John, Philip,
George, Jacob, Philip) , my dad, was born.
 |
| Elmer A. Drum, age 2. |
In 1897, Elmer would have been too young, just two, to
join such a club even if one had formed in Drums. Of course, that would have
been impossible. The
first 4-H Club to form in
Pennsylvania was organized in Mercer (North of Pittsburgh) in
1912. Use this
hyperlink
for more information [note: once this link opens, zoom in until you can see a
pushpin on the left (Western) side of Pennsylvania. Click that pushpin and
information will open. Zoom in until you see a pushpin on the right side of the
state (Eastern) and click that pin. A short history of 4-H Clubs in Lower
Luzerne County produced by 4-H’ers in 1979 is available there] {and yes, I am
still shamelessly promoting
our
National 4-H History Preservation website.}
At
age 3, Elmer was still too young to remember, even if Elmer had seen it, an
occurrence about town that had everyone excited! But, I’m sure his dad Nathan saw
it, or at least heard about the “
Winton
Motor Carriage” that Alvin Markle and Sam Price drove down a Hazleton
street on July 29, 1898!
This actually was a big deal. Only 22 of these vehicles
were sold in 1898 and one of them was putt-putting about in Hazleton!
[8]
I’m sure it set people to talking! After all, it was the first automobile ever
seen in Hazleton and the darn thing got all the way up to 20 MPH
[9]
-- practically flying – BREAK-neck speed!
By now the world, itself, was changing at what those who
lived through it must have felt was, “break-neck speed”! Not only were people
“flying” down the streets in their new “automobiles”, but soon they were flying
overhead, too! It was 1903 when two brothers,
Orville and Wilber
Wright, put their bicycle knowledge and mechanical engineering
skills to good use and invented a contraption with a small motor and wings that flew. After a number of failed attempts, on December 17 everything finally
came together and for 59 seconds Wilber flew their contraption 852 feet over
the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
[10]
Just sixteen years later, the
people of Hazleton found themselves running outside and craning their necks toward
the sky to see one of those airplanes fly over Hazleton, the first one ever
seen over the Hazleton area. It was carrying the U.S. Mail from Chicago to New
York City.
Ten years after that, in 1929, the famous aviator,
Charles A.
Lindbergh landed a plane at the
Reifenberg Airport in Drums. Yes, Drums has an airport.
 |
This is just one of the many things on display at the
Conyngham Historical Society’s Museum on Main Street in Conyngham. If you want
a special treat, head over there on a Saturday afternoon and see what else they
have on display!
|
He stayed the night at the Hotel Altamont in Hazleton.
What he spent that night was not reported but if he’d been there when the place
opened on July 5, 1924, he’d have paid $2.50,
[11]
unless he paid the $5.00 rate for one of the fancier rooms.
[12]
Just sixteen years after Hazleton saw its first automobile,
Hazleton saw its first public bus transit line established!
The
Motor Transit Company incorporated April 6, 1914 although
regular bus service did not begin until 1925
[13].
Now if planes were flying overhead and cars and buses
were zipping along the streets of Hazleton, and perhaps even Drums, why it’d be
enough to make a person’s head hurt! Well, not to worry! For just $.10 you
could get “5 cures” (which appears to have been 10 capsules; 2 capsules per
“cure”) and for $.25, fifteen “cures” of “
Sherman’s Headache Cure”, available from Orator F.
Woodward of Le Roy, NY.
And once that headache is cured, you may just want to
celebrate with a big bowl of ice cream! But where to get it? Well, for just
$.25, two packages of Jell-O Ice Cream Powder could be purchased so you could
make your own. Only one package would be enough, however, because one package
mixed with one quart of milk would yield two quarts of ice cream according to
the Jell-O Ice Cream
Powder advertisement.
However, be careful, some people get headaches from
eating ice cream and you may be out of “Sherman’s Headache Cure”!
