Ration Books in World War II

In the summer of 1941 rationing increased in the United Kingdom due to military needs and German attacks on shipping in the Atlantic. The government there asked the U.S. to conserve food, and the U.S. Office of Price Administration began warning Americans of potential shortages in gasoline, steel, and other areas. The OPA created a rationing structure after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 

Local officials chose volunteers for 5500 ration boards around the country. A system of books and stamps given to individuals in families were used to obtain rationed goods. Some stamps specified the rationed product, others were later associated with other goods. For instance, one airplane stamp allowed a person to buy a pair of shoes; stamp number 30 from ration book four was needed for five pounds of sugar. Other strictly regulated products included tires, gasoline, meats, cooking oil, butter and canned goods. All household members received ration books, as did merchants of all types. As you might expect, a black market quickly developed. Read more details about U.S. rationing during World War II here. 

Ration books were issued in four waves during the war. Book 1 came out in May 1942 and applied to sugar. In January 1943 Book 2 appeared with blue and red stamps. Blue covered canned goods, and red later went into use for meats, fish and dairy products. Book 3 in October 1943 utilized brown stamps for meats, canned milk, cheese, butter and lard. Book 4 had been issued in July and August 1943 with green stamps for processed foods such as canned, frozen or dried. Black stamps labelled "spare" were included for future use.

As if that weren't complicated enough, gas rationing was achieved with four types of use. Class A allowed 3-5 gallons a week for shopping, church, and doctor visits. Class B applied to factory workers and traveling salesmen, who received 8 gallons per week. Classes C [essential war workers, police, doctors, mailmen] and Class T [truck and bus drivers] had no restrictions. 

Our family is blessed--some might say cursed--with all sorts of paper ephemera from past decades. The ration books shown here are examples. See more comments below. 

The use of stamps to buy rationed goods was established to prevent hoarding. That behavior, along with a black market in stamps and trading and selling of stamps, were serious problems.

These books were issued to my dad's parents in Gadsden, Rosa Mae Wright and Amos J. Wright, Sr. My grandfather served in the Army briefly at the end of World War I. I've written about them here. 

Here are a couple of photos from mom's ration books 1 and 2. These were issued when she was 12, or just a "squirt" as she would say. On Book 1 her sister, known to us as Heth, signed for her. On Book 2 we see that her father, John Miller Shores, a long time Methodist minister in Alabama, signed the book. At the time there were living in Florence. You can see a photo of him and one of mom and her siblings in later years on this blog post. 

Source: Internet Archive

A 1936 Check from Marion Bank & Trust

Old checks hold a fascination for both my brother Richard and I. In going through mom and dad's house in Huntsville we've found a large batch of checks from the 1950s and 1960s Dad had saved that document payment of Cub Scout and school fees and many other landmarks of family life. Perhaps I'll do a blog post on some of those one day.

This blog post is about a different check that Richard gave me for Christmas one year. Let's take a look.

As you might expect, Wikipedia has an extensive history of check use and development. In the U.S. banks issued their own checks for many decades. The current system of routing information at the bottom did not appear until the 1960s.

What is now Marion Community Bank traces its history to 1902 when the Marion Central Bank opened. That institution was forced to close in 1933 during the Great Depression, but one year later under a new charter reopened on March 17, 1934, as the Marion Bank and Trust Company. That bank operated in the original bank building until 1972, when a new headquarters opened. After opening a number of branches in that part of the state, the bank rebranded to its current name in 2021. On this check you can see that Marion Bank and Trust Company has been stamped over the original bank name. 

So, what else can we determine from this check? Based on the date in May 1936, it was written just over two years after the bank reopened and still during the Great Depression. A nice rendering of the original bank building decorates the upper left corner. A fairly recent photo can be seen below.

The names of two men appear on the check. W.R. Hale wrote the check to "Cash" for $10.00. On the back the check is endorsed by J. V. Howell "Sr." The check has been marked as paid by a punch machine of some sort. 

So who were these men? 

I found a W.R. Hale in the 1950 U.S. census, 80 years old. He was born about 1870 in Alabama, a widower and roomer with James E. Stone and family, 1000 Clements St. in Marion. His occupation was listed as "unable to work". 

