proantitransubstantiationableness

OREGON CLIPPINGS is getting closer and closer to being published so here are clippings from OREGON CLIPPINGS about words.  The last clipping is more about names than words but I needed to include at least one funny clipping.

This graphic is from Pixabay.com

 The longest word in the English language is “proantitransubstantiationableness,” a jointed word of 33 letters.  “Transubstantiationableness” is the next longest.

Herr Polack, a well-known engineer and electrician, has discovered, says the Vienna correspondent of the London Chronicle, a means of telegraphing 60,000 words per hour over a single wire.

E.D. Halloway has been telegraph operator at Pasco for 10 years without a vacation, and has sent an average of 100 telegrams a day during that time.

Among all the European languages the English is the richest so far as the number of words is concerned, and it is also the one which has added to its vocabulary the largest number of words within the last half century.  The latest English dictionaries contain not less than 260,000 different words.  Next in rank comes the German language, with 80,000 words, and then come in succession the Italian, with 35,000, the French with 30,000, and the Spanish with 20,000 words.  Among the oriental languages the Arabic is the most copious, its vocabulary being even richer than that of the English language.  In the Chinese languages there are 10,000 syllables or roots, out of which it is possible to frame 49,000 words.  Another notable language is the old Indian Tamil, which is now spoken in the south of India, and which contains, according to the latest calculation, 67,642 words.  In the Turkish language there are 22,530 words.  A singular fact is that aborigines, as a rule, have very limited vocabularies.  The Kaffirs of South Africa have at their disposal not more than 8,000 words, and the natives of Australia use only 2,000 words.

There is a fashion in language, as there is in dress and in customs.  One year “only cads ride bicycles,” and the next year society sanctions the use of the wheel by members of the Four Hundred.  Croquet goes out and tennis comes in, to be succeeded in popular favor in its turn by golf.  So it is with our written and printed speech.  A chance use of a word or the coining of a happy phrase is followed by the adoption and constant iteration of the favorite expression until the monotony of it grows wearisome.  Unlike a fashion in dress, the new phrases are not discarded.  We get accustomed to them and use them still, and we use also the new forms of speech to express other ideas.  No one nowadays speaks of a tendency; it is always a “trend.”  Ten years ago “trend” was a fad-word.  Now it has quite superseded the use of the older and more accurate word.  There were “combines” and “deals” before those words were invented, and there was no difficulty about expressing the ideas without them.  We may call this era the Reign of the Intensive Adverb.  A plain, simple, unattended verb is becoming unusual.  Does any man complain?  He is sure to “complain bitterly.”  He is also “bitterly disappointed,” although his feeling of disappointment may be momentary.  No one in this age fails without failing “utterly.”  These adverbs are additions to the old stock of awfullies, fearfullies, totallies, completelies and the like, which came in with the last generation.  When all the superlatives are used up, where will the word-makers go to find forms of expression when strong and comprehensive words are required?  [Author’s note:  The Four Hundred were the social elite of New York City in the late 19th century.  Four hundred is supposedly the number of people Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr.'s ballroom could accommodate.]

A couple named Newton Lord and Jennie Helper were married in an eastern Kentucky town some days ago and the editor of the local paper was almost clubbed to death by the indignant groom because he made use of the heading, “Lord–Helper.”

Potatoes

It is potato harvesting season here in the San Luis Valley––many, many huge trucks on the highways loaded so full that you can find "roadkill" potatoes at the corners where the trucks turn.  So, some excerpts from OREGON CLIPPINGS about potatoes will be the subject of today's blog.
 
*Sam Owen has made a discovery that will be of vast importance to Eastern Oregon farmers in all dry seasons.  He has found by planting onions and potatoes in the same field in alternate rows the onions become so strong that they bring tears to the eyes of potatoes in such vast volumes that the roots of the vines are kept moist and a big crop raised in spite of the drouth.  Sam tells us that Jack Allphin is trying an experiment, too, but says he don’t think it’s any good.  He has crossed the early eggplant with the milkweed hoping to harvest custard pies.

