History – Sarah's Notebook

YouTube Video Roundup March 2024

I actually HAD a second video all ready to go at the end of the month, but it was a short and for unknown reasons YouTube has decided it has a problem with me posting shorts right now. So hopefully April will be the month a break the one a month pattern. This is a really good video though. It’s about how you wind a striking clock like the one Laura and Manly had and he wound every week.

Here is the video I posted during March 2024:

1. Winding a Striking Clock Like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s: In the Kitchen With Laura

In this In the Kitchen With Laura we’ll learn how to wind a parlor clock that strikes. For Christmas one year Laura Ingalls Wilder’s husband Almanzo traded a big load of firewood for a parlor clock. Every week for the rest of his life Almanzo wound the clock and its tick-tock filled their homes. Learn what this type of clock looks like, see photos of Laura’s, a bit about how other clocks strike, and how to wind this kind of striking clock correctly and safely.

Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.

Historic Farming Videos

Iowa PBS did a documentary on Rural Midwest Farm Life. They’ve posted some of it as clips on YouTube broken up in under 5 minutes parts. It’s focused on the early 20th century agriculture or the time when Laura and Manly were building up Rocky Ridge. These videos give you a good look at what their life was like.

Some things continued from the 19th century. Especially pay attention to my notes under each video. Especially check out The Role of Women on the Farm in the Early 20th Century below that talks about farm wives and shows the flynets at 1:20 into it.

Rural Midwest Farm Life in the Early 20th Century

Set up and introduction, (note my grandfather and his friends always said a farm that should support a family would be 80 acres, not the 40 mentioned in this)

Mechanization on the Farm in the Early 20th Century

Why some farmers preferred horses to tractors, Hand Shucking Corn with a bang board, Effect of technology on farm culture

Threshing Machine: Farmers Working Together

Video of how Threshing Worked, Community Aspect, Threshers Dinner

Socializing, Traditions and Chores for Rural Farm Families in the 1940s

Community Connections, Women’s Work

The Role of Women on the Farm in the Early 20th Century

1:20 Fly Nets

Raising and processing chickens

Electricity and Plumbing Change Rural Farm Life in the Early 20th Century

Mostly about the coming of indoor toilets

The Depression, the Family Farm and the New Deal

Great Depression Arrives

Life on a Rural Midwest Family Farm during the Great Depression

Foreclosure, Protecting kids

Farmers Fear Bankruptcy During the Great Depression

Taking Care of Farm and Family During the Great Depression

Raising, Have to work

Farm Life in the Early 20th Century: Avoiding Waste

Not wasting money or water, being thrifty

Say in a One-Room School Survey

One-Room School Teacher Cooking Cocoa — Cocoa in a One-Room School

An on-going project of mine has been collecting surveys about what people took to one-room schools for lunch. It’s a specific question, but since I’m interested in both historic foodways and one-room schools it’s a pretty good fit. I haven’t done the program in a while, BUT I have not one, but TWO possible bookings for it this fall. So I’m going to do another push if you know ANYONE who went to a one-room school please have them think about it and then fill out my form. If you know of a place where you can do handouts, please run them off and set out some forms. If you have social media accounts, PLEASE share out the link. – Very much appreciated.

Fill out the survey and share the link: http://tinyurl.com/1RmSurvey

Start With Research

I’ve collected information from parent and teacher magazines. (I’m also very distraught that there is a thesis from the 1910s I can’t lay my hands on.) I’ve also collected government publications talking about what you should have for school lunch.

What People Really Took

One of my on-going projects has been a survey on what people actually ate. I’ve been collecting surveys for what people remember taking. So far I’ve got 468 responses with answers coming from everywhere between Canada to Louisiana. Answers on what they took ranged from hoe cakes to ketchup sandwiches to a hot dog kept warm in a Thermos with string tied around the natural casing knot to pull it out.

Politics

I was surprised about how school lunch, or at least providing a hot school lunch, turned out to be a pretty political topic as it was an excuse given as one of the reasons to close one-room schools. Many creative efforts were made to fill the gap (until the Thermos made it unnecessary).