Therefore, perhaps you would prefer to have fruit-flavored
Jell-O Gelatin, the
“Dainty Dessert”, instead. One box of six flavors only cost $.10,
according to this same advertisement.
The year was 1914 when “It” hit again! The “worst
blizzard since 1888” roared through the Hazleton area creating, in some places,
15-foot-high snow drifts! One easily imagines 19-year-old Elmer out building
snowmen for his best girl or fighting a snow-ball fight with the neighbor from
the “next farm over.”
 |
That’s Elmer on the right, during the great snowball war of 1917,
before he headed off to fight the war to end all wars in 1918,
the war now called WW 1.
|
By 1918, Elmer, now 23, was leaving snowmen behind and
exchanging snow-balls for bullets as he was marching off to the war in France,
World War I.
Harry
made this napkin holder when he was a teenager.
Long-time Hazleton Resident, Eva Sharpless, remembered
the Hazleton of the early 1900’s for a
Standard-Speaker reporter when Sharpless
celebrated her 107
th birthday anniversary on February 15, 2018. Sharpless
told stories of growing up in Hazleton and remembered things like how they’d
buy goods from men in horse-drawn buggies and carts. Berlitz Bakery sold their
goods that way, she recalled, as did a rag-man and a vegetable man; ringing
their bells on the dirt streets of the city to alert people they were coming.
“They all rang bells. They had horses, not horns” she recalled.
[14]
 |
Harry,
age 5 and his sister, Clara, 2.
Year was 1928.
Photo by Edwin Finstermacher. |
It appears most of the Drums faired alright when the
Spanish
Flu hit the region in the fall of 1918, but thousands of people
died from it in the Hazleton area alone. However, with “the boys” coming back
from Europe, there was much excitement and joy for many as well.
When
Lindbergh landed in Drums the first time - he did it twice, 1929 and again in
1933 - Harry was not quite 6 years old. He probably didn’t remember Lindbergh
landing. Another thing we can be pretty sure Harry didn’t remember was the
arrival of the “
Talkies”,
that is, movies with sound! They came to Hazleton for the first time in 1927.
Sharpless remembered the “talkies”.
Before they came, she said she would go the Family Theatre and watch the silent
films. She said they would have a piano playing exciting music during the tense
scenes and the words were written across the bottom of the screen, so the
audience could read what the people in the scenes were saying.
[15]
Apparently she would still have been able to see a silent film in 1928 if she went to the Capitol Theatre. This ad that appeared in the May 9, 1928 afternoon edition of the
Plain Speaker (page 6) is advertising, among other things, a silent, black and white, comedy movie called "
Something always Happens" starring Esther Ralston and Neil Hamilton. I was not able to find much on the other shows advertised with Esther's movie. They may have been live performances.
If Elmer had a radio, he might have heard the first radio
broadcast made from Hazleton on April 27, 1930. In the same way, if he had a
TV, he might have seen the first TV Broadcast from a Northeastern Pennsylvania
TV station,
WBRE-TV,
in 1953. Sharpless was amazed by television, “How wonderful. You
can sit in your living room and see (a movie.)”
[16]
Of course, to get TV, one not only needed a TV set, but an
antenna, too! The best place to set up your antenna was on the roof. Most of the
antennas in the Hazleton/Drums area in 1954 were blown down when
Hurricane Hazel
hit, just one year after Harry built his house, the same year Nathan H.
(Harry,
Elmer, Nathan A., John, Philip, George, Jacob, Philip) was born.
Harry’s house came through ok, but it took the roof off
Clyde Young’s barn and no sooner did he get that fixed then it got damaged
again by Hurricane Diane in 1955!
After Hazel, Dad must have decided the roof was no place for a TV antenna. This is a pic from 1964 of our Halloween decorations that year. The antenna is behind the scarecrow. I’ve circled it. By the way, the sign says, “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.” To a pumpkin, that was pretty scary!