*Mlle. Emma Calve is probably the only great prima donna who combines farming with her brilliant operatic achievements.  She has a large farm at Cevennes and rusticates there each summer.
     Last summer the famous singer went into her kitchen garden and cared for her own vegetables.  No one was allowed to touch them and the results were far better than when her gardener cared for the things.  Mlle. Calve wore a short skirt of blue jeans, sabots, and a linen shirt waist.  She spaded and hoed and watered her vegetables day after day and proudly sent gifts of the finest fruits of her labors to friends in Paris.
     The prima donna was very ill and nervous when she went to Cevennes, but this free, open-air life and the vigorous exercise soon restored her to the most robust health.  When friends ask her the secret of her cure she answers: “Spades and potatoes.”
     Mlle Calve’s chickens also come in for some of her attention but the garden is her chief delight.

*A good many gardeners have made money out of early potatoes, says the Asotin Sentinel.  The very first sold at $3.60 a bushel.  The present price is $2 for 100 pounds when sold directly to the consumers and $1.75 when sold to dealers.

*A prominent scientist of a mathematical turn, having a little spare time on his hands, devoted some of it recently to computing the bulk of food he has consumed in the seventy years of his life.  The resulting figures are surprising and in the comparative details of his report the average man who eats and drinks will find much to interest him.  The scientist says, in summing up, that if all the bread he has eaten could be duplicated and gathered together, it would weigh fourteen tons.  He has feasted on a good-sized herd of oxen, sheep and pigs, which, if represented in one animal of each of the kinds mentioned, would make the prehistoric mammoths like like babies.  “If all the milk, tea, coffee, beer, wine, liquor and water I have used or wasted in those years,” he continues, “had been stored in a vessel of sufficient capacity, its size would make the famous Heidelberg tun look like 30 cents.”
He reckons that he daily ate one and one-half pounds of bread, biscuits, cakes and crackers during sixty out of his seventy years of life, adding that as a boy under 10 years he probably consumed about half that quantity.  This makes in seventy years 280,000 to 300,000 pounds of bread, etc., a quantity equal to 441 cubic yards.  “A man eats on the average three potatoes a day, weighing in the neighborhood of one-quarter of a pound,” continues this authority.  “That isn’t much per week and per year, perhaps, but it amounts up in sixty or seventy years.  Imagine twenty-one potatoes piled up week after week for seventy years, making due allowance for a lesser consumption during the first ten years.  The giant potato evolved would fill two flat railway cars of the longest kind, and 100 men would be unable to move it.

There is more to this article and some pictures in the book.  I'm still working on the book but no specific publication date yet.

Miscellaneous Clippings from Oregon

On to book number three––OREGON CLIPPINGS.  It is all put together and now just needs proofreading and a few final touches, which could take a week or two or three.  In the meantime here are a couple of items with pictures:

August 4, 1899

New Harmony, Ind., is probably the one town in the Mississippi valley that has a sun dial town clock.  It is probably the oldest and most reliable timepiece in the country.  It has been turning off the minutes and hours and days since 1821 without over 50 cents repair.  It never runs down, never goes on a strike and as long as the sun does business, it is reliable.  Today it is something more than a timepiece – it is a curiosity.  It is historical, probably having an edge over any other timepiece in Indiana in this respect.  New Harmony was a colony settlement.  The building on which the dial is placed was built by the colonists and was used by them as a barracks.  It was erected in 1814.  There were no railroads in those days and as everything was local there was no need of anything but sun time.  The whole world ran on the same schedule then.  For several years the colony operated by a number of sun dials and hour glasses but this became unsatisfactory and at last George Rapp, the leader, conceived the idea of having a town clock.
    He was probably the first to endow any Indiana town with such an adjunct.  He went to the forest and cut the solidest black walnut tree he could find.  He finished it down to six foot lengths and made a facing 6x4 feet.  A strip was nailed across the top to throw off the rain.  He then had the colony blacksmith turn out a piece of steel wire.  The date of the construction was printed across the top in letters of fire, in other words, burned in, as were also the hours.  At the top and in the center is the figure of the sun, a thing of glory, with a man’s smiling face and rays jutting from all sides.  From the nose of the sun the steel wire was run coming to a point and then fastening directly below the sun.  The sun was then put to work and the hour markings were defined.
    Though the storms of seventy-eight years have beat against the dial, it has not begun to show the wear. 
    Sundials are curiosities now.  Probably less than one person under 35 years out of every 1,000 population ever saw one.  Still it has been but a short time since the sundial regulated affairs, and though watches were used they took their time from the dial.  Up to 1869 there was no uniform time.  In that year Professor Charles F. Dowd first took active measures for establishing a standard time.  He sought the railroad managers as the persons best adapted to bring such a plan into general service.  In that year in the country alone there were about seventy-five different standards – all of them on the sun basis.
    From his work and energies evolved what is now known as standard time and which also has the sundial as its basis.  Four meridians, each one hour apart – sun time – were chosen as standard meridians.  They are the seventy-fifth, which passes near Philadelphia; the ninetieth, passing near New Orleans and St. Louis; the one hundred and fifth, passing near Denver; and the one hundred and twentieth, near Virginia City.  By the division thus adopted, the space between them readily became divided into minutes and they into seconds, so that after all the world is thus transformed into one great sundial of imaginary lines, not only tracing the minutes but even the smaller divisions.  Theoretically it was intended that each meridian should govern the belt seven and a half degrees on each side of it; but there has been a slight variation from this.  The local time of those places at the edge of the belt will differ from the standard time by half an hour.  The details of the system were worked up by W.F. Allen, secretary of the railway time convention.  It was not until 1883 that the railways took hold in earnest.  In that year 90 per cent of them adopted standard time, and now the United States and the commercial world operates on that plan.  The time of the seventy-fifth meridian is called eastern time, that of the ninetieth called central, that of the one hundred and fifth mountain, and the one hundred and twentieth Pacific.  The adoption of standard time made New York’s time four minutes slower than previously.  At the conference of the International Geodetic association, held in Rome in 1883, the question of cosmopolitan time was first discussed.