I also found out that where you ate lunch turned out to be a problem, if you ate on your desk how did you get it or keep it clean? Plus, were students made to wash their hands? It’s lead me down a lot of interesting questions besides food.

Handouts

I’ve put together a presentation what I’ve got so far, but I’m still going to be collecting surveys. So if you went or taught in a one-room school or know someone who did, please fill out the survey and spread the word.

Here is my latest update of my Handout 2018 about what I’ve learned so far. I’ll put out an updated handout including what I’ve learned since out this fall.

Steamboat Willy and Mickey’s Pants

Now the entire reason people have been talking so much about Mickey Mouse this year – other than that he’s great (See Note 1) – is because this year his first released cartoon is aged out of copyright and into Public Domain. (See Note 2) I wrote some about that on LibBlog the blog I do for the Sundberg Library and Learning Center at Kirkwood Community College where I work. If you want to know more about that check out this post.

Mickey Mouse’s Mysterious White Buttons

I was listening to a Disney history podcast I like and I was surprised when one of the hosts said something like “they should never had those buttons on Mickey’s pants anyway. Why are there 2 horizontal buttons?” The other host replied something like “yes and what about those dumb buttons on the back.”

I was kind of shocked because it was obvious to me what they were for and to pretty much everybody in 1928. They are for suspenders. Suspenders are straps that hold up your pants instead of a belt. You hook them on the front of your pants and on the back of your pants and they hold them up without need of a belt. Now the buttons aren’t exactly correct. There should be 2 little buttons instead of one big button for each location, but that’s what they reference.

You see today almost all the time when you get suspenders you get a clasp fastening. Those are little metal, alligator style clips that hook the suspenders on to your pants. You have one on each end. Some times they are just straight over the shoulders with 2 separate straps, often the straps cross in the back with 2 ends in the back, and sometimes they are sewn together forming a Y stem with only one in the back.

Clip-On vs. Button-Hole Suspenders

You rarely see them today, but the original option for connecting them was to have buttons sewn on your pants to button the suspenders on to. Fancier pants had them sewn on the inside so you couldn’t see them if you weren’t using them, but everyday pants would have the buttons there for everyone to see. If you weren’t wearing suspenders that day the buttons would remain there until the next time you did need them for suspenders. Think about the pocket watch pocket on a pair of jeans (the small pocket normally a third of the way down your normal front pocket on the right hand side). It still exists even though I bet most people don’t actually wear watches there or even realize they were for watches, but they are still there. (They should wear them though pocket watches are awesomesauce.) This is the same kind of thing. Buttons for suspenders aren’t really a thing any more, but on some older pants like the ones Mickey is wearing the buttons would still be there whether Mickey ever wore suspenders or not.

This link below is to a page where they sell button suspenders for re-enactors. I haven’t purchased anything from them, but you can nicely see the button suspenders I’m talking about in their photos.

https://www.historicalemporium.com/store/008198.php

Oh, I should mention this just because a lot of people at the first LauraPalooza were shocked by it. (I guess they don’t watch a lot of Britcoms.) In Great Britain, and I imagine other places, what Americans call suspenders are called braces. It’s like how they call undershirts vests and vests waistcoats. There the term suspenders refers exclusively to garter belts that use a similar design to hold up your stockings if used correctly. That’s not what we’re talking about with Mickey.

Representation Demonstrated With Disney

This is actually nothing to do with copyright, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately comparing the various studios as I study Disney history and I thought this might be a good spot to share. I’d like to point out that when Disney created its stable of character/actors that they immediately started adding female characters. Minnie Mouse is featured in the first Disney sound cartoon opposite Mickey. That isn’t true of the other big cartoon stable, Looney Tunes. I never noticed as a kid, but you got Granny and the poor black cat Pepe Le Pew chased and a very occasional Miss Prissy (Foghorn Leghorn’s sort of sometimes girlfriend) and the big fat rabbit that very occasionally is after Bugs anddddddd… that’s pretty much it. Tweetie Pie/Tweetie Bird is actually a boy even if I thought he was a girl as a kid. Instead you get things like robots with bombs in them dressed up as women and drag humor and Witch Hazel. But with Disney Minnie balanced Mickey, Daisy balanced Donald, Clarabelle Cow balanced Horace Horsecollar. Normal females actually – gasp – exist! I grew up with Looney Tunes, and they are hilarious, but if you think about their representation it’s amazing how much worse it was and it’s a stone in your shoe. So yay, Walt! Your more equal set up is appreciated!

