Time Machine Trip to February 1887

Hello Fellow Time Travelers,

Well it’s time to fire up the old “Time Machine Chair” and travel back in time to February of 1887.

For today’s trip Bruce Werschem will be sitting in the front seat operating the Time Machine.  The big wheel is spinning, the years are clicking back and in no time we are back on Wisconsin Avenue on Kaukauna’s Northside.

 

• Dundas coal mines look good in future
• Gun powder explodes in desk   
• Man is town is “Cactus oil for Suckers”

 

Charles Raught, Times owner, has left the newspapers for us on the chair

  

Your old newsman - Lyle 

February 4, 1887

Luther Lindauer is now prepared to furnish first class kindling wood to any part of Kaukauna. He is also prepared to furnish wood and coal at the very lowest market prices.

While playing an engagement at Memphis, Tenn., Fanny Davenport placed her diamonds, valued at $35,000, in charge of the night clerk Chas. Talbott of the hotel. Next morning diamonds and clerk had disappeared, together with about $800 from the cash drawer.

The “Cactus Oil” man has been in town during the past week, and it is needless to say he has reaped quite a harvest of silver dollars from the unsuspecting through his ingenious methods of advertising and his faculty for making people believe he could cure their every ill. To see him rake in the hard earned shekels of the Kaukaunaites, it would be difficult to believe that “hard times” existed this winter. On a pole apposite the Hotel, might have been seen hoisted a placard which read “Cactus Oil for Suckers”

The baby king of Spain is a fine, handsome child, who enjoys robust health and receives immense amount of care which surrounds him. Though court etiquette requires that the 6-month-old Alphonso XIII, should be treated with the most rigid ceremony, but his mother refers to him not as “the king” but simply as “my child”.  He is dressed by a bevy of ladies of honor under the direction of his “governess” in according to traditional ceremony. 

February 11, 1887

The papers throughout the state are discussing the possibilities of paying coal mines at the Dundas mine, where a 3foot vein was discovered at 178 feet.

Bill Nye writes to a bald-headed friend who asks his advice about hair restorers as follows; “Take your hair invigorator money and buy a lot in a growing town that supports its home paper. You will find in twenty years that you will be well fixed and a man who is well fixed does not care much whether he has much hair or not.

The Wyoming Supreme Court, on the 3^rd, decided that the bill granting suffrage to women is unconstitutional. The act was passed in 1885 and women have been voting in the territory ever since.

Nearly 90,000 men engaged in strikes this year. The long shore men and freight handlers are now on strike and have stopped work for over 40,000 at New York. A large number of ships have been delayed by the strike. 

February 18, 1887

As an illustration of the increase in value of Kaukauna real estate one has but to refer to the tax roll of 1880. According to a document Island No. 2, in the 5th ward of this city was assessed that year at $50 and the tax on the same was 99c. During the past year, the same property has been sold for $9,900.00.

The Wisconsin Natural Gas and Mining Company intend shortly to open the old well on the Killian farm at Dundas, where the tremendous volume of natural gas was discovered last August. They will see if it still exists in the quantities then observed.

A Des Moines schoolboy saved his pennies and practiced heroic self-denial to buy clothes for another little boy whose parents were too poor to provide him suitable school garments. That boy got more solid fun out of his investment of cash that he would have derived from the purchase at a toy shop.

John Bortmas, an old man with a reputation for hoarding wealth lives in Butler County Pa. On the night of the 18^th masked men took possession of his house. They hung him over live coals burning his feet. They left with $312, which he assured them was all he had. They left leaving $1,000 in bills which he had stored away under the floor.

February 24, 1887

Marshal Mulloy arrested a runaway girl in Appleton last Sunday night. The girl, who is fourteen years of age, was in the company of a young man also from Kaukauna. She was arrested on a complaint of her parents who stated that she has been led astray and is in danger of going totally to the bad.

The combined national and state taxes of the United States, including the big payments made on the public debt amounts to $6.00 a year per capita. Great Britain and France have declared that the United States is becoming impoverished by its payments of pensions to disabled veterans.  

Insanity is rapidly increasing in Illinois. It is estimated that the number of insane persons in that state is 8,000 against 5,000 in 1880.

Julius Kuehn, the blacksmith, was the victim of a powder explosion on Monday last. He had two cans of gun powder stored away in his desk and while working near there about noon there was a sudden explosion and Mr. Kuehn found himself several feet distance from the place he had been standing. The windows of the shop were broken but Mr. Kuehn’s injuries were slight.