If you meet a dark-eyed stranger whose features resemble a pair of bicycle lamps on an ice pick, feeling his solitary way by means of a fishpole covered with dog’s hair, you will be safe in assuming that he is melanolestes picipes, alias kissing bug.  In order to recognize him after this fashion, however, it will be necessary to use a microscope.  The illustration was obtained by this means at the Smithsonian Institution.
    This hideous insect is a predatory insect.  Until recently it was never known to feed on man.  Its favorite pasture has been the cubicular bug that inhabits bedding, and its most acceptable feeding time is just after that bug has had a meal of blood from a human being.  In this way it gets a taste of human blood.  It has now gone into the business for itself, and taps its food supply without the aid of a vicarious distributer.
    The kissing bug is black, has a fat body, and does all its hunting by night like the wolves in “The Jungle Book.”  It is about an inch long, has a narrow, pointed head, and a beak as sharp as that of a mosquito.  When it sucks its victim, who is always asleep, feels no pain, but the stung parts swell to ten times normal size in from two to four days.  Collodion is used in the treatment.  The probable cause of the prevalence of the melanolestes this year is the great abundance of insect life to be found everywhere.  Nature has provided this species to prey upon caterpillars and other insect pests, and with the disappearance of these the melanolestes will disappear also.  Again, nature has provided millions of of parasites which in turn feed upon this insect and destroy its eggs.
    As a rule the melanolestes picipes makes his home under the bark of rotten trees.  The insect runs with great swiftness and is hard to catch.  It flies mostly at night.  In the larvae state these creatures resemble somewhat the common bedbug.  In fact, in the states of California and Texas and in all the Southwestern country where considerable annoyance and suffering are caused by its depredations, it is commonly known as the “Great Big Bedbug.”

I can't leave you with the image of a “Great Big Bedbug” in your head so here is one more:


AUGUST 11, 1899
Among all the European languages the English is the richest so far as the number of words is concerned, and it is also the one which has added to its vocabulary the largest number of words within the last half century.  The latest English dictionaries contain not less than 260,000 different words.  Next in rank comes the German language, with 80,000 words, and then come in succession the Italian, with 35,000, the French with 30,000, and the Spanish with 20,000 words.  Among the oriental languages the Arabic is the most copious, its vocabulary being even richer than that of the English language.  In the Chinese languages there are 10,000 syllables or roots, out of which it is possible to frame 49,000 words.  Another notable language is the old Indian Tamil, which is now spoken in the south of India, and which contains, according to the latest calculation, 67,642 words.  In the Turkish language there are 22,530 words.  A singular fact is that aborigines, as a rule, have very limited vocabularies.  The Kaffirs of South Africa have at their disposal not more than 8,000 words, and the natives of Australia use only 2,000 words.


