Old Newspaper Items

Old Newspaper Items

The old newspapers, as I have mentioned before, are really goldmines of information if you want to know what it was like in the mid to late 1800's. So will put a few things here that I thought you might like.

In the Windham County Transcript of 5 Jan. 1881 is a little story about irrascible Colonel Malbone of Brooklyn, Ct. who had no patience with fools even if they were aristocratic fools. Miss Ellen Larned in her History of Windham County wrote this about him: “An aristocratic kinswoman expressed her desire that there might be “a place fenced off in Heaven for servants and common people, it would be so disagreeable to be mixed up with everybody!” “And I,” roared the disgusted Colonel, “hope there'll be a place fenced off in Hell for d_____d fools!” A listener who not long since heard a would-be-high-toned young lady find fault with a dealer in this village (Danielsonville), because a special assortment of fancy goods was not kept for “ladies,” and “something cheaper and less elegant for working girls,” mentally borrowed the explosive utterance of Col. Malbone with slight variations. That young woman will be likely to find something cheaper and less elegant portioned off for herself in the other world if she doesn't get rid of some of her selfish shallowness and abominable vanity before she gets there.

In the 16 Sept. 1880 paper there are two wife notices:

Whereas my wife, Addie E. Tucker, has left my bed and board, I forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on my account after this 15^th day of Sept. 1880. W. A. Tucker,
E. Killingly

I hereby forbid all persons harboring or trusting my wife, Mary E. Burdick, on my account, after this date, as she has left my bed and board without suitable provocation.
Alexander S. Burdick, Plainfield, Ct. 1 Sept. 1880.

Then in the 2 Feb. 1881 I find this:

When a woman leaves a man who has not earned his salt for years, he immediately advertises that he will pay no debts of her contracting.--Phil. News.

        Have noticed in some of our old papers that they publish the Court Record and in some of them are divorces. Was not going to pay much attention to them as we have the published books on Divorces in Windham County and other counties in Conn. But when I started to really look at them in the paper found that in some cases the woman took back her maiden name and it says so and what it is. But the published books do not have that information. So will put together these little divorce tidbits so we all have access to them. And in some papers in the 1880's I have been going through I see divorces but nothing in the published books about them.

    As I have said before we are not perfect people so the way I look at it we can fix published records that are wrong or add to what we find by typing up the new information and putting it on the shelf at the historical society. It helps everyone.

    Oh, that reminds me, I was looking for a gravestone for Charles Bennett in the Bennett Cemetery in Canterbury. There was one but he died in 1830! I needed one much later. Well, when I went to the Town Hall in Canterbury and found Charles death record in 1890 I knew exactly what happened. The person reading the gravestones back in the early 1930's read 3 for a 9. And with early carving it is very easy to do. Anyway, problem solved.