We’ve been looking at old Sears Roebuck catalogs at the East Linn Museum because they reflect much of what can be found in our collection. The catalogs won’t take us back, it’s true, to the earliest days of pioneer life in our area, which was settled around the 1850s, but the 1897 catalog is only about 40 years later, and continuities can be detected. At the same time, the 1897 catalog has a section on garden seeds not found in some of the others.
This time of year, when soggy winter days are expected to soon pass into soggy spring days, gardening comes to mind for those of us for whom planning and planting have been drilled into us by previous generations. Even those who have no connection with green-thumb movements can feel a horticultural urge when signs of spring begin to appear—like the songs of peeper frogs and the first colorful burst of dandelions in the grass.
Even those of us who believe we are familiar with heirloom tomatoes and old-fashioned flower beds can be surprised by what Sears had available in 1897, although we know plant breeding has been integral to agriculture for around 10,000 years. For some of us, the best garden is one grown by someone else, though we’re happy to help with the harvest. (We once had amazing luck growing okra, but that wasn’t here.)
The surprise comes from the number of seed varieties. For example, there are 10 kinds of onion seed and seven varieties of tomatoes.
Heirloom tomato growers may not recognize these: Ponderosa, Atlantic Prize, Royal Red, Early Optimus, Dwarf Champion, Livingston’s Beauty, and Early Ruby. We’re interested in tomatoes because we’ve heard how they were once called “love apples” and considered poisonous, being related to the nightshade family.
There are plenty of bean varieties too, divided into three categories: bush, wax-podded, and pole. Who can turn down a bush bean named Early Improved Red Valentine?
Some seeds we might not expect include artichokes, cress, chicory, and herbs from anise to thyme. There’s also tobacco, but we have to remember the list was for the entire country, not just our region—though attempts have been made to grow tobacco between Crawfordsville and Brownsville.
The seeds are sold by the pound or by various ounces. Heavy seeds like sweet corn sell by the pound. Dwarf White Kalamazoo, for instance, is low-priced at $1.05 per pound. All popcorn varieties are even cheaper at 5 cents per pound.
There’s an offer, too, for a great sale on vegetable seeds—13 packages for 25 cents. Customers are urged to go into business, keeping some packages for themselves while selling five to neighbors to defray costs. But this only applies if the 13-package offer is purchased.
Flower seeds sell for half an ounce at prices ranging from 6 cents to $1.35, the highest price being for Double Mixed Very Fine Daisies. For the most part, we find old favorites—annuals like asters, carnations, hollyhocks, morning glories, poppies, sweet peas, and sweet Williams.
But what is Adonis Autumnalis? And is Margaret perhaps Marguerites or daisies? What are castor beans, which we understand to be poisonous gourds, doing in the mix? Apparently, they are decorative. And what is a Mourning Bride?
For just a few dollars spent on seeds, it seems a pretty good garden could be put together. On the other hand, a gardener would have to look elsewhere for fruit trees, flowering shrubs, roses, honeysuckle, iris, digitalis (foxgloves), and perennials. No strawberries either—just dry seeds.
Sears would help with gardening by selling the necessary tools, plus fencing to keep chickens out of the pea patch. Most of us know shovels, hoes, and rakes, but we may be less familiar with six-tined manure forks—useful for spreading barnyard-supplied fertilizers and priced at 70 cents each, making them the elite of manure forks. We’re also not certain what a three-tined hardwood strawberry fork is used for.
If we want to look at something that appears lethal, we can consider corn knives and hooks with cast steel blades, selling at 20 cents for the least expensive and 30 cents for the most expensive, which has a serrated inner edge.
Corn planters are represented in the museum, and Sears sold one for 75 cents apiece. The garden we have in mind is too small to be worked using horse power, though there is an example of a horse-drawn plow in the museum annex.
We worry about the 1897 catalog’s advertised Paris Green sprinkler, used to keep insect pests away. Carried on the gardener’s back, it had a hose for each hand. Paris Green is an arsenic compound.
Should the gardener feel stressed with sore muscles, the catalog offers “Electricating Liniment,” which “never fails” either man or beast. Sold only by Sears, it is touted as “a new and great discovery.”
The liniment was supposedly treated by a “powerful current of electricity whereby the liniment has been powerfully changed so it never fails in its magical effect.”
“It is a certain cure for rheumatism, cuts, sprains, wounds, old sores, corns, contracted muscles, and stiff joints.” It could be had for 29 cents per bottle or $3.00 per dozen.
No doubt it could be seen as a gardener’s friend, but the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act would eradicate such medicinal cure-alls in the future—when a zap of static electricity to an afflicted area might instead be used.
When we look at the low prices in the 1897 catalog, we must remember the low wages of the time. A dollar to $1.50 a day was often standard for a man working a 12-hour day—sometimes longer. More skilled labor might earn $2.00 to $3.00 per day. Women and children worked the same hours but earned lower wages.
However, no matter the wages, if the garden did well and surplus produce could be sold—along with a housewife’s butter and eggs—Sears’ Wishbook was waiting to inspire dreams of a better day. Maybe one spent in an old-fashioned flower garden.
Although Sears did not sell rose bushes, at least not in 1897, the museum does have an old-fashioned moss rose growing south of the front entryway. It is associated with the Nothiger family, who arrived in the 1880s. The rose has caused some consternation among volunteers used to tea roses, which bloom from spring through fall, because the moss rose blooms just once—with a special sweet scent—before simply growing greenery.
Like a visit to the museum, it is worth waiting for. Planted here in 2012, it was accompanied by Margaret Nothiger Morse, who had turned 103 just the year before. The original rose was brought from Switzerland in 1884 and is listed in the Northwest Heritage Rose Registry.
For those wanting a jump start on the pleasures of a flower garden, the 1897 catalog had a collateral offering among its perfumes. A number of scents—including New-Mown Hay, Sweet Pea, and Carnation—could be found among the annual flower seeds.
Looking at the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog connects us with a long tradition of admiring the colorful attraction of both the vegetables we eat and the flowers we admire. We thank all “cottage” gardeners who continue to bring us long-established values found in hybrid beauty—whether edible or not.