The Good Old Days
Ah, the Good Old Days! Back before the hurly-burly of modern life, people sat on their front porches sipping lemonade and socializing with their neighbors. Things were much better! Here are a few news items illustrating how good things were back then, all from a single column of the Chicago Tribune of August 13, 1880 (adjacent to the baseball report: Providence beat Chicago the day before, 6-4).
INDIANA KU-KLUX
Cincinnati, O., Aug. 12.–Democratic threats of driving the negroes out of Indiana are being put into execution in at least three counties. Early yesterday morning a band of masked Ku-Klux attacked the house of an inoffensive negro named Joshua Mack, one mile from Columbus, Ind., broke open the door and windows, and dragged him from his bed, declaring with vile oaths that they would hang him, and that they intended to “clean out all the G-d d–d niggers in the county before the election.” They ransacked the house for arms, and found none, and finally agreed to let Mack go, on condition that he would immediately leave. After they had gone some distance, he followed them to the road, where others of the party were in waiting, when all mounted their horses and rode away. Soon after the house of Mr. Walker, who has the farm rented on which the negro lives, was stoned, the party yelling, cursing, and threatening for a considerable time. Near Bluffton and Shelbyville similar attempts at intimidation have been made.
AN ELOPEMENT TRAGEDY
Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 12.–Information has been received here of an elopement which ended in a terrible tragedy. For some time past Mr. Havelock Styles, a well-known young farmer, has been in love with Miss Ophelia Upchurch, daughter of Benjamin Upchurch, a well-to-do farmer of the same county. Mr. Upchurch refused to give his consent to their marriage. The young people, with the aid of Mr. Styles’ friend, Ethan Webster, eloped to Franklin County, where the marriage ceremony was performed. The father of the young lady was in close pursuit, although they did not know it, and just as the marriage ceremony had been finished, he rode up, armed with a double-barreled shot-gun. Taking in the situation at a glance, he fired the two barrels loaded with buckshot into Webster’s breast, and the unfortunate young man fell to the ground. The new-made husband fled to the woods, leaving the horrified bride to the care of the father, who at once took her home.
SHOT HIS SON-IN-LAW
New Albany Ind., Aug. 12.–In Lafayette Township, four miles northwest of this city, Roger Russell this evening shot his son-in-law, John Norma, with both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun. The load took effect in the face, tearing out both of Norman’s eyes and inflicting fatal wounds. A family difficulty led to the shooting. Russell is over 70 years old, and well respected. After the shooting he walked away, and has not yet been arrested. To-night Russell took morphine and strychnine with suicidal intent, and it is said by his physician that he will die. He bought the poison before doing the shooting.
You see, it WAS better. The negros were in their place, and a father made sure his daughter married well and didn’t become a tart. An uppity SIL was “taken care of” and put in his place. This was accomplished by the common use of firearms.
Sniff, the good old days!
It had AC right?Report
Not having AC was quite the problem. Impeded mental development, doncha know?Report
Providence beat Chicago the day before, 6-4
The Cubs lost, which goes to show that some things never change.Report
Quite the contrary, they won the pennant easily, and this was the first of a three-year run. The past really is a foreign country,Report
I think there’s a distinct possibility that Ophelia was 10 years old at the time of her elopement.Report
The father’s name doesn’t match. And that one was buried in Georgia, not NC, though that’s not conclusive,Report
Oh, I didn’t realize there were other tabs with more info. I also was curious if those Upchurches were related to the Upchurch that was mayor of Raleigh in the (19)80s, but his late 19th century ancestors all have different names, too.Report
Is it possible that the choice between “things were much better” and “things were much worse” is a false dichotomy driven by our political commitments and the past was just different? Better in some ways and worse in others?Report
This is an important point.
We alternately shun or embrace, a past which never existed in order to accomplish something contemporary.
