It started with a pocket watch

(From our email bin)

--About the Pocket Watch, a very interesting story with a surprise end. If you were in the market for a watch in 1880, would you know where to get one? You would go to a store, right? Well, of course you could do that, but if you wanted one that was cheaper and a bit better than most of the store watches, you went to the train station! Sound a bit funny? Well, for about 500 towns across the northern United States, that's where the best watches were found.

Why were the best watches found at the train station? The railroad company wasn't selling the watches, not at all. The telegraph operator was. Most of the time the telegraph operator was located in the railroad station because the telegraph lines followed the railroad tracks from town to town. It was usually the shortest distance and the right-of-way had already been secured for the rail line. 

Most of the station agents were also skilled telegraph operators and it was the primary way they communicated with the railroad. They would know when trains left the previous station and when they were due at their next station. And it was the telegraph operator who had the watches. As a matter of fact, they sold more of them than almost all the stores combined for a period of about 9 years.

 

This was all arranged by "Richard", who was a telegraph operator himself. He was on duty in the North Redwood, Minnesota train station one day when a load of watches arrived from the East. It was a huge crate of pocket watches. No one ever came to claim them. So Richard sent a telegram to the manufacturer and asked them what they wanted to do with the watches. The manufacturer didn't want to pay the freight back, so they wired Richard to see if he could sell them. So Richard did. He sent a wire to every agent in the system asking them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch. He sold the entire case in less than two days and at a handsome profit. That started it all.

He ordered more watches from the watch company and encouraged the telegraph operators to set up a display case in the station offering high quality watches for a cheap price to all the travelers. It worked! It didn't take long for the word to spread and, before long, people other than travelers came to the train station to buy watches. Richard became so busy that he had to hire a professional watchmaker to help him with the orders. That was Alvah. And the rest is history as they say. The business took off and soon expanded to many other lines of dry goods. Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to Chicago -- and it's still there.

YES, IT'S A LITTLE- KNOWN FACT that for a while in the 1880's, the biggest watch retailer in the country was at the train station. It all started with a telegraph operator: Richard Sears and partner Alvah Roebuck! 

 

Bet You Didn't Know That!  OK, maybe you did; I didn't! 

 

Now that's History.

(PPE footnote)

The above account seems to be basically verified by the following from "Sears Archives" at searsarchives.com : 

100th Birthday Of President Ronald Reagan

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Ronald Wilson Reagan Born February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois

Died June 5, 2004


At 73 years of age was the oldest person to ever be elected President.


Reagan's administration saw the collapse of Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Last Living WWI Veteran Celebrates Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODAY FRANK W. BUCKLESBy: Bill Lohmann

Frank Woodruff Buckles doesn't get out as much as he used to, and he doesn't have particularly big plans for his birthday tomorrow. (February 1st)

But then, he is turning 110.

You read that right: 110 .

For those who may not know, here is perhaps an even more stunning fact about Buckles: He's the last known American veteran from World War I, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and one of only three survivors worldwide recognized for direct service during the war. The others, as British subjects, served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

"He's an unbelievable person," said David DeJonge, a Michigan photographer and president of the World War I Memorial Foundation who is making a documentary of Buckles' life and has become his spokesman.

Buckles lives on his West Virginia farm, near Charles Town, with his daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, and round-the-clock caregivers. As you might expect, he is at almost 110 not in a condition to do cartwheels or make long speeches, but DeJonge reports that Buckles "continues to have great daily discussions with his daughter and caregivers." He occasionally wrestles with illness but is "a fighter and continues to pull through," DeJonge said.

"His daughter reports he's in great spirits and looking forward to his 115th," DeJonge said with a laugh.

I visited Buckles last year at his farm. We chatted about one of his favorite people, Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. How many people can you talk to who actually knew Pershing when he was leader of the U.S. forces in Europe in World War I?

When they met, Buckles was still a kid; he'd grown up on a farm in Missouri and fibbed about his age so he could enlist in the Army at 16 and head off to war. Pershing noted Buckles' Missouri dialect and asked where he was born. Buckles told him. Pershing's reply: "Thirty-three miles, as the crow flies, from where I was born."

"I had great respect for Pershing," Buckles said. "He was real tough. He didn't have a smile on his face, but that was all right with me."

Seeking the quickest route to the western front, Buckles joined the ambulance service and shipped to England in late 1917. He arrived in France a few months before the shooting stopped in November 1918. After the war, he escorted prisoners of war back to Germany.