As William R. Hale he appears in the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Census records in Marion along with his wife Elizabeth and children. His occupation was listed as farmer. They were married on February 20, 1888. According to his gravestone seen below, Hale was born December 15, 1869, and died June 1, 1952. His wife had died in 1949. 

In the 1930 census I also found two men named John Valentine Howell in Marion. The elder Howell [19 February 1869-10 February 1941] was a retail merchant. His son was a physician, living with wife Marguerite and children at 319 E. Lafayette St. Gravestones for both men can also be seen below. 

Presumably Hale wrote this check to pay toward a store bill, since the endorsement signature on the back is "J.V. Howell Sr."

Lots of stories hidden in these humble objects...

Grave of William Ramus Hale [15 Dec 1869-1 June 1952] in Pisgah Cemetery, Perry County

Source: Find-A-Grave

Grave of John Valentine Howell, Sr. [19 February 1869-10 February 1941] in Marion Cemetery. His wife Eugenia died in 1960 and is also buried there.

Source: Find-A-Grave

Grave of John V. Howell, Jr., [13 September1896-20 August 1953] in Marion Cemetery. His father is buried in the same cemetery along with their wives. 

Source: Find-A-Grave

Old Marion Bank Building in April 2010

Source: Flickr

Lola Montez Visits Mobile in 1852

Lola Montez in 1851

Source: Wikipedia

In the first half of the nineteenth century "Lola Montez" was a famous--and notorious--dancer and actress who performed in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. She was born in Ireland on February 17, 1821, as Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. At the age of 16 she eloped to India with Thomas James, a lieutenant who became her first husband. They separated five years later, and Gilbert began her professional dancing career as Lola Montez.

In her short life Montez would have two other husbands and numerous lovers.  That group included King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who gave her the title Countess of Landsfeld. In 1848 revolutions began in the German states, and Montez fled for Austria, Switzerland, France, London, and then America. She supported herself by dancing as she had earlier under the name Lola Montez.

Her career declined in the later 1850s. After a failed tour of Australia in 1855 and 1856, she returned to the U.S. by way of San Francisco. Further U.S. tours were unsuccessful, and she spent her final years in rescue work among "fallen" women and lecturing on morality. Montez died of syphilis on January 17, 1861, a month short of her 40th birthday, and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. 

At the height of her fame she descended upon Mobile in December 1852. The Port City was not very large at the time, but had a lively performing arts scene and was a perfect stop for entertainers or theatrical companies appearing on tour in Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans. Thus Mobile attracted Montez after appearances in Charleston that year.

Her venue was the Mobile Theatre, opened in 1841 and being operated at that time by Joseph Field, an actor, writer and theatrical manager. I've written about one of his publications, The Drama in Pokerville [1847], some of which is set in Wetumpka. Local newspapers expressed some trepidation about the appearance of Montez, but her visit was also highly anticipated. The Mobile Daily Register declared that "...the terror of the Jesuits, the favorite of an Emperor, and the cynosure of all eyes; will make her appearance on the Mobile state tomorrow evening...already we are impatient." Because of her lifestyle and her for-the-times erotic dancing, Montez was a controversial figure, but that didn't seem to prevent many people from attending her performances.

The arrival of Montez by the steamer Louisa was delayed, which no doubt increased the local anticipation. She gave six performances from December 21 and 28. Despite selling out the theater, Montez and Field had entertainment competition in Mobile. Horse races continued at the Trotting Club and Dan Rice's Hippodrome featured minstrel shows, circus acts and a parody of Hamlet.

The December 21 crowd included "a large number of highly enthusiastic ladies" who watched Montez in her "Sailor's Dance" and "Spider Dance". These performances came between various comedies from the theater's regular company. After two night of dances, a third night on December 23 featured "Lola Montez in Bavaria" with the lady enacting scenes from her own life. Christmas Eve repeated the drama, but added "Sailor's Dance".

On Christmas Day she played the title role in Maritana with Joseph Field as the male lead. Maritana was an opera written by William Vincent Wallace and first performed in London in 1845. Her final appearance on December 28 repeated "Lola Montez in Bavaria" and added the dance "La Saviglliana". On that final night the enthusiastic audience convinced her to repeat the dance. In a curtain call Montez expressed her appreciation of the response to her by audiences in Mobile. She left the city and arrived in New Orleans on New Year's Eve. 

