Hark, friends, gather round and listen 2 their f8, and please 4C: 1 day U 2 shall cease 2B an N.TT!Ī 2010 article in the New Yorker mistakenly identifies the anonymous poet who wrote “Katie Jay” as Charles Carroll Bombaugh. Katie Jay’s trans-Atlantic cousins were no less than the unfortunate “Miss LNG of Q” (Ellen Gee of Kew, blinded by a “B” sting in the “I”) and “MLE K of UL” (Emily Kay of Ewell, burned to death while putting “:” a kitchen fire grate.) Sad nymphs and “SX” (Essex) maids, these. The original “KTJ,” in turn, might have been inspired by two incredible British “text-speak” dirges published in The New Monthly Magazine in London in 1828. An even earlier “cousin” of this amazing poem was printed in the Utica Organ in upstate New York, the Columbia (Penn.) Spy, and Atkinson’s Casket , a popular Philadelphia literary journal, as far back as 1832. John Jones probably saw “Katie Jay of Uticay” in a copy of Dwight’s American Magazine, published in New York in February 1847. (In fact, due to safety concerns over wandering children and livestock, trains were nearly even banned in Indiana before the Civil War.) Early trains often traveled at a speed that we would find maddeningly slow today - sometimes running at less than 20 mph, hardly faster than a horse at a gallop or a steamboat going downriver. Samuel Morse invented his own “abbreviated” form of communication around 1844, but the telegraph didn’t come into common use until the 1850s. Most of the poetry and fiction printed in antebellum Indiana papers was copied out of Eastern journals carried west by riverboat or stagecoach. Written by an unknown author around 1832 and previously printed in literary magazines back East, “KTJ of UTK” (for short) is probably the earliest example in a Hoosier newspaper of what we now call “text speak.” In one of the last issues of Indiana’s oldest newspaper, the Vincennes Western Sun, editor John Rice Jones excerpted a clever love poem addressed “To Miss Catherine Jay of Utica.” Well, gentle readers, if u r like me, u r probably annoyed the terrible vocab skills of the txt generation.īut W8 just a second. Sadly, Sam Crow never found a wife - and no little crows ever “hopped and skipped over that splendid western land of his.” He died in Greencastle in January 1916, still unmarried. Sam Crow, who was out looking for a wife on March 6, 1914, brings us up into the twentieth century. One of the most long-winded “matrimonials” was actually written up by the staff of the Lake County Times in northwest Indiana. ( Staunton Spectator, Staunton, Virginia, April 24, 1866.) The ad even went “viral,” appearing all over the South in 1866. Here’s our personal comic favorite, originally printed in a St. ( Terre Haute Saturday Evening Mail, January 25, 1873.) ( Reading Times, Reading, Pennsylvania, Febru.) ( Crawfordsville Record, Crawfordsville, Indiana, June 6, 1835.) ( The Tarboro Southerner, Tarboro, North Carolina, May 5, 1855.) ( Pittston Gazette, Pittston, Pennsylvania, August 8, 1856.) ( Nashville Union and American, Nashville, Tennessee, November 23, 1855.) ( Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 11, 1853.) ( Western Sun & General Advertiser, Vincennes, Indiana, May 29, 1824.)
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( Weekly Messenger, Printer’s Retreat, Indiana, November 24, 1832.) If you can find a time machine, this may be your chance. Here’s some of our favorite historic “lonesome hearts” ads - from the Hoosier State and all over. Some of what follows was probably meant as a joke, but these caught our eye, anyway.
#NEWSPAPER FUNNY PAGES FULL#
Heart palpitations, “foppery,” “extravagance,” and “a pocket full of musk”? No, thanks! Many prospective spouses - male and female - made no secret about their preference for “no-frills” applicants. Some of the most highly valued traits, in fact, were common sense, practicality, and a good sense of humor.
#NEWSPAPER FUNNY PAGES PROFESSIONAL#
And while Americans back then certainly ranked each other according to social standing and wealth - as they still do today - money, physical beauty, and professional promise weren’t always absolutely required in a partner.
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In the mid-1800s, before newspapers were able to print photographs alongside “Wife Wanted” or “Husband Wanted” ads, a witty writing style was essential to vintage seekers of Cupid. Chicago marriage bureaus in the 1880s had more female clients than male. While American men, especially out West, were more likely to have to resort to “mail-order brides” and the advertising columns of newspapers, a surprising number of women were also willing to do something unconventional to reel in a good husband. Taking out an ad to find a marriageable mate long pre-dates (pun intended) the days of the internet.