My grandfather once told me he would like to know more about his grandfather. However, it was during a time when I was having my own children and the days were filled with raising the next generation. There was no time to look back. But now there is. My Granddad passed away in 1983 but I have always remembered his words to me and this blog is a result of that remembering. I have sourced my information. These are my own words except where indicated. * * * * * * * * * *
Since Jacob began several newspapers during his lifetime, I am certain he knew about the telegraph which finally spanned the United States in the early 1860s. Perhaps he and his family knew how to send and read Morse code over the telegraph since they were involved in newspaper publishing. In reading over information gathered for this narrative, it appears that Jacob liked to involve his family in his ongoing projects.
By 1870 the transcontinental railroad was completed and the Erion family were frequent users, traveling back to Ohio for visits, in fact, to many places including Hot Springs, Arkansas; Beaufort, South Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Illinois; New Orleans and Pineville, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; Winslow, Arizona; and finally, for Jacob, San Diego, California. (This genealogy research has been an eye opener for me because when I used to think about the 1800s, I imagined people traveling in covered wagons, carriages, or on horseback – which they did – but, apparently, they were also zipping and zooming around the United States on the steam engines. Americans like to travel . . . always have, always will. Bleu)
Alexander Graham Bell gave the country the telephone, which I feel safe in assuming Jacob
and Mary had at some point in their lives.
As a side note, I came across the following article which shows that human beings are always reluctant to accept new technology;
an excerpt from "Time and Distance Overcome" by Eula Bliss which is on page 19 of February 2009 Harper's magazine:
"Of what use is such an invention?' the New York World asked in 1876 after Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated his telephone. The nation was not waiting for his telephone. Bell's financial backers asked him not to work on his invention because it seemed too dubious an investment. The idea on which the telephone depended -- that every home in the country could be connected with a vast network of wires suspended from poles set an average of one hundred feet apart -- seemed far less likely than the idea that the human voice could be transmitted through a wire.”
Eula Bliss goes on to write about the War on Telephone Poles. Rutherford B. Hayes had one installed in the White House. (If you can find a Feb. 19, 2009 copy of Harper's, read the article. It's an eye opener and it shows that human beings are always the same, no matter the generation. Depending on how you look at that, this thought either gives you comfort or scares you to death! Bleu)
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the precursor to the IPOD, during the married life of Jacob and Mary; whether they had one or not, it is not noted. (I do know that the phonograph, later called the record player, was a feature in the household of Carl Andrew Erion, the grandson of Jacob Benjamin Erion. Carl loved listening to his records, especially classical music, and would sometimes whistle or sing along. Bleu) It was not until the 1930 census when census takers began asking, “Do you have a radio in your home,” then noting the answer on the census form.
Both Jacob and Mary were alive for the Wright brothers’ first flight and the building of the Panama Canal. Mary had passed away before the first global influenza epidemic hit in 1917 and Jacob died just before the first television broadcast.
Fern Terry, daughter of Jennie Mabel Erion Terry, wrote the following words about her grandfather, Jacob Benjamin Erion, in the letter she sent to her cousin Carl Andrew Erion and Carl’s wife, Louise Marie Krumwied Erion:
“Grandfather Jacob Benjamin was quite talented, a poet of some repute, a flute, or perhaps it was a fife player, and a powerful speaker. He edited the first newspaper in south Omaha, "The Stockman's Journal" . . . I don't know whether the newspaper folded or what, but I know that Grandfather taught school, and during the summer, with a horse and buggy, drove through the country demonstrating and taking orders for Singer Sewing Machines.
Aunt Lu (Luella Matilda Erion) and Aunt Alice taught school in Omaha until Aunt Alice developed Bright’s Disease and the doctors advised her parents to take Aunt Alice south for her health. This is when Grandfather applied and got charge of National Cemeteries in the South. Aunt Alice died and was buried in the National Cemetery in Pineville, Louisiana. Mother (Jennie Mabel Erion Terry) and I visited my grandparents in Beaufort, S.C. at the same time as Grandfather's sister and her daughter were visiting them. We met them, (the sister and niece) on the train and traveled two days together.
I don't know when Grandfather resigned from the cemetery work. From Beaufort, S.C., he went to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and later he retired and he and Grandmother were living in Mobile, Alabama where Grandmother died of cancer.
