I love scrapbooks. In fact, I just went on a three-day scrapbooking retreat this past weekend, where I finished three Christmas albums and most of a 2008 album. Oh, and my high school album. (My 10-year reunion is this year. There's a little bit of a delay.)
Well, Hubby is into scrapbooking too, in his own way. I like fancy paper and family photos. Hubby, well, Hubby loves newspapers. A lot.
So what he does is cuts out old newspaper ads and pastes them into blank books. He gets super-old newspapers at used book sales, and from his mom's house in Delaware County.
Now me, I like newspapers, but really only like local news. So I was super-happy when he flagged this ad for me recently. It's from the State Register in Laurel, Del., from Oct. 4, 1919. (Price of that edition of the newspaper? 3 cents a copy!)
It's an ad for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, and one of the testimonials is a woman from Hellam!
The medicine was for "female troubles," and the Hellam woman, Mrs. E.R. Crumling, was happy with how it relieved those symptoms. The thing is,she said she wasn't able to do any work before, and now she's thrilled because she can keep up with all her housework. Um, wait. I wouldn't want a medicine that made me MORE able to do housework! (Just kidding.)
I think it's pretty nifty that Lydia Pinkham has her own Wikipedia page!
Joan: There really was a Mrs. E. R. Crumling living in Hellam. The E. R. is for her husband Emory R. and her name was Edna. They both were 26 years of age and had a daughter, Florence, three and a half when the 1920 U. S. census was taken. There were many other Crumlings living in the Hellam area in the 1920 era. Was advertising more truthful back then than it is today? Probably.
Hello,
I bet the active ingredient of the vegetable compound was alcohol. Whoo-hoo Lydia! Makin' housework fun again.
Love, Weez