What’s in a Name?

I never realized growing up that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were named that because they were trying to trespass on the good reputation of Disney’s Silly Symphonies which were a series of experimental cartoons based on music like Skeleton Dance and the Old Mill. Clearly they are just playing off the name of the already established series. They didn’t copy “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” though which is a great theme song for a cartoon series.

The title of this particular cartoon, Steamboat Willie, is actually a play on a Buster Keaton comedy called Steamboat Bill, Jr. Keaton was the mega star of the silent film comedy. This was due in part to his ability to do amazing physical comedy and keep a straight face doing it. He also was quick to pick up on possible tricks to plus them up. For instance there was a balcony in a building on top of the hill so stand on that balcony, frame it right, and you look like you’re hanging way up in the air when really you’re like a couple of feet of the ground with no green screen (not developed yet). If you’ve never seen any of Keaton’s work see Steamboat Bill, Jr. that this is a play on. I also recommend The General with the proviso that it is total Lost Cause garbage in plot, but also has some of the funniest bits I’ve ever seen including this one scene with the confederate officer’s face (the name The General is from the train, not any particular person) that will be your favorite bit ever if you’ve ever had a terrible boss. I smile every time I think about it. To see a non-Lost Cause garbage version of the same true story check out Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase starring Fess Parker.

Note 1: Mickey Mouse was kind of a teen like smart aleck in the early cartoons. He grows up into the lovable mouse we have today later. He was still very popular as a smart aleck though and you’ll enjoy the early cartoons.

Note 2: There were issues with the copyright on Plane Crazy, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon completed, that was pulled back so sound could be added before it was released. There were irregularities with filing the copyright which was more form/registration driven back then. A good case could be made that Plane Crazy was already out of copyright because of the irregularities, but it IS a good case could be made not that it’s crystal clear so it would be a risk and no one has tried Disney on it since it would simply be inviting a lawsuit.

Note 3: Not anything to do with copyright, but ask me about the song used in Steamboat Willie called “Turkey in the Straw” sometime. It’s quite a story all on its own… Although now I think about it there is one piece of a Public Domain status in the story.

In the Kitchen With Laura Thanksgiving 1845

Interior of Independence Cabin (Previous Version)

Cooking has changed a lot over time. When people think of cooking in the 19th century they tend to think of in being the same for the whole century – it wasn’t. This post looks back to 1845. While things change over time they don’t change on a dime so this is the kind of cooking that Ma (Caroline Quiner Ingalls) would have known as a girl. Ma would have still done some of this the same way even as an adult. She would have especially used some of these same techniques when she only had a fireplace when they lived in Kansas.

Demonstrating Fireplace Cooking

This offering is from the Slow Oven YouTube channel. Today they are offering 3 videos showing prepping for Thanksgiving and then celebrating it. These videos are demonstrations not lessons, so don’t expect to see all the steps to making any one particular dress. It’s more like eavesdropping on them prepping and then enjoying the meal. The one exception is in the one that’s actually about enjoying the meal. In that one they show you about making butter and using a butter mold.

Publication they are using is the New England Economical Housekeeper.

Thanksgiving Videos

Baking Day

Preparing

Celebration

Walnut Grove Pageant History Video

Sarah by the 45th Anniversary of the Pageant Sign at the Walnut Grove Museum

I was glad to visit in 2022 for their 45th Anniversary. I’ve visited the pageant quite a few times since I first visited in 1984 and I feel a strong connection to the pageant and even got to be part of the 45th Anniversary pageant photo.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Walnut Grove Pageant has put together a video showing their history with some predictions from 1978 to 2027. The video is a series of highlights and rare photos through the years. There are few early photos left because they had been stored in the archives of a local newspaper. Many of these were lost due to a fire in the building next door to one of the local newspapers. The photos were lost to water damage. So we’re pleased they have these.

They’ve put some of the photos from their 45th Anniversary slide show and some others in this year by year look back and look ahead.

