Lookie what we found in our old house

[47of74]

We're remodeling the upstairs of our house, which was built around 1880. Except for carpet and fresh paint jobs the upstairs hasn't really been touched as much as the rest of the house. So this is the first substantial redo and stuff is being pulled up that hasn't been pulled up before.

My brother found this stuffed under some trim that he pulled up, an old grocery ad from November 1878







Having spent the last 130 some years inside a trim board it looks to be in pretty good shape.

[cyberswede]

1. That is so cool!

Are you in Dubuque? The German is great - love the various typefaces.

[47of74]

3. Fairly close to there

I live fairly close to Dubuque. Close enough that this traveled all the way down from there in the 1880s, which would have been quite the journey back then.

[ellisonz]

2. All I want to know...

How do I order frozen White Castle sliders?

[bemildred]

4. You might want to look around for somebody to give that to.

Historian, somebody like that ...

[NJCher]

5. how cool

check around and see if there are any relatives.

I live in a house built in 1875, so I can identify.

Thanks for sharing.


Cher

[Hissyspit]

6. I found an old newspaper ad for "Citizen Kane" that was used as wallpaper

in an old abandoned dog-trot cabin in the backwoods of Tennessee. I still have it.

[1monster]

9. Amazing what was used for building materials when traditional materials of means

were unavailabe. I grew up in a pre Civil War home that has a kitchen added during the Depression. We tore out the kitchen walks when I was a preteen and found that inside the clapboard shell was only painted newspapers and canvas. the rest of the house had the traditional clapboard outside and horse hair, wooden slats covered by plaster inside. The kitchen was simply clapboard outside with layers of painted newspaper and canvas inside. It worked. Necessity is the mother of invention or needs must when the devil drives.

[jdadd]

7. My Cousin the librairian,

Works in the reference dept of our local Library. He's constantly getting donations of old papers,ads, and photos found by owners of old houses. Maybe the Dubuque Library would be interested in this.

[Mopar151]

8. Ask your local Historical Society

Or the one from Dubuque. They often maintain a local history archive.

[AlbertCat]

10. I can beat that!!!!

I had a roommate after collage who liked antique furniture. He was a set dresser and I was a costumer. He bought an 1830's couch at some flea market, and the upholstery was dreadfully faded and coming apart. It musta been the original because when we took it off we found in the seat stuffing half (????) a velvet coat. It was picked apart into its pieces but all the parts of the left side of an 1830's cutaway coat were there.... in bottle green velvet. I made a pattern out of it and used it in a Dickens show I did a year or so later.
It looked very much like this coat:



But with sleeves that were fuller and gathered into the armseye at the top and a very high collar around the back of the neck. (this coat looks more 18-teens/20's... the gathered sleeve and high collar gave the decade away...1830's)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

11. I would get that framed in that special glass. cool find!

[JDPriestly]

12. Wonderful, Dubuque, Iowa

Interesting mixture of English and German -- and in print. You don't see that very often.

This was printed for a community in which, as a rule, people must have spoken both languages.

[47of74]

13. Dubuque has had a German presence for a long time

The first wave came in the 1850s and 60s and by the 1860s were about 30% of the population. There was another large boom in the 1880s when the Milwaukee Railroad Shops opened bringing a large number of young German families to the area. Even into the 1900s German was spoken in north end churches and schools.

[FedUpwithcalls]

14. very nice

reminds us of what prices were in the good old days