Looking Back to 1890

From the December 31, 2014, Mid Week (Sycamore, Illinois) "Looking Back."

Some interesting items from 125 years ago.

JANUARY 1, 1890:

**  No one gave Fred Davis a Christmas present last week, so he helped himself to one.  he entered the house of John Gray, north of Genoa, while the family was at supper, and stole a gold watch and some money.

**  There is an epidemic of sore throats, boneaches, headaches and fever in DeKalb.

**  Mr. I. L. Ellwood, while in Washington, D.C., last week had a personal interaction with President Harrison at the White House.  (Ellwood was prominent in the production of barbed wire and quite wealthy.)

**Arch Miller of Hinckley gave land for the city water tank and will be supplied with free water for 99 years.

**  The Army reports for November show 158 desertions out of 24,000 enlisted men.  Desertion from colored regiments was less than from white ones.

--Cooter

Shorpy Takes a Look at 1890s US Navy

Always a great place to find some great old photographs and even better since you can blow them up for unbelievable detail, the Shorpy site featured this era in US Navy history with photos taken aboard the USS Maine, USS Brooklyn and USS Oregon as well as at the US Naval Academy back then as well.

The USNA photos were of the baseball team and the Class of 1894, all 23 of them.

There were also two pictures taken below deck on the Brooklyn c. 1897 and a boxing match on the Oregon the same year.

Yesterday, there was a picture of some of the unfortunate USS Maine's crew dressed for a masquerade ball and a gun gang in 1896, two years before the unfortunate explosion in Havana Harbor, Cuba, which prompted the US entry into war with Spain.

Of interest, there were black sailors serving aboard the ships, indicating that they were not segregated at the time.

A Real Trip Back. Thanks Shorpy. --Cooter