Digging Up the Real McCoy

Considering the Last McCoy Library holds almost a thousand items already, I thought I had a large chunk of the real McCoy history. Lo and behold, I was wrong. My parents originally started giving my sister and I items to pass along family history and make sure we could identify a few key characters in the family tree. After I started my library and information science degree, my father realized how interested I was in old photographs and family papers. So when I visited home in March 2021, my father gave me a large portion of the items he had in Virginia.

While I began the digitization project here in Colorado, my father gathered even more items in Pennsylvania. When I arrived home for Christmas break this year, he had an entire vintage trunk and two other boxes full of papers, photographs, and albums. As we dug through all the containers we found treasure after treasure. It was wonderful to sit with my father and have him talk about his family history. I thought I might share some of our amazing finds! I hope you enjoy these little bits of history as much as I do. I can't wait to digitize them and get them on the Omeka instance for everyone to see in full.

The first is a framed Civil War honorable discharge document. Most of the writing is too faded to read, but the stamp at the top includes the year 1868. That makes it the second oldest item in the entire library at 154 years old. The frame is quite dirty so I will need to clean it carefully. I will also have to learn if there are techniques that can restore the faded writing.

Image 1 - A Civil War Discharge Document sits in a dark frame. The writing is faded, but the print remains. The header reads: "Army of the United States".

The second is a scrapbook of color ads put together by someone in the late 1800s. It appears to start with ads in 1881 as seen in the image below and continues on for some years. Although the album itself is covered in mildew, the ads seem to have remained intact and brightly colored.

Image 2 - A page in a scrapbook that shows 8 color ads from the late 1800s. They include the following. 1. A drawing of a young girl playing outside with two puppies on top of a crate and a cat in the background. 2. An ad for the Boston and Hingham Steamboat Co and the Nantasket Beach Railroad Company that shows one girl giving another a piggy back ride in the ocean while wearing full coverage swimsuits. A train passes in the background. At the bottom it reads "Time Table, 1881." 3. A robin on a branch in the snow. 4. A Ombre colored leaf that reads "The Estey Organ Leads The World! Catalogue Free! Brattlesboro, VT. 5. An ad reading "Crown Sewing Machines Florence Oil Stoves are manufactured at the Florence Machine Co. Florence, Massachusetts. See A Crown Sewing Machine before buying any other." It depicts two women using a stove and reading a thermometer while a boy holds a thermometer outside and girls play croquet in the background. 6. A religious card with seashells that reads "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Prov. 20:1". 7. Another Crown Sewing Machine ad with the same script that depicts a woman reading next to her sewing machine and a gentlemen with top hat warming by a small Florence stove. 8. An ad reading "Hood's Sarsaparilla Purifies the Blood" that depicts a woman in a pink dress feeding a donkey flowers.

Next up is a photo album from the early 1900s of a cruise that includes a picture of a sinking ship along with the newspaper ads describing the catastrophe. The Rhynland liner saw a ship sinking in the sea and the Captain insisted on rescuing the crew, not his first time doing so apparently. The wreck occurred off the coast of Nova Scotia on the way to Liverpool.

Image 3 - An album page includes a photograph of a sinking ship entitled "The Wreck" and a photograph of the Captain and crew lowering the lifeboat to rescue the crew entitled "Lowering the Lifeboats".

Image 4 - An album page includes two newspaper articles about the shipwreck and subsequent rescue. The first is titled "Rescued in A Storm by the Rhynland" and the second is titled "In the Nick of Time, Captain Hans Doxrud Effects Another Rescue at Sea".

And, finally, one of my favorites, a piano scroll from World War II that someone used to record diary entries about basic training. The author included fabulous self-drawn cartoons depicting what he perceived as the idiocy of his commanders.

Image 5 - A portion of a piano scroll shows a diary entry from World War II. It reads as follows. "We of course had instruction in the use of firearms at Miami. The only difficulty was the instructors didn't know what they were talking about, and I know the fellows couldn't understand a thing. The day at the range was really a riot. Why someone wasn't killed will always be a mystery to me. The instruction we received on firing and dismantling guns was next to nothing. I should hate to think what half of the fellows know about taking guns apart. I don't know but I think the guns would come apart in a rather rugged way." The author then drew cartoon soldiers covering their ears, looking down the barrel of the gun, and beating a heavy artillery gun with a sledge hammer. It continues. "Of course we had plenty of physical training. They seem to have the idea that in order to be a pilot you must first be a commando. Each day they would mark off the area and march our squadron to it. Then we would receive some training in commando tactics, and we would practice them." The piano scroll has no known copyright at this time.