I want to express my appreciation to Sara Elizabeth Gotcher whose dissertation cited below provided many details and newspaper quotes about Montez's appearance in Mobile. 

 

FURTHER READING

Burr, C. Chauncey. Autobiography of and Lectures by Lola Montez [1860] 

Gotcher, Sara Elizabeth. "The Career of Lola Montez in the American Theatre" PhD dissertation, LSU, 1994

Morton, James, Lola Montez: Her Life & Conquests, Portrait, 2007

Seymour, Bruce, Lola Montez, a Life, Yale University Press, 1996

Lola Montez in 1860
Photo by Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Historical Marker database

Alabama River at Selma on a 1907 Postcard

Now we come to a post on one of my favorite topics, old postcards. I've written one piece on a number from my own collection, "Some Old Alabama Postcards (1)". I really must move on to part two one of these days. I've also incorporated postcards into a number of entries on this blog, such as the one on "Carnegie Libraries in Alabama."

I've found many interesting cards, such as the one below, at the Alabama Mosaic collection of digital resources from various libraries in the state. You can browse through more than 8200 here. 

So what's up with this postcard? First, it was issued by the Rotograph Company, founded in New York City in 1904. The company closed in 1911, but not before it had printed cards with numerous images from around the U.S. 

This card has a view of the Alabama River passing through Selma, with a bridge in the foreground constructed in 1885 by the Milwaukee Bridge and Iron Works. Another postcard below shows the draw bridge open for river traffic. This structure was replaced by the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1940.

The address side of the card tells us it was sent to Miss Zola Campbell of Darlington, Indiana. Via Ancestry.com and Find-A-Grave I located a Zola Campbell who died in 1960 aged 78 and is buried in Darlington. Various entries for her in the U.S. census track her through the years in Indiana; she never married. In 1950 she was living with another single woman two years younger on Main Street in Darlington and working as a library assistant. The 1940 census gives the same information, except she is a "Senior Library Clerk."

The postmark is unreadable, but the sender has conveniently written a date, August 21, 1907, on the front of the card along with his message. The one-cent Ben Franklin stamp used here was first issued in 1902. 

So what is our correspondent's message on this postcard? He [presumably] informs Zola that "Haven't seen or heard of any of our party so far" and puts those words in parentheses. Also set off that way is "Used to swim here" either under or near the bridge. Does that mean he grew up in Selma? Visited relatives there? 

Finally, at the bottom of this side of the card is "Now wont [sic] you be good? Been fishing up the State and am headed for Texas. Had great time. Write me. With love [what may be] Mom and Dad. If that last part is correct, the card may have been written by her father, Thomas M. Campbell, who was also born in Indiana. Perhaps the "our" is himself and his wife, Zola's mother.

Except for the swimming and fishing notations, much of this message is cryptic to us. What "party" is he expecting to see or hear from? Why does he ask Zola about being good? By 1907 she was 26 years old. What is the background of the note "Used to swim here"? 

Zola Campbell's obituary can be seen below. Since she lived in a small town and died in 1960, and had a sister that survived her, I wonder if anyone in Darlington today could offer some clues. 

I presume the "B5-PC 4.50 1907" notation in pencil was added by a dealer in such ephemera.

Ah, the mysteries of postcard messages more than a hundred years old....

Source: Troy University Digital Collections

Source: Indianapolis News 23 August 2023. The 1920 U.S. Census gives her occupation as milliner. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Back in the Days of the Poll Tax

As one does in these days of modern times, I recently wandered through the online riches at the Smithsonian Institution web pages. The Alabama resources there are numerous, and this time I came across the poll tax payment certificate seen below.

Along with literacy tests, property or residency requirements, U.S. poll taxes were one of the methods used to prevent African Americans from voting beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century. After the Fifteenth Amendment enabled the right to vote for African Americans, a number of states enacted poll tax laws as a legal method to restrict voting rights. The poll tax was especially effective in disenfranchising potential black voters since African Americans made up a disproportionate number of the poor who could not afford to pay. Of course, a number of poor whites were also affected. 

This certificate is evidence that Alice Irby, a resident of Selma, paid the tax on January 29, 1966. An examiner from the U.S. Civil Service Commission certified the document. Voter registration for blacks in Dallas County had been problematic for decades. In 1958 the Commission met in Montgomery and took testimony about problems faced by blacks trying to register to vote in the state. At that time 130 of 15,115 eligible blacks in Dallas County were registered. 

