Rare Book Monthly
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
1833 Farmer's Almanac
We then find a schedule of court dates both for New Jersey and New York. Litigation apparently is not a 20th century invention. This is followed by a list of office holders and their salaries. Andrew Jackson was being paid, if not necessarily earning, $25,000 while the Governor of New York, Enos T. Throop, was pulling down $4,000. There is then a list of counties and towns in the State of New York. For people who search our database by place such lists are a goldmine. Places disappear and names change. Often the key to finding great items is to search using place names of once important communities.
For those who paid interest there is then a chart showing simple interest of 6% and 7% annually for amounts up to $1,000. This kind of puts us in our place. Alan Greenspan would certainly approve. There is then a list of post towns and then the distances between them. Here are some of them: New York to St. Mary’s, Georgia: 1,163 miles; Albany to Lewiston 526 miles, and Newburgh to Ithaca 175.
And then there are the advertisements. Main Street Poughkeepsie had a foundry where they are “now prepared to execute orders in its various branches – such as castings for mill gearing and machinery." There is James Grant, Jun., who advertises as Lottery, Exchange and General Broker, Wm T. De Graff who sells Groceries and H. Power who bills himself as a Gold and Silver Worker and mentions he is a retailer of Silver ware and can supply spoons of all kinds, as cheap as elsewhere. E. B. Bailey advises that his Fashionable Hat Store is relocated to No. 25 Main-St. where he offers fashionable hats and caps of his own manufacturing. Then there is a shop that offers drugs, medicines, paints, linseed oil, sperm oil and candles, dye stuffs, etc. Based on the size of their ad they must have been the New York Central while the other firms were just branch spurs.
The publisher of this Almanac, Mr. Potter, clearly had and perhaps had to, have several irons in the fire. Whether his advertising was too dear, the town too small or the salesman too inebriated, he ended up as his own best customer for advertising space offering in direct competition to his apparently paying customers a complete selection of what he calls Valuable Medicines! including Young’s Patent Vegetable Specific, Dr. Craig’s Itch Ointment, Dr. Hamilton’s Worm Destroying Elixir, Hooper’s German Corn Plaster and Dr. Soloman’s Rheumatic Ointment. He also devotes an entire page to extolling the virtues of Swain’s Panacea and promises everything but eternal life in exchange. For those more concerned with this life he is clear that it cures scrofulous complaints. Not forgetting that he is also a printer, he separately advertised albums, medical books, an array of locally printed school books including the highly touted Bentley’ Spelling-Book of which he clearly had a desperate overstock. Assuming the Shakespearian third person he describes his own printing firm as anxious to dispose of their stock of such bibliographical gems as Vought on Bowel Complaints, Velpean’s Midwifery, Fordyce on Fevers and Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy.
From one almanac so much of life is apparent. At $15.00, there’s simply no better entertainment.