World War II was a more painful experience, though he was no longer in the military. He was working as a civilian in the steamship business in the Philippines when he was captured by the Japanese and held as a prisoner at Los Baños for more than three years.

Through fate and good health, Buckles has become the modern face of The Great War, and he has lent his voice to the call to restore and rededicate the World War I Memorial in Washington.

DeJonge met Buckles four years ago as he began work on a documentary about the last U.S. survivors of the war. Within a matter of months, Buckles was the last one, and DeJonge began spending considerable time with him, conducting interviews on camera "to get every ounce of memory out of him," DeJonge said.

DeJonge has several hundred hours of interviews and other footage he hopes to transform into a documentary, "Pershing's Last Patriot." Actor Richard Thomas, of "The Waltons" and "All Quiet on the Western Front," has agreed to provide the narration, said DeJonge, who is trying to piece together the funding for the documentary, as well as a proposed larger-than-life bronze statue that has been designed by Pennsylvania sculptor Gregory Marra. The planned statue depicts Buckles with Pershing's riderless horse, and, depending on available financing, could be placed near Buckles' home in West Virginia.

DeJonge has had the privilege of accompanying Buckles to such places as Pershing's home in Missouri, the Pentagon and the White House for a visit with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

A highlight?

"Being corrected on history when we were in the West Wing," DeJonge said with a laugh.

"I saw that very famous painting of George Washington crossing the river, and I said, 'Mr. Buckles, look, there's George Washington crossing the Potomac.' He said, 'I believe that's the Delaware.'"

www.timesdispatch.com

Archaeologists Excavate War Of 1812 Vessel

For months in the spring and summer of 1814, Commodore Joshua Barney and his ragtag flotilla of gunboats had harassed the mighty British navy on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. But outnumbered and outgunned, Barney and his miniature fleet were bottled up in the Patuxent River with no escape and enemy forces approaching.

So following orders from Washington, Barney's men scuttled the estimated 17 vessels — including his flagship, the USS Scorpion — near a place known as Pig Point.

Almost 200 years later, a team of archaeologists have been combing the bottom of a stretch of the river separating Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties in search of artifacts from what they believe is the wreckage of the Scorpion.

With a storm approaching, Susan Langley emerged from the murky waters of the Patuxent on a recent afternoon last week and climbed aboard a cluttered barge floating above the presumed resting place of the Scorpion.

"Visibility is a pretty grim right now," the chief archaeologist for the Maryland Historical Trust reported as she and her colleagues from the historical trust, the State Highway Administration and the Navy neared the end of three weeks of underwater excavation efforts. The team wrapped up Monday but hopes to be back next year to resume the mission to uncover a long-buried piece of Maryland's history in time for the bicentennial of the War of 1812 campaign that ended in the successful defense of Baltimore.

Archaeologists have suspected the presence of Barney's flagship in this spot since 1980, when Nautical Archaeological Associates researchers Donald Shomette and Ralph Eshelman performed a magnetometer survey of the river bottom and found artifacts they believed came from the Scorpion. But lacking the funds and facilities to preserve what they might uncover, they decided to conserve the wreck in place — leaving its excavation for another time.

That time didn't come until this year — and only in a limited way.

"It's all about the money," said Julie Schablitsky, chief archaeologist for the highway administration, which is involved because it is Maryland's center of expertise in archaeology. (Federal and state laws require the agency to protect historical resources that might be in the way of road projects.) Much of the funding for the project comes from federal transportation programs administered by the state.

Schablitsky said the state and federal governments were able to put together $200,000 to finance this summer's explorations, which were intended to pinpoint the dimensions of the wreckage to allow its excavation in future years.

"It truly is a literal time capsule, and 200 years would be a perfect time to open this time capsule," Schablitsky said. "This is a prime opportunity to garner support and enthusiasm for what we believe will be a very symbolic object to the entire state of Maryland."

The events that put the Scorpion on the bottom of the Patuxent are part of a heroic but little-known chapter in American history involving an all-but-forgotten hero of the early Navy.

Barney, born near what is now Dundalk, was a veteran of the Revolutionary War who re-entered naval service after war with Britain broke out in 1812. The summer of 1814 found him in command of the Chesapeake flotilla, a makeshift fleet of shallow-draft barges that did a surprisingly effective job of delaying and annoying the British. Barney's flagship was the estimated 50-foot Scorpion, with two long guns and two carronades.