In going through mom's house in Huntsville, my brother Richard and I have recently discovered five family documents that are related to this topic. See them below with comments. 

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Family of Alice Irby

Here is dad's voter registration on July 19, 1948, in Etowah County. His residency address given, 1113 Chandler Street in East Gadsden, was his parents house, and one I visited many times before my grandmother Rosa Mae Wright died in 1997. At some point the house number changed to 1313; that's the only one I remember. You can see the house in this blog post. Dad returned home from his U.S. Navy service on July 10, so he didn't wait long to register. 

The back of the certificate outlines the extensive requirements for voting: two years' residency in the state, one in the county, and at least three months in the precinct prior to the election. The potential voter also had to register and pay the poll tax. 

This poll tax receipt from Etowah County dated October 25, 1948, is apparently for my grandfather. He served in U.S. Army briefly at the very end of World War I.

 

After dad finished his naval service, he returned to Auburn to finish his education. That's where he and mom met and were married in 1950. After he graduated, the couple moved to Gadsden and lived there for a few years. Then dad got a U.S. civil service job with the army in Huntsville. This registration certificate in Madison County, dated November 11, 1955, shows their first Huntsville address, 150 Redstone Park. That neighborhood was former military housing turned to civilian use after World War II. 

Here is the certificate for dad's poll tax exemption allowed by his military service. 

Mom registered to vote in Huntsville the same day as dad. 

Birmingham's Hillman Hospital Opens in 1903

In July 2014 I posted an item on this blog, "Hillman Hospital and How It Became UAB." I recently came across the article below published in the May 3, 1903, issue of the Birmingham Post-Herald just before Hillman opened. The piece is full of fascinating details about this early city hospital, which replaced a 100-bed facility that had burned in 1894. Various temporary quarters were used until Hillman opened for paying patients on June 16, 1903, the day after a reception for local visitors. 

Groundbreaking ceremonies had taken place on May 2, 1902; a year was required to build the facility. The article declares medical advances "make the hospital one of the great institutions of today...The charity hospital is in a class alone. No other philanthropic institution is comparable to it. The Hillman hospital is a charity hospital" and will be to Birmingham what Bellevue is in New York." Birmingham Medical College, which had opened a new building next door, provided most of the hospital's medical staff.

About $60,000 was spent to build the hospital, which was four stories high of red brick and white stone. The building was fireproof and heated by steam; it featured electrical elevators, gas and electricity lighting and steam heat. The interior finish was native pine, and the bathroom and operating room floors were Venetian mosaic. Hillman had room for about 98 patients. 

The basement held clinics, dispensary, physician offices, laboratories, the laundry, various storerooms, and the boiler and fuel room. On the first floor were the nurse superintendent and resident physician offices, reception room, six private rooms, and two large wards. Six more private rooms, two more adult wards and a large children's room with sunlight and toys were located on the second floor. 

On the third floor could be found the surgical amphitheater with seating for 80 students, a private operating room and sterilization and anesthesia rooms. Also located there were five more private rooms and two wards for surgical patients. The top floor had a kitchen with dumb waiter connection to the other floors. Also found there was a dining room, nurse's dormitory and six private rooms. 

The article includes extensive quotes from the newly-hired superintendent of nurses at Hillman, Miss Nannie Boyce Hamilton, "one of the best equipped young women in the profession. She has diplomas from the famous hospitals of the north, and to her experience and training she adds a wonderful executive and business ability. she is a very remarkable young woman."

Miss Hamilton praised the plainness of Hillman Hospital furnishing which mad cleanliness much easier, "affording no lurking place for dust." She notes the presence of a study and sitting room for nurses' use in their time free from patient care or classes. Hamilton hoped to establish a nurses' library, and pointed to the amphitheater, private operating rooms and large children's ward as important features. 

Hillman was a charity hospital, but did take paying patients who were the ones able to afford private rooms. Four graduate nurses and eight student nurses cared for those private patients. Hillman Training School for Nurses graduated seven students in 1903. 

All of these wonderful facilities and staff did not prevent financial problems that Hillman soon developed. By May 1907 Jefferson County agreed to assume the outstanding $9000 debt on the property, and under it's control the hospital continued to admit charity patients.