Mitchell South Dakota Corn Palace 2024

I was very excited when I saw the 2024 designs for the The World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Each year they do over the magic decorations and this year the theme is famous South Dakotans. Guess who made the list?

Corn Palaces Images for 2024 – With Permission

What is a Corn Palace?

“Crop Palaces” were a thing started in the 1880s. They were designed to celebrate a particular crop that was substantial in the area, as a tourist attraction, and to help convince more people to move to the area. They were built like a fairy tale palace or something an Imagineer would design for something short term.

The palaces were inspired by the St. Paul, Minnesota and Toronto, Canada ice palaces. The first built in 1887 in Sioux City, Iowa was a corn palace, but the craze took off like wild fire. According to The Forgotten Midwest: “By 1890, there was a bluegrass palace, a hay palace, Forest City’s flax palace, and a sugar beet palace in Grand Island, Nebraska, followed in the next years by a grain palace, broom palace, and more and more corn palaces.” My personal non-corn favorite is the coal palace in Ottumwa, Iowa.

These buildings were mostly constructed out of whatever they were celebrating on wooden scaffolding. They weren’t constructed to hold up well to the elements, they were fire hazards, rotted, and attracted all kinds of birds and animals to eat them. Even though they accomplished their goals about attracting more people and getting the names of the different cities out there they didn’t necessarily make back all the funds it took to construct them.

When Sioux City gave up its palace, Mitchell, South Dakota stood up to create their own in 1892. The craze faded, but Mitchell didn’t give up. In 1919 they decided they were going to permanently keep their Corn Palace going. Their palace was different because it was designed to be a regular real building just with swoops, spires, and decorations using real corn on the inside and an an ever changing outside design. The inside space is used for tourists over the summer and the rest of the year it’s a gymnasium space used for sports and concerts. The current building was completed in 1921 with a remodel in the 1930s adding more of the original corn palace fantastical look to the building. Their website explains about the decorations that “The Palace is redecorated each year with naturally colored corn and other grains and native grasses to make it ‘the agricultural show-place of the world’. We currently use 12 different colors or shades of corn to decorate the Corn Palace: red, brown, black, blue, white, orange, calico, yellow and now we have green corn!”

There is even a book: Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Dairy Sculpture by Pamela H. Simpson.

Has Laura Appeared on the Corn Palace Before?

Soooo has Laura Ingalls Wilder appeared on this Midwestern icon before? Not quite. I had remembered reading about Laura being on there somewhere… so I reached out to the corn palace a few years back. They didn’t have any record of it.

However, I kept looking and I discovered the Spring-Summer 1984 issue of Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore (Ed. William T. Anderson) had reported that a scene of the Surveyor’s House would appear during the 1983-1984 season complete with photo. The image showed the Surveyor’s House, but not any people so not Laura herself.

2024 Designs

The World’s Only Corn Palace shared out the designs behind the coming year’s art on their Facebook page and gave me permission to post them here. There are 9 “scenes” spread around the building. The famous South Dakotans included in the designs are – the 1964 Olympic runner Billy Mills, Basketball coach Mike Miller, Basketball coach Becky Hammon, Wild Bill Hickcok, Medal of Honor winner and former South Dakota governor Joe Foss, Native American artist Oscar Howe, astronaut Charles Gemar, Bob Barker, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. You can see the Laura image design below is heavily borrowing from the Pioneer Girl cover.

I hope you can get a trip arranged out to South Dakota next summer to see it.Work has started already getting the designs changed over for the 2024 year designs. “Jeff Hanson, the supervisor of decorating and maintenance for the palace, said a crew of 15 started in May by taking down the old corn and grain. They just finished putting up the new sour dock grain that borders the mural in July. Hanson said they will start to take down the actual corn in mid-September and the whole building should be done by Thanksgiving….He said over 400,000 people come through the Corn Palace every year.” (via Keloland)