Note:  Today the number of words in the English language is: 1,025,109.8

Money

I launched CHICAGO CLIPPINGS this week.  Publishing means I got it uploaded to and approved by Amazon but launching means I set up promotions on different web sites and there are so many to choose from that it can be overwhelming.  I have learned much since THE COFFIN WAR and one thing I have learned is that researching and compiling books is way more fun than launching them.  Anyway, I opted to go with just one or two this time - baby steps.  The big promo day, September 3, finally arrived and suddenly instead of being excited I got scared no one would want my book, not even for free, and then how would I feel.  I understand the niche for my kind of books is a small one and they will never be best sellers.  I am perfectly fine with that but I don't want to be the only one who likes them either.

I checked the numbers just before we headed to town at 9 a.m. and was pleased to see there were 25 free downloads.  By the time we got to town, 20 minutes away, there were 50.  The numbers climbed steadily all day and now, on the last day of the free promotion, the total is 686 downloads.  The overall ranking of the book started at over 8,000 and got as high as 362, only 262 from being in the top 100 free books.   And CHICAGO CLIPPINGS is ranked #1 in the US History, State and Local, Midwest category!

So, because I didn't make a cent on all those downloads today's clippings will be about money from the soon to be published OREGON CLIPPINGS.

*  Four happy Dawsonites passed through Skagway recently with a canvas sack of Yukon gold that weighed 100 pounds dead weight, and which came from French gulch diggings on Eldorado creek.  They are all Canadian citizens and first came to Alaska during the popular Klondike rush of December 1897.

*Paper money cannot be used in the Philippines.  The islands are infested with ants which eat almost everything and are particularly fond of paper.  A warning was given that nothing but gold and silver coin be sent to the islands.

*It is computed that there is £80,000,000 in gold and jewels at the bottom of the sea on the route between England and India.

*An Eastern Oregon paper is taking coyote scalps for subscriptions.  Another says it will take the scalps of its subscribers if they don’t pay up their subscriptions.

*The Savings Bank, in Brussels, says the Revue Scientifique has recently adopted a process of sterilizing all bank-notes which pass through its hands.  The money is exposed for several hours to the vapor of formalin.  The Revue suggest that books lent out from the public libraries should be similarly treated.

*A good story is told of an old-fashioned miser.  He was never known to have anything in the way of new apparel but once; then he was going on a journey and had to purchase a pair of boots.  The stage coach left before daylight so he got ready and went to the hotel to stop for the night.  Among a whole row of boots and shoes in the morning he could not find the old familiar pair.  He had forgotten the new ones and he hunted in vain.  The coach was ready so he looked carefully round to see that he was not observed, put on a nice new pair that fitted him, then called a waiter and told him the circumstances, giving him ten shillings for the owner.  But the miser had bought his own boots.

Sad Story from Owingsville, KY. 1899

CHICAGO CLIPPINGS is going to be free for five days beginning this Thursday, September 3.  The more people who get a copy on the 3rd the better.  Ranking in the top 100 free books will get it noticed and that's a good thing!

This week I'm going to write about a touching story I read in a September 1899 Oregon newspaper.

Two of the most remarkable children ever born in Kentucky are those of Mr. and Mrs. C.L. Cartmill, of Owingsville.  They are Della May, aged 3, weight 180 pounds, and Willie, aged 4, weight 210 pounds.  At birth the elder weighed 8 pounds and the younger 7.  They began to grow in about a week’s time and grew so rapidly that people for miles came to see them.  Doctors and scientists from everywhere where their rapid growth was known came to study them.  They are perfectly healthy, but sleep more than half the time.
  Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cartmill are people of ordinary size.  Mr. Cartmill is quite tall but his weight is not more than 160 pounds.  He is a huckster, and although he attempts to reduce them by dieting they continue to grow.

I wondered what happened to these poor children so searched for them online.  I learned from a Kentucky newspaper that Delia May, not Della May, had died in January of 1899, which is quite a few months before the story appeared in the Oregon newspaper.  Delia May was the lucky one.

Poor Willie lived from 1895 until 1945 and spent the last 13 years and 10 days of his (or maybe her)  life in the Eastern Kentucky State Hospital.  Learning this led me to an interesting article about a man looking for a spot for a community garden in Lexington, KY, who ran across a few gravestones which led to the discovery of a mass grave of Kentucky State Hospital patients – 7000-8000 people buried in a plot the size of a normal back yard!  Most of them will never be identified.