I guess reception wasn’t so good on the ground. Here is a
photo from 1980. I
think it was supposed to be of Mom’s` Christmas decorations in the front
window, but it sure shows the TV antenna fairly well. There it is, now up on
the roof. I circled it once again, as if you’d not be able to find it on your
own.
The world almost stopped in amazement in 1957 when the
USSR launched a small silver sphere into space called “
Sputnik”. The
“Space Race” was on!
The “race” ended July 20, 1969 when the United States
landed two men on the moon and brought them home safely. And again, the world took notice.
The Moon Landing was such a special moment that fifteen year-old Nathan H.
filmed the TV broadcast with his Kodak Brownie
8mm Movie Camera!
Of course, the moon-walk was in all the papers.
And a few magazines, too!
Although I remember the moon landing quite clearly, I
was, after all, twelve at the time, I don’t have any memory at all of Sputnik.
But then, Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957, but it wasn’t until October
8 of that year that I made my first appearance in the maternity ward of St.
Joseph’s Hospital in Hazleton.
I do remember 1963, however, when, on Friday, November 22
nd,
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX. I remember it because
I was so angry. The TV coverage of his funeral on the 23
rd pre-empted
my cartoons that Saturday morning and to a six-year-old, at least to THIS
six-year-old,
Saturday Morning cartoons
were very important. In fact, the funeral was all that was on TV that whole weekend! No. I haven't gotten over it yet.
I also remember the blizzard of January 13-14, 1964. It
gave me 22 inches of snow to play in! And that was followed by another storm on
February 18-19 which added 25 inches MORE! It was WONDERFUL, that is, it was to
me.
That’s me on the
right. I think that’s my brother at the far end of my snow tunnel.
I don’t think everyone shared my joy, in my house or in
the area. For example, I am certain that my dad, who had to plow it off our
driveway, he didn’t like it at all.
Return to the Drums of Drums, PA on December 3, 2018
when we’ll be using our 13th post to start Getting a few things straight, like names and dates.
[1]
Unless otherwise cited, historical information found in this chapter for the 19
th
Century is based on information found in
A History of the Nineteenth Century
Year by Year (in Three Volumes) by Edwin Emerson, Jr. (New York: P.F.
Collier, 1901)
[2] Unless
otherwise cited, historical information found in this chapter for the 20
th
Century is based on information found in
Pages From the Past Special
Edition, Hazleton Standard-Speaker, Friday, September 6, 1991
[3] Drum, Nora, Miss; Mrs. R. S. Small, and Mrs. Millard
Shelhamer,
Drums Methodist Church and Valley Notes (Drums, PA: St.
Paul’s Methodist Church, 1953)
[6]
Wessel, Thomas and Marilyn Wessel,
4-H: An American Idea 1900 – 1980, A
History of 4-H (Chevy Chase, MD: National 4-H Council, 1982) p 4.
[8]
Auto Editors of Consumer Guide,
History of the American Auto
(Lincolnwood, ILL: Publications, International, 2004), p 14.
[9]
“Red Letter Days”,
Pages From the Past Special Edition, Hazleton
Standard-Speaker, Friday, Sept. 6, 1991, p A 11.
[11] Once
upon a time … in Hazleton: Second Century Celebration, (Hazleton: People’s
First National Bank and Trust Company, 1988.
[12]
Christorpher, Carl, “Rooms with a view: Plush and elegant, Hazleton’s downtown
hotels attracted celebrities”,
Pages From the Past Special Edition, Hazleton
Standard-Speaker, Friday, Sept. 6, 1991, p C 10.
[13]
“Motor Transit Company at 100”,
Hazleton Standard-Speaker, Feb. 1, 2013,
p C1
[14]
Monitz, Kelly, “Happy at 107: Lifelong resident shares fond memories of city,”
Hazleton
Standard-Speaker, February 21, 2018, p A11
[19] "104 Years of Service and Progress" (Deisroth's advertisement),
Hazleton Standard-Speaker, Section A, Thursday, July 3, 1975, p 3.