In 1814, the British dispatched a fleet and army to the Chesapeake Bay region, where they raided costal settlements. Barney's ships were forced to flee to the sanctuary of the shallow St. Leonard Creek near the mouth of the Patuxent, where British warships could not pursue them.

Barney's sailors and a detachment of Marines staged a breakout at the Battle of St. Leonard Creek that allowed the flotilla to reach the Patuxent. Barney took his fleet as far north as he could, to a spot near present-day Waysons Corner.

After the fleet was scuttled, Barney led his sailors and Marines overland to join the Army at Bladensburg, where U.S. forces were routed Aug. 26 despite the stubborn stand made by his men. Barney was badly wounded and taken prisoner in the battle, which preceded the British capture of Washington.

Barney died in 1818, possibly as a result of his wounds.

Only now, said Bill Pencek, executive director of Maryland's War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission, through the excavation is Barney getting his due.

"It's very exciting because it brings attention to the most important and inspirational figures of America's forgotten war, Joshua Barney," Pencek said.

Rodney Little, director of the historical trust, said the Scorpion — if that is in fact what it is — could turn out to be the best-preserved wooden ship ever found in Maryland waters. He said the vessel was sunk quickly — without much opportunity to remove objects that would now be valued artifacts — and silted over within a few years by a series of storms. The silt, he said, has acted as a preservative.

"What we have here is a vessel that appears not to have collapsed. Its structural integrity appears to be reasonably intact," he said. Little said the funding for future work isn't 100 percent certain but added that the team has "fairly strong" commitments of about $4 million — enough to pay for most of the work being planned right now.

Schablitsky said the investment in archeology could pay off by generating tourism as people visit the excavation site.

To excavate the wreck, Schablitsky said, the team will need to install a device known as a coffer dam, which would section off part of the roughly 10-foot-deep river and pump out the water to expose the bottom. Her hope is that by 2012, the team will be able to erect viewing platforms from which visitors can observe the work being done within the confines of the coffer dam.

For now, Schablitsky said, there are no plans to raise the ship because the money is not available to conserve it — a venture she estimated would cost $7 million. Like Shomette and Eshelman before them, the Scorpion team may have to recover what they can and move on.

"Sometimes you have to leave something for the future," she said.

www.baltimoresun.com

Baltimore and Norfolk To Be Ports-of-Call

NORFOLK — Norfolk and the port of Hampton Roads are among five destinations for Operation Sail Inc., a commemoration of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and the birth of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The other ports announced Tuesday in Norfolk are Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans and New York City.

Called OpSail, the 2012 celebration will bring an armada of tall ships and naval vessels and the Blue Angels flight demonstration team to Virginia. The commemoration begins May 2012 in New Orleans and concludes in Boston Harbor on July 4, 2012.

Norfolk has seen its share of tall ships, including the 2007 commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.

www.easternshorenews.com

Babe Ruth Museum Has A Mystery To Solve

It hangs in an upstairs display case at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum on Emory Street, an old baseball card at the center of a Baltimore mystery.

Inside the faded red border is a photo of the great Babe Ruth gazing off to his left, somehow looking pensive and mischievous at the same time.

The future Hall of Famer is 19 years old, tall and lean, not yet showing the effects of a prodigious appetite for beer and hot dogs that developed over his lifetime.

This is the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card. It's one of the most valuable cards on the market, priced at a cool $500,000 in good condition. No more than 11 of the cards are believed to exist.

Museum officials are ecstatic to have it in their possession. While displaying the card for 12 years, they learned only recently that its value had skyrocketed.

"The Honus Wagner tobacco card used to be the Holy Grail of collectibles," says Mike Gibbons, the museum's executive director. "Now the Ruth card is the Holy Grail."

Gibbons and his staff are so excited about the card that they plan to make it the centerpiece of a "blockbuster" display on the history of baseball card collecting.

But before they do, they want to contact the card's owner, the Baltimore man who generously loaned the card for display. They want to let him know about their grand plans for his wonderful gift.

Except … they can't find him.

In this age of computer databases and search engines and 24/7 social media connectivity, the man has flat-out disappeared.

He vanished in a way that seems almost impossible to do in this day and age.

And all he left behind was one of the most expensive baseball cards in the world.

An offer they couldn't refuse

If you ask Babe Ruth Museum officials, they'll tell you the story begins in June 1998. That's when a local man named Richard Davis approached them with an offer.

