Huntington Historical Society

Yard sale season is in full swing now, and I finally let Mrs. Huntington out of the cellar after her last excursion as I talked about here.

She rushed home with a great find today,  much better than that box of shoe lasts’.  It was a nice gesture, although I’m more inclined to believe that she stopped off at an antique store to find something adequate enough to warm me to the idea of yard sales every weekend again.

Anyhow, she returned with an old Billy Williams record.  He was a very popular Music Hall performer, called “The Man In the Velvet Suit”, from the early days of the 20th Century. Read the rest of this entry »

Often referred to as the "Father Of Modern Body Building", Eugene Sandow was born as Friederich Wilhelm Mueller in Königsberg, Germany on April 2, 1867.  He was discovered in Italy by Florenz Ziegfeld, and recruited for his show at the age of 19. 

One of Ziegfeld's top performers, Sandow also organized the first body building competition in 1901, and was well recognized as an astute business man until his premature death in 1925 at the age of 58. 

And thus ends our very short reference to Eugene Sandow.

Original image photographed in 1893 by Napoleon Sarony, N.Y.

Phineous Zivick Huntington May 26, 2007

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This weeks tid-bit comes from a 1916 publication by Popular Mechanics.

The broom holder shown in the sketch is made of an ordinary hinge with one wing screwed to the wall. The loose wing has a large hole drilled in it to receive the handle of the broom. The manner of holding the broom is plainly shown in the sketch.
–Contributed by Theodore L. Fisher; Waverly, Ill.

The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1
700 Things for Boys to Do

Phineous Zivick Huntington
May 19, 2007

This is one of our favorite old reads, dating nearly 200 years old and long before the days of the government having much interest in such matters. Originally published in Kentucky, this was translated from french.

of  The Distiller Of Whiskey.  

Whiskey is made either with rye, barley, or Indian corn. One, or all those kinds of grains is used, as they are more or less abundant in the country. I do not know how far they are mixed in Kentucky; but Indian corn is here in general the basis of whiskey, and more often employed alone. Read the rest of this entry »

Long forgotten by a lot of people in a world of compact discs and the other high-tech gizmos of the day, are the earliest formats of recorded music. We’re going to pass on an entire overview until another day, but in the early 20th century, people were ecstatic over something called an "Edison" which played wax cylinders of 2 and 4 minutes with the music broadcast through a large, tin horn.

We’ve always loved the machines, basically because they don’t require Mrs. Huntington spending an hour figuring out which buttons to push to make them play music. As an added bonus, there’s no clocks to reset either. Read the rest of this entry »

Things must be pretty boring around here, as we seem to be wasting time looking at some old U.S. Patents.  Which brings us to a Mr. Harry M. Bigelow, a citizen of the United States and a resident of the City of Milwaukee, County of Milwaukee and State of Wisconsin.

 At first glance over the patent, I thought it was a paper trimmer.  It’s unrecognizable from any Ouija board I’ve ever seen, and Mrs. Huntington and myself are avid Ouija Board users.  I personally think it’s a lot of bunk, but she seems to like it so I humor her.  Which is fine, as I enjoy the occassional appearances by Theodore Roosevelt. Read the rest of this entry »