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How things were when our town was in its second decade

About 400 people lived here in 1890. The flu was called the grippe then, women careful about their reputations never used cosmetics, and 100 pounds of barbed wire cost $4.

The U.S. population was 63 million, Emily Dickenson’s poems were published, and many Williams residents believed that celery cooked and mixed with alcohol and coca had almost magical powers to calm the nerves. They recommended drinking a mixture of alcohol and sarsaparilla every spring as a good way to purify the blood.

Sixty miles east of Williams a National Guard cavalry unit from Flagstaff rescued a sheriff's posse surrounded by Navajos angry because a white rancher had moved his cattle onto their grazing land.

Readers of the Williams News and big city papers and magazines brought by the railroad learned that Idaho and Wyoming had become states, and that Oklahoma Territory and Yosemite National Park had been created. Nellie Bly of New York City who’d traveled around the world in 72 days the previous year was one of the country’s most popular journalists, a symbol of female enterprise, independence and gumption.

Harvey Girl waitresses wearing freshly laundered black and white uniforms at the Williams train depot restaurant were trained to serve full meals to 16 railroad passengers in less than 30 minutes and keep the coffee cups full.

Women’s bathing suits had risen above the knees by 1890 and twice as many American girls as boys were graduating from high school. Vicks VapoRub went on the market to provide relief for head cold sufferers. Rubber gloves were used for the first time by surgeons to reduce the risk of operating room infection. And Williams area farmers raised 700 tons of potatoes.

Because of new farm machinery, the amount of labor required to produce a bushel of wheat was 10 minutes compared to three hours a half century earlier. Williams families kept horses, mules, milk cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and a few pet burros in their backyards. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act intended to prevent business monopoly but used instead by the courts to destroy the power of labor unions.

A year later congress designated the first of what were called forest reserves to stop destruction of forested areas on public lands like those surrounding Williams because of out-of-control timber cutting and livestock grazing. This was the first step toward establishment of the U.S. Forest Service.

The Williams Methodist Church was built in 1891, and Coconino County was organized from part of Yavapai County. The new county seat was at Flagstaff, and Cormick Boyce of Williams became a supervisor. Two other local men were selected for county jobs: F. R. Nellis as recorder and Stanford Rowe as fire marshal and road overseer. Coconino County’s estimated population was 4,000 and its assessed property valuation was $2 million.

That was about the time Thomas Edison finished work on a motion picture camera he called the kinetescope, and the game of basketball, the alternating current electric motor, and the zipper were invented.

Circus lovers mourned the death of P. T. Barnum, the showman who’d made Jumbo the elephant and a midget named Tom Thumb famous. The Santa Fe Railroad’s new luxury train, the California Limited, passed through Williams on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles. The first American electric automobile was built, and a board of trade, ancestor of the modern chamber of commerce, was organized by Flagstaff businessmen.

In 1891, Williams housewives used wood-heated ovens to bake potato yeast bread twice a week. They fried donuts in melted lard and made pork sausage. They could buy three kinds of pepper at the general store plus food flavorings including vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, lemon, mint and wintergreen. They made their own hand lotion of rose-water, glycerine and egg whites, or a mixture of egg whites, alum, boric acid and olive oil.

Women had first names we don’t hear much anymore: Addie, Bird, Comfort, Fern, Hilma, Ladybug, Muff and Ophelia. Many men’s names from those days 110 years ago also have been lost to changing fashion: Aristotle, Bottle, Blue, Dudge, Hack, Obadia, Patch and Supple. Some cowboy monikers were Dutch Kid, Banjo Bill, Calamity, Hurricane, Bed Wagon and Speak Easy.

Polite people said Land sakes! and Pshaw! when they were surprised. A smile could mean either a happy facial expression or a shot of whiskey. An outhouse was the ‘necessary,’ and many of the jokes they told were considered unsuitable for children and ladies, as per example:

A wife accused of beating up her husband was brought before the justice of the peace who wanted to know why she’d used a chair as a weapon. “Because,” she answered. “I couldn’t lift the table.”

Then there was the one about a man driving a delivery wagon down the street. A woman stuck her head out of a window and asked if he had the time. “You bet,” he said. “Wait ‘til I tie the horse.”

(Jim Harvey is a Williams’ historian who contributes a monthly column depicting our town’s early days.)


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