He was in possession of the 1914 Ruth rookie baseball card in good condition, along with 14 other cards issued that year, mostly of Ruth's teammates. Davis agreed to allow the museum to display them on a long-term basis, with no time-frame for their return.

The cards were from a series issued by the old Baltimore News when Ruth had only recently left St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, the Baltimore orphanage where he had been consigned at age 7 by his parents for "incorrigible behavior."

A 19-year-old pitcher, he had just signed his first professional baseball contract with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. The team was managed by the legendary Jack Dunn, who had agreed to be Ruth's guardian. As the story goes, Ruth's teammates took to calling him "Jack's newest babe," and the nickname stuck for the rest of his life.

Museum officials were delighted with Davis' loan. Even back then, they knew the card was valuable. But they didn't think it was worth anything approaching the amount the 1909 Wagner tobacco card was fetching. A card of the Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame shortstop had sold for $640,000 in 1996.

"We're in the sports heritage business, not in the business of buying and selling memorabilia," Gibbons says of why the Ruth card wasn't appraised back then.

Still, Gibbons knew the Ruth card was rare. Not a lot of people had come across it back in 1914. And the ones who did apparently weren't excited enough to hold on to it.

"It had a very limited distribution, just in the Baltimore area," says Brian Fleischer of memorabilia evaluator Beckett Media in Dallas. "And couple that with the fact [Ruth] was a rookie."

In addition, World War I had just begun, in July of that year, about the time that baseball card experts believe the Ruth card was issued. And even though the U.S. would not enter the war until 1917, Americans seemed to have little passion for frivolous pastimes such as collecting baseball cards.

"There could have been more important things to worry about than the … card of an unknown future Hall of Famer," notes Fleischer dryly.

Richard Davis died in August 2001. His son, Glenn Davis, then entered into the same loan agreement with the museum concerning his father's card collection.

And for the next eight years, the Ruth rookie card was displayed with little fanfare in an upstairs room adjacent to where Ruth was born.

Then last year, Gibbons and his staff were alerted to a story in Forbes magazine on the world's most expensive baseball cards.

There, at the top of the list, was the 1914 Ruth rookie card. And now the price listed for the card was an eyeball-popping $500,000.

Not only had its price taken off, but the Honus Wagner tobacco card had nose-dived in value. Now a Wagner card in comparable condition was worth only $300,000, according to Beckett Media.

Part of the reason, according to Fleischer, is that experts now believe there are some 50 or 60 Wagner tobacco cards in existence, compared to the far smaller number of Ruth rookie cards. So while a Wagner card in almost mint condition sold for $2.35 million three years ago, it's estimated that a Ruth rookie in similar condition could command between $3 million and $5 million.

At this point, museum officials had their Ruth card photographically appraised by Beckett Media. The judgement was, yes, the card was in good condition. Therefore it was worth a half-million dollars.

Hearing this, museum officials quickly decided the Ruth card needed to be displayed more prominently. The museum, which opened in 1974, has struggled in the down economy. A blockbuster display of a rare Ruth card would only help attract interest.

"We knew we had a valuable piece" before, Gibbons says. "But what Forbes was saying made it a totally unique and rare situation."

In search of the owner

Their first order of business was to try to contact Glenn Davis to let him know of their plans for the card.

But he was no longer at the address he had listed on the original loan form. He had left no forwarding address, either. And an Internet search and dozens of phone calls also failed to turn up the right Glenn Davis.

On the original loan form, Davis had listed his employer as Duron Paints. But the company, which had been taken over by Sherwin-Williams, told Gibbons and his staff that it couldn't release private information about an employee.

When museum officials persisted and sent a certified letter to Duron headquarters in Beltsville, they say, the company promised to try to locate Davis.

But they say Duron never got back to them. Calls by the Baltimore Sun to Duron's Human Resources department Monday were not returned.

The search for Davis had arrived at another dead end.

Not that museum officials are giving up.

Now they're hoping a newspaper article will help them locate the mysterious Glenn Davis.

They're eager to find him, eager to get started on their new display. And they're anxious to tell the world that the Baltimore museum that celebrates the most iconic figure in sports also has one of the rarest, priciest memorabilia items associated with his name.

"For a long time, we've had this jewel, this gem," Gibbons says of the card. "And we never tooted our horn about it. Now we're proclaiming publicly that we have this incredible artifact. And we're hoping the public will come to see it."

It would be nice if Glenn Davis comes to see it, too.

Although right now, museum officials would probably settle for a phone call.

www.baltimoresun.com