Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Odds and ends and tidbits from a world gone by
Odds and ends and tidbits from a world gone by
Topics are found by spending a lot of time reading, in the course of which were found hundreds of brief but interesting items.
T his month marks the 17th year that I have been writing feature articles for Digital First Media. Nearly all these stories have been about local history: events that happened in the Pottstown area, local people who became famous, or how local men and women were connected to events of great importance, such as the Civil War or World War II.
Few of these stories would have been possible without Pottstown newspapers, a resource that chronicles life and events in this area in an almost unbroken run from 1858 to 2015. These hundreds of volumes are not searchable. There is no index. They are not digitized. But that is part of their charm. Topics are found by spending a lot of time reading the thousands of daily editions, in the course of which were found hundreds of brief but interesting items too small to make a story but still irresistible. This month’s feature will consist of several of these little gems. Boy Learns to Hold His Tongue: In keeping with the yuletide season, this story is very appropriate. “A Christmas Story,” a 1983 movie about 9-year-old Ralphie Parker’s efforts to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, has become a cult classic, a must-see holiday show that ranks right up there in popularity with “A Christmas Carol” and “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”
In one scene, set in the schoolyard during recess on a freezing snowy day, Ralphie’s friends Flick and Schwartz are hotly debating whether a tongue would stick to the icecold metal flag pole. Schwartz takes the affirmative and Flick dismisses the idea with a disdainful, “You’re full of it!” This leads to Schwartz challenging Flick to prove his assertion by touching his tongue to the flag pole. Flick declines but when Schwartz issues the “dreaded triple double dog dare” he has to do it and his tongue instantly becomes stuck to the frozen metal.
The question that runs through many people’s minds while watching this scene is would anyone really be dumb enough to do that? According to The Daily Pottstown Ledger, the answer is “Yes.” The paper’s Jan. 8, 1878, issue reported that “Master David Clark, 13-year-old son of Mrs. G.R. Clark” had “placed his tongue on one of the iron fence rails in front of the Trinity Reformed
Church” on the northeast corner of Hanover and King streets, and for this “very foolish act suffered considerable pain.”
Like the luckless Flick, young Clark’s tongue “remained frozen fast to the iron rail for some time.” Eventually his “cries attracted the attention of a lady passing by,” who got some water, and poured it over his tongue, thus giving “the Lord of Taste, its freedom, much to the relief of David.”
Medical Miracles in the Borough:
Even with the stunning advances medical science has made over the last century, today alternative medicine, the use of therapies outside the orthodox medical canon, is very popular. So, looking back to the 19th century when medical practice was still very crude, it is no surprise that people afflicted by chronic diseases and conditions were willing to turn to people outside the medical profession for relief.
An example of this was found in the April 27, 1885, issue of The Daily Pottstown Ledger where it was announced that “Madam Campbell who professes power of second sight and is stopping at the home of Mr. Marshall Lockard on New Street above Franklin will consult with” people who have medical problems. The litany of conditions she treated include: “rheumatism, female complaints, neuralgia, and dropsy, palpitations of the heart, ruptures, malaria, insanity, cancers, and tumors.” Unfortunately, there was no follow-up article in The Ledger.
In November 1898, the borough was the scene of faith healing on a grand scale as the Boy Phenomenon and his agent came to town for a two-evening performance at the Opera House on King Street. According to the advertisement in the Nov. 29 issue of The Ledger, the Boy Phenomenon, whose real name was Dr. Franklin Temple, was a “Magnetic Healer who cures the Deaf, Blind, Sick, Lame, Rheumatic, Paralytic and all Chronic Diseases by the LAYING ON OF HANDS.”
The crowds that turned out for these demonstrations on Nov. 29 and 30 were too large for the opera house. The Ledger reported that on Nov. 30 there was “a regular crush of humanity” that “would have been large enough to the fill the place twice,” resulting in “hundreds of people” being turned away.
Apparently, the Boy Phenomenon brought his A game for both evenings as “canes and crutches disappeared as aids to walking as if by magic.”