I did a bit of research on Annie Kendrick Walker and Nannie Boyce Hamilton, but found very little. Walker did publish two family histories, Memoirs of the Graham Family [1908] and Old Shorter Houses and Gardens [1911]. On March 24, 1900, she had published a profile of popular novelist Mary Johnston in the New York Times; Johnston lived for a period Birmingham. 

Hamilton did not remain at Hillman for too many years. The Holley book cited below notes that the nursing superintendent at Hillman, a different woman, remained in that position in 1907 when Jefferson County took over. 

Further Reading

Holley, Howard L. A History of Medicine in Alabama [1982]

Holmes, Jack D.L. A History of the University of Alabama Hospital [1974]

Wright AJ. Hillman Hospital. Hektoen International spring 2015

Source: Views of Birmingham, 1908

Johnny Mack Brown as Billy the Kid

I recently picked up and flipped through my copy of William K. Everson's classic A Pictorial History of the Western Film, as one does when escaping the heat of an Alabama summer day. What did I find but a couple of stills and some discussion of Johnny Mack Brown's role as William Bonney in the 1930 film Billy the Kid. Let's investigate.

I've already written about the Dothan native, University of Alabama football star and actor in several pieces on this blog. Early in his career MGM tried to turn him into a romantic lead, such as the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters in which he starred with Joan Crawford and fellow Alabama native Dorothy Sebastian. That same year major star Norma Shearer and Brown appeared in A Lady of Chance. I've devoted five posts to that film, since much of it is set in Alabama. 

In 1930 he was teamed with Crawford again in Montana Moon, which also co-starred Dorothy Sebastian. A third pairing with Crawford did not work out. Audiences failed to respond to early showings and MGM ordered the film Complete Surrender reshot with Clark Gable opposite Crawford. 

Brown soon left MGM and moved into westerns. I've posted about one of those, the 1945 "Flame of the West" in which he plays a new physician in town. Now it's time to look at another. 

Billy the Kid was one of four films Brown made in 1930 and was directed by King Vidor [1894-1982], whose career in the movies began in 1913 and lasted until 1980. The film also stars Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett, the lawman who tracked down and shot Billy on July 14, 1881. The outlaw had been sentenced to hang, escaped and killed two deputies in the process. As it happens, Garrett was born in Chambers County, so there's a second Alabama connection in this film.  

Today Henry McCarty aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid is an iconic character with many appearances in popular culture, ranging from films and television episodes to comics and video games. But in 1930 he was just beginning his rise in the pantheon of western outlaws.

A folk song "Billy the Kid" appeared at some point in the west; the Sons of the Pioneers recorded it in 1937. A play "Billy the Kid" ran on Broadway in 1906. Two silent films about Billy were released in 1911; both starred women impersonating the male outlaw. Brown & Vidor's 1930 film was the first sound movie devoted to the Kid, and the first in which a male starred in the role!

This film was one of two released in 1930 that a used 70mm widescreen process; the other was The Big Trail starring John Wayne. Unfortunately, the Great Depression prevented cinemas from upgrading to widescreen and only a few such  movies were made at the time. The process would lie dormant until The Robe filmed in Cinemascope and released in 1953. Wayne's widescreen version has been restored, but the only known version of Brown's film is standard-width. 

Billy the Kid runs 95 minutes and was release on October 18, 1930. The film was shot on various locations such as Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, San Fernando Valley, and Gallup, New Mexico. As the IMDB notes, the great silent film star of Westerns William S. Hart was an uncredited technical advisor. He owned some of Billy the Kid's "six shooters" and was friends with such legends of the West as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. 

Images two through six below are taken from Everson's book and offer some interesting details about the film. Hart is shown in the first photo offering one of Billy's guns to Brown. The second photo is a scene with a confrontation between Garrett and Billy. In the the text shown from the book, Everson discusses the dominance of long shots and lack of closeups and the effect of that in the standard-width version. The film is available from Warner Archive; a preview can be seen on YouTube. 

By the mid-1930s Brown began a long series of western films for several studios, including Republic, Universal and Monogram. In the 1950s his likeness appeared in a series of comic books published by Dell. He is an inductee of the College Football Hall of Fame [1957] and the first class of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame [1969]. He died November 14, 1974. Brown was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in 2008. 

Source: YouTube 

Source: Grand Comics Database