The corn is specially grown by “Local farmer Brett Lowrie, from Mount Vernon [South Dakota], contracts to grow the colored corn for the Corn Palace. ‘It all started with Indian corn where kernels were hand-separated into like colors from the multicolored ears. Those kernels were then used to keep color purity,’ he explains. ‘Today, I plant 3 to 3.5 acres each of 10 colors. We also buy a green corn and use my yellow field corn. I plant 160-foot-wide strips of soybeans or grain sorghum in between to keep from cross-pollinating.’ Though Lowrie employs the same fertility and crop-protection program across all his corn acres, the colored corn is planted at a lower population of 12,000 plants per acre. It’s also harvested sooner — at about 40% moisture — to keep the ears from breaking when they are cut and nailed to a mural. Ears that are 8 or more inches long work best for the artwork. “I’m more concerned about ear size than I am about yield,” Lowrie says, “but in the end, I get anywhere from 60 to 100 bushels per acre.” (via Progressive Farmer)

Learn More at These Websites

World’s Only Corn Palace
https://cornpalace.com

Corn Cam of the Palace
https://cornpalace.com/157/Corn-Cam

Travel Information
https://www.travelsouthdakota.com/trip-ideas/story/visit-worlds-only-corn-palace-mitchell-south-dakota

https://www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/mitchell-corn-palace-festival-celebrates-130-years

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2023/09/01/palace-prairie

1883: Farm Life in South Dakota

The following article appeared in the Kingsbury Journal in the Wednesday, August 16, 2023 issue on page 18. It appeared as part of their Days Gone By feature where they collect articles from different points in the past and pull up articles from newspapers that week and that year. Some articles they quote, some they sum up.

These Days Gone By type features are pretty standard small town newspaper-fare. Normally these things go back 100 years, but now that’s the 1920s, they’ve added more slots I’m glad to say. This time it’s back 140 years. It’s clearly an article designed to boost the area and with that in mind it may be too positive and upbeat, but it’s also clearly not made up. I wanted to include it because the narrative gaining ground today is of the pioneers who failed. There were others who stayed, whose family is still living in South Dakota, were successful, and today help produce the food that feeds a good chunk of the world. There is a big narrative right now that suggest the Midwest should never have been settled, but the people pushing that narrative? – they’re eating food raised in the Midwest.

This particular article is from the Huron Leader on August 17, 1883. That’s just over 2 years before Laura and Almanzo Wilder got married. Huron, South Dakota is roughly 30 miles and 45 minutes due west of De Smet on Highway 14, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway.

1883: Farm Life in South Dakota
140 Years Ago
August 17, 1883

The best way to learn all about a country is to visit it and see it for yourself. Travelers in passing over the railroads and stopping only in the towns and cities often get a wrong impression of the actual state of the crops. Not all farmhouses in Dakota are shanties; there are many pleasant little cottages scattered over the prairies, where happy households dwell free from the cares and vexations of business life.

The home of Mr. W.H. Boothroyd, about seven miles west of the city, is one that show the possibilities of this undeveloped country. The house is a snug little cottage containing five rooms, surrounded by beautiful flowers and thriving vegetables. Everything about the place shows that the family means to make it their home. Boothroyd and his brother: who lives adjoining, have about 60 acres of small grain and 140 acres of social grain and 140 acres of corn, which is in excellent condition. In the edge of the garden were found several heads of oats 20 inches in length. They have 10 acres of oats of the White Russian variety on pulverized sod that will yield from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. The garden is one of the best in the country, containing all varieties of vegetables.

It really makes one feel at home to see such evidence of Dakota’s future greatness.
– Huron Leader

Rootsweb Genealogy Website is Shutting Down

I was starting to update my Genealogy LibGuide (a set of resources to help people get started) and as step 1 I was checking all my links. One of them was to Rootsweb and suddenly things didn’t look the same or frankly very well.

Rootsweb was a free website that gathered information on genealogy sources and offered free resources, like some very nice and useful forms for taking notes from various sources. However, it was owned by Ancestry.com and so took every opportunity to tell you that you needed to subscribe to Ancestry.com to do this or that. It was very well organized to yank you into a paid subscription, but still offered enough free useful stuff that the link made my LibGuide.

For some reason Ancestry.com must have decided that it was no longer doing a good job enticing people. They have cut funding and while there are a few things left they are mostly links to things other people created and have been moved to free platform.

So if you are looking for Rootsweb resources they’re pretty much gone.

Category: History