As a testimonial to the healer’s prowess, the names and addresses of eight of the afflicted who were cured were listed in the article, among them Samuel Nagle, 351 Laurel St., who had been plagued by rheumatism, and a person known as A. Volk, who was so badly crippled by rheumatism that he or she “was assisted to the stage by two canes and ushers,” and after the laying on of hands “walked off alone.”
Bovine Assault and Battery:
Life can be full of surprises. On May 4, 1915, Mrs. Anna Scharlatta, who lived at 444 ½ South St., just west of Washington, was in her front yard when a cow, moving at a trot, thought it would be a good idea to come through her front gate. Naturally, alarmed at the sight of large bovine bearing down on her, Mrs. Scharlatta, attempted to keep the cow out by closing the gate.
She should have tried Plan B: run for the house. The two arrived at the gate simultaneously resulting in the woman being “thrown down and painfully bruised.” The episode ended right after that with the cow being “rounded up and taken down with some strong men in chains.” Though poor Mrs. Scharlatta, had no broken bones she had “a painfully sprained left arm” and “was much affected by the excitement.”
If the strong men with chains had been in charge of the cow from the start Mrs. Scharlatta would not have been bowled over in her front yard. The story that is in the May 5, 1915, issue of The Ledger under the headline COW ON RAMPAGE IN FOURTH WARD begins with Adolph Printz, who had a butcher shop at the southwest corner of High and Washington, selling the cow to his brother, Marcus, who operated a grocery store at 113 S. Washington about a block away. (Note: Marcus Printz and his children were famous for generations in Pottstown for their bakery, but that wasn’t established until 1926.)
Delivery of the beef on the hoof was entrusted to three teenage boys. The procession got under way with each one holding a rope that was tied around Bossy’s neck. Apparently, the cortege hadn’t traveled very far when the cow decided to run off.
Two of her escorts quickly dropped their tethers, but the third, 16-yearold Abraham Printz had his line wrapped around his wrist, so when the cow accelerated Printz was dragged behind her, down Washington Street and over the railroad bridge, “meeting with all kinds of obstacles along the way.” Printz got loose from the rope at South Street. With “all his clothing torn nearly off” and “considerably cut up and bruised,” he was the worse for wear but not seriously injured.
Benefactors Provide for Pottstown’s Poor:
In the 1950s, three Pottstown residents were revealed as benefactors of the borough, leaving the town’s citizens a combined total of about $650,000. The first was Wilfred G. Fronheiser, who in his will left $185,000 for the “good of the people of Pottstown.” The money was donated after the death of his widow in 1956.
The estate of Mifflin W. Bailey, which as of Dec. 15, 1959, according to his attorney, Joseph L. Prince, was “over $200,000,” was also slated to go to the people of Pottstown once the necessary federal approval was received for establishing a charity.
In the week prior to Dec. 15, the final adjudication of the estate of Martha Fenstermacher was accomplished, clearing the way for a $257,000 trust fund for the “poor and needy of the borough of Pottstown.”
Martha A., probably named for her mother, Martha A. (Brooke) Fenstermacher, was a daughter of Andrew Fenstermacher. According to The Pottstown Mercury article of Dec. 15, 1959, Andrew owned a very successful feed business in Pottstown. When he died in 1930, his entire estate went to his only surviving heir, his daughter, Martha.
Martha Fenstermacher was a lifelong and devoted member of Trinity Reformed Church (now Trinity Reformed United Church of Christ) in Pottstown. To her pastor, the Rev. Dr. John B. Frantz, she was a “generous person who never married and instead devoted her entire life to helping the poor.”
According to The Mercury article, Frantz “also recalled many times seeking financial help on behalf of a needy person of the church. Miss Fenstermacher gave without hesitation in each case.” And “often the person would remain ignorant of where the money came from.”
Though she never married and lived alone after her father’s death, she was a “very warm person who had a large circle of friends.”
Of course, this final vignette raises the question of what happened to all this money left behind for good works. Hopefully one of our readers has the answer.