      Name            Died         Buried at      Length of stay  Birth                                          Parents

Apparently the hospital didn't know who his parents were but we do thanks to www.files.usgwarchives.net.  This is the site of Local Vital Records from Newspapers of Bath County, Kentucky by Eric C. Nagle.  If you are in need of a major distraction, I highly recommend going here.  I couldn't quit reading it and include a few of the clippings.  I put the clippings from two different papers (both with differing information) about Delia May in bold.

September 25, 1884:  Late last Friday evening, Samuel Clay of Bath County stabbed his niece, Miss Sallie Oldham, five times.

October 2, 1884:  Obediah Dooley, a wealthy Clark County farmer, committed suicide last Sunday morning while the family were absent at church by hanging himself.  On the following day, and on Dooley's farm, the wife of Al. McDonald, formerly of Bath county, committed suicide by taking poison.  [My grandfather was a Dooley but I have no idea if Obediah is a relative or not.]

Jan. 25th, Delia May Cartmill, second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.L. Campbell, of tonsilitis. She was born in Feb. 1895 and although not quite 4 years old, weighed 115 pounds. Burial at Cartmill graveyard. Upper Prickly Ash. Also, Bath County Democrat, 02 Feb 1899.

 February 10, 1899: The four-year-old daughter of Charles Cartmill died Thursday, Jan. 26 of pneumonia. She weighed about 125 pounds.  Owingsville Democrat.

Is it any wonder genealogists have such a hard time pinning down information?  More confusion –   Here is Willie listed in the 1940 census.  Seems to be the same person but Willie is listed as male in one and female in the other.

A group called Naming the Forgotten organized to try to identify as many bodies from the State Hospital as possible and on their site is a link to www.kykinfolk.com that has a number of newspaper clippings that dealt with patients who were declared "lunatics" and why they were declared insane.

November 13, 1896:  William Fox, a colored barber, was sent to the insane asylum Wednesday.  Fox's hallucination was that he had been delegated by the Almighty to make speeches for McKinley.

February 11, 1898:  E.H. Ballard, brother-in-law of the late Col. A.M. Swope, and one of the wealthiest and best-known farmers of Madison County, was adjudged insane Wednesday, and ordered to the Lexington Asylum.  He imagined his cattle were starving and his family in want and Tuesday threatened to cut his throat with a razor.  He is seventy-four years old.

February 4, 1898:  Aggie Sydner (sic), an old colored woman who claims to be 105 years of age, and who looks nearly that old, was tried before Judge Evans and a jury Wednesday and sent to the lunatic asylum at Lexington.  She claims to have two husbands, one of whom is John the Baptist.

April 19, 1998:  Superintendent Wiley, of the Easter Kentucky Insane asylum, who recently gave Dr. S.S. Johnson permission to visit his sister in Augusta, Ga., where on Wednesday he tried to commit suicide, had a telegraph from that place Thursday night saying that the doctor will be returned to Lexington as soon as he is able to make the trip.  Dr. Johnson was a prominent dentist in this city until about one year ago, when he lost his mind while at an Ohio summer resort.

I also learned a bit about the history of the state hospital:

Eastern State Hospital

Lexington, Kentucky

The second oldest in the nation.
Location:
627 W 4th St
Lexington, KY 40508
Names (according to annual reports):

1. Fayette Hospital (1817-1822)
2. Lunatic Asylum (1822-1844)
3. The Kentucky Lunatic Asylum (1844-1849)
4. Lunatic Asylum of Kentucky (1850-1852)
5. The Lunatic Asylum (1850-1852)
6. The Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1852-1855)
7. The Eastern Lunatic Asylum of Kentucky (1855-1858)
8. The Kentucky Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1858-1864)
9. Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1864-1867)
10. The Kentucky Eastern Lunatic Asylum (1867-1873)
11. The First Kentucky Lunatic Asylum (1873-1876)
12. Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum (1876-1894)
13. Eastern Kentucky Asylum for the Insane (1894-1912)
14. Eastern State Hospital (since 1912)

The following comes from Wikipedia:
The hospital was overcrowded in 1945 - over 2000 patients. 

Most of the original buildings were demolished in 2013.

Patients that were unknown, that had families unable to pay to have their relative brought home, or patients that went unclaimed were buried on the hospital property from 1824 until 1954. The cemeteries were moved at least 2 times to the current one behind the Hope Center in 1984. The state acknowledges about 4,400 remains in the cemetery but the number might be higher. The number of unmarked graves on the property is not known. As work progresses on the property, any remains found on the property will be re-interred at this cemetery.