Fashions in 1886

My Paternal Great Grandmother and Family were Fashionable!

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Square Deal Saga

Well I misled you and have a blog today. I am compelled to get this down and this is the easiest way for me.  I mentioned a project that I was starting to work on and I have already jumped into my first diversion. I discovered a piece of (family) history that I was not aware of and have dwelled on it all yesterday after reading about the tragedy. Here are some things I discovered after some follow up research. It may not be interesting to you, but to me, it is. 

The first thing I looked at and scanned was a little 4.5 x 6.25 inch paper advertising booklet called “Square Deal.” I figured out, by the contents, that it was printed in 1911 as a restart of a paper box business that was based in a building which was destroyed in a horrendous fire in November 2010 in Newark, N.J. The booklet was distributed one year after the fire when the business moved to a new building.

My maternal grandfather is A. A.Drake. (Aurelius Alva Drake b. 1872) and he was a business partner in this manufacturing industry. 

Please read to the end of this blog to not only view the pages of the booklet, but to view the newspaper article. I had to scan it paragraph by paragraph to make it be “readable.” They are in order. As you read, my dismay will come clear to you, I'm sure. The fire was never mentioned to me by anyone before now.

You MUST view the newspaper article which is posted after the Square Deal booklet in a larger format to be able to understand and it is shocking to read. If you would like to pursue the topic I have added a few links for your convenience. Just click on an image.

Fire Link 1 Copyright 1998 - 2015 Glenn G. Geisheimer

Fire Link 2 Copyright 1998 - 2014 Glenn G. Geisheimer

Fire Link 3 Submitted by Stu Beitler

Overwhelmed

I probably won’t be blogging much for a while as I have a project that I have just started working on and it will take a lot of my time and energy.  I also get diverted by my habit of jumping out of where I am into another place completely when I try to do projects like this. 

I have old things that my mother saved and it is getting very interesting - at least to me. One of them is an old magazine and a couple of old paper booklets of advertising having to do with family members of the past. They are extremely fragile! 

Now I am also trying to preserve old photographs with the scanning process. That is difficult work - well I mean the removing from scrapbooks, cleaning, repairing, and so on. The numbers and variety are overwhelming to me and then there will be sorting and re-organizing and preserving - to the best of my ability before I die. It might not ever be completed, but I’ll try.

These are just a couple of scans that I made today of the “Delineator” and its contents. Wow! What illustrations there are of the Chromo-Lithographic plates of fashions in the year 1886! What a wonderful discovery. I MUST do “something” with these images. There are many and they are marvelous, including children, both girls and boys, and men and their attire; there are descriptions and offers of patterns.  Delineator Information Link

Then there is the text. I am a reader so I HAVE to read the pages. That’s what I mean by getting diverted. The book is very old and no sincere thoughts of ever preserving it are obvious. It has tons of wear.

An idea also popped into my crazy head about layering one of these ladies over one of my barn photos and making a photo manipulated creation. I had to force myself to stop when I made one very rough trial. 

So you see….I’m off to see the wizard…………..

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