Sometime before October 30, 1885, Jacob and Mary Erion and their six children moved to South Omaha, Nebraska because it was there that Jacob had the distinction of starting the first newspaper in South Omaha, Nebraska, called The Globe. (Source: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nedougla/html/so1.html)
When Jacob and Mary moved to South Omaha, Nebraska, it was four miles from the post office in Omaha, located in a broad valley. Incorporated in 1886, South Omaha had a population of 1,500. There were no jails, although there was a deputy sheriff, or churches, but there was a justice of the peace. There were, however, a gambling house, two houses of ill repute, three general stores, a drug store, four meat markets, three blacksmith shops, five hotels, eight saloons, and two lumber yards, two coal yards, a feed and flour store and a number of boarding houses. (Source: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nedougla/html/SObeg1.html) The Union Stock Yards formed the nucleus of South Omaha in 1884. The stock yards were opened 1 Aug 1884. (Source: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/resources/OLLibrary/Omaha_book/omaha042.htm)
According to www.nebraskastudies.org, South Omaha is one of the oldest parts of Omaha. (Some of the nicknames for South Omaha were “Magic City,” “Porkopolis,” and “South O.” [Source: South Omaha 1886-1915, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nedougla/html/SObeg1.html]) Many immigrants from European countries like Germany and Poland lived there.
When Englishman Rudyard Kipling, author of books like “The Jungle Book” stumbled upon Omaha, Nebraska in 1889, on his way back from a seven year stint in India, he declared that it “was but a halting-place on the road to Chicago. But it revealed to me horrors that I would not have willingly missed.” (Source: Kipling, Rudyard, “Omaha Between Trains,” in Roundup: A Nebraska Reader, Virginia Falkner (ed.), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957, (originally published in Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel, New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1899), republished in Bristow, David L., A Dirty Wicked Town [1999])
When Jacob, Mary, and their children arrived in Omaha-South Omaha around 1885, packs of dogs still roamed the streets along with hordes of hogs that rooted in the garbage which was tossed out willy-nilly from even the nicest houses. Dead animals – hogs, dogs or otherwise – stayed where they dropped. It wasn’t until just before the Erion family moved to Omaha-South Omaha, that a position of City Scavenger was created to remove dead animals.
During the dry season, the dust was choking and during the wet seasons, the roads were big mud holes. Finding a substance to pave the roads was uppermost in citizens’ minds: crushed rock known as “macadam” and blocks made of cedar, granite or brick. Paving was completed sometime in the late 1880s.
Keep in mind that the Erion family lived in South Omaha, albeit in the upper part of South Omaha, which was also where the stockyards were. Imagine the pungent smells that must have wafted toward their home when the wind was just right; there was no central air to cool or warm the house so that one could shut the windows against the smell.
A fully developed sewer system was not in use until 1895 and outdoor privies and cesspools were not outlawed until 1945. Historian Michael Harkins wrote, “To avoid cleaning privies, Omahans usually provided openings in the rear of the outhouse and allowed waste to freely run out. The fecal matter found its way into alleys, streets, and eventually into the local water supply.”
The South Omaha stockyards were located along the Missouri River, the waste from the yards no doubt running into the river.
(Source for above five paragraphs: Bristow, D. (1999), “A Dirty Town.” A Dirty Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha)
As Fern Terry has already related in her letter, quoted above, Jacob Benjamin Erion, was an extremely talented, powerful man, and that power only grew as he aged. Hot tempered, he was also opinionated and competitive. He got things done. Jacob was a resident of South Omaha for only two years when he made his way onto the South Omaha School Board; he was also Secretary of the South Omaha Board of Trade. (Source: Omaha Herald, 9 May 1888)
In the 18 Apr 1891 edition of the (Omaha) Morning World-Herald under “Affairs at South Omaha” there was an article written by a reporter claiming to be a sports reporter. He visited a spelling bee at the Presbyterian Church in South Omaha and reported on the spelling bee as if it were a boxing competition:
In part:
“Round two opened up with Prof. Zerby on one side and Miss Carpenter on the other, with a good reserve. Whether the supper had dampened the ardor of the spellers or not cannot be stated, but it is positive that they all fell below the scale. Mrs. Pinney and Mrs. Mayfield each attempted to spell “preexistimation” and failed. They could not spell a little bit and were sent to the rear of the room.
At last no one remained but Mr. Erion and Prof. Zerby. They were both pretty well winded when time was called at the end of the second round, but Mr. Erion succeeded in hitting the wily professor a terrible blow over the heart that sent him to his corner so badly used up that he could not respond when time was called again and he was consequently counted out. The winner will be given a leather medal and the loser half the gate receipts.”
One could make the argument that “Mr. Erion” was possibly Frank, Jacob’s son, who would have been seventeen at the time, but I believe the Mr. Erion referred to in the above referenced article was, in fact, Jacob Benjamin Erion given the fact that a “Prof. Zerby” was competing also. The man (Jacob B. Erion) shaved off his beard and it made the news: “J. B. Erion has severed connection with his whiskers. Comment is useless; he looks twenty years younger.” [Source: Omaha Morning World-Herald, 20 Jun 1891] So to believe that it was Jacob Benjamin Erion that “succeeded in hitting the wiley professor a terrible blow over the heart” is not so far- fetched. He clearly enjoyed being in the spotlight.
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