Its like when we try to map our current political affiliations onto the past (hey, did you know that Democrats were the party of the Klan? True fact!) it yields weird and conflicting results.Report
The past was objectively better: the baseball game mentioned at the end of the OP had no designated hitter.Report
::insert rant about watching high-school-level hitters not try here::Report
This doesn’t follow. It was a National League game, so it wouldn’t have a DH today, either.Report
Yes, was better in some ways. The porch socializing culture I mentioned in the post is in many ways very attractive. On the other hand, we abandoned our porches as soon as we got air conditioning and televisions. Presumably this was perceived as a net improvement.
And really, much of the attractiveness about society back in the day was only true to the extent that you were an insider. Good ol’ boy networks work great, so long as you are a good ol’ boy. But if you were excluded due to gender or ethnicity or disability or simply due to power politics within the network, you were royally screwed.
I also notice over and over in my baseball research that if you followed the guys’ post-baseball careers, men typically dropped dead sometime in their fifties. If they won the genetic lottery and had no predisposition for heat attacks or strokes, then they could live into their seventies. But it was unremarkable for guys in their fifties to simply be walking down the street when they drop. If they didn’t die right away, the ambulance would come and cart them to their home. There would be no point in taking them to the hospital. So some guy has a stroke, and he lies in bed for the next three days and his family and friends come to say good-bye, then he dies. The modern American way of dying has more than its share of problems, but when someone with access to routine healthcare dies in his fifties, this is unusual.
Just reading the newspaper ads for quack medicines is enough to convince me that the net improvement is huge.Report
One of my most favorite things about history is encountering people with names like Havelock. Where did people come up with these names.Report
A: Aww, hell, I’m going on a long trip and I don’t have a lock for my door. Hey neighbour, do you have a lock I could borrow?
B: Sure I do
The rest is historyReport
Or, if we might forgive a serious answer, ‘Havelock’ is a surname–not a common one, but not an extraordinarily uncommon one. There is a pattern in English going back to the 16th century of using a surname as a given name. (Recall that Lady Jane Grey’s husband was named Guildford Dudley.) The usual route in later centuries was via a middle name. Middle names often draw from both pools, and someone might go by his middle name, or some relative might be given it as a given name. Some newly-given names stuck and became standard given names. ‘Douglas’ is a good example of this. We are more likely to think of it as ‘really’ being a given name than as a surname, as it was originally. Others died out, or were found only in certain families. So while I don’t know why Havelock’s parents gave him that name, the fact of a surname being used as a given name is unremarkable. Or, to put it another way, this is no weirder or quainter than, say, ‘Harrison Ford.’Report
Harrison is weirder, actually, as linguistically that screams “surname”Report
Weirder still as a girl’s name. I can’t think of any fem Harrisons of my acquaintance, but I do know a number of fem (Someone)sons and Mac(someone)s.
I mean, name your kid what you want, it’s just a series of hopefully pronounceable syllables to use as a label…Report
In Japan, “Blue” (aoi, really) is a common girl’s name.
And, really, anything‘s better than naming your child Chastity.
Or Faith, or any of those virtues.Report
Fortitude and Justice would like to have a word with you.Report
How about Continence? Who doesn’t want their child to have that?Report
Fun fact: the popularity of “Madison” as a girl’s name derives directly from the movie Splash. This sound like it ought to be an urban legend, but it actually is well documented.Report
SI NON CONFECTVS, NON REFICIATReport
That’s the first Havelock I thought of too.Report
Well, whatever other flaws one might identify from this glimpse of past society, they were clearly polite.Report
Heh, I love the censoring in the newspaper quote of the KKK.Report
It was the Victorian version of political correctness.Report
Very much so. This is why I don’t discreetly edit the “N-word” for modern, and entirely justified, sensibilities. What gets elided and what does not is part of the history. Edit it for modern sensibilities and you soften the historic realities.Report
I find your lack of snark disturbing.
I was aiming a barb at the various essays and blog posts that bemoan today’s political correctness, and reference a golden age when there was free and robust discussion, free of the stifling bonds of overweening sensitivity.Report
Is the correct response to that, “Hie thee back to 4chan, thee troll!”?Report
BOTH ERAS DO ITReport
A guy named Webster in North Carolina got shot? I wonder if that was a relative of mine….Report