NEXT MEETING
Sunday,
March 26th, 2 P.M. in the museum on East Lawn Avenue
The Champaign County Historical
Society and co-host Champaign County Preservation Alliance have scheduled a
railroad-oriented program. A host of presenters will talk about various aspects
of Champaign County’s railroad history. Among the articles on display will be
maps, pictures of railway stations in Champaign County, photos of the
Preservation Alliance’s railroad car restoration, railroad locks, and railroad
tin ware manufactured by the Johnson Manufacturing Company.
As always, the
public is invited to attend.
Please Note!
The Champaign County
Historical Society membership list is to be revised in March. The names of
members whose dues are in arrears, will be deleted. Please check the address
label on your last newsletter. If the date “2006” or “comp” appears on it, you
are safe. If not, please sent your $10.00 annual dues TODAY! We would be sad
to see you leave the Society.
________________________________________________________________________
New Members
The Champaign County Historical
Society welcomes new members Max and Janice Coates of North Lewisburg, Ohio.
Please notice the enclosed brochure pertaining
to Freedom Grove.
- Historical Tidbits –
Introducing the Knife
While
dogs customarily are regarded as man’s oldest and most loyal friends, one
historian says, “not so; knives are man’s oldest and most faithful companions.”
To whichever generalization you subscribe, however, it rarely has been
questioned that mankind’s first implements were knives—thin pieces of flint or
quartz sharpened into cutting edges. Some of these knives, attached to wooden
or bone handles, have been found with the remains of 100,000 year-old Stone Age
people.
Ultimately, these primitive knives were adapted
for weapons—swords, daggers, spears, and sabers, to name a few. Only much later
were knives designed for dining purposes.
Until the
end of the 17th century, most table knives had sharp, pointed tips
but Cardinal Richelieu, a French religious and political leader, changed all
that. It seems the Cardinal frequently entertained a certain nobleman at dinner
who was in the habit of picking his teeth with the point of his knife. Revolted
at the man’s poor table manners, Cardinal Richelieu ordered the points of all
his table knives ground down so the ends were rounded. Others at the French
court followed suit.
Table
knives—silver ones, that is—were prized possessions and normally stored in
elegant knife boxes with locking devices. Some boxes were made from fine
woods. The illustration depicts a knife box that dates from circa 1760. Made
of painted and gilded sheet iron, it is one of a pair and stands 16½
inches high.
Picture not
available
The range
of knives, silver and otherwise, is amazing—draw knives, survival knives,
pruning knives, paring knives, grapefruit knives, scalpels, razors, sickles,
chopping knives, machetes, filleting knives, carving knives, bread knives, fruit
knives, steak knives and butcher knives. There are knives—the dagger type—that
cleverly are concealed in canes. And, of course, there are pocketknives of all
sizes and descriptions.
Adam A. Wiant of
St. Paris, Ohio, once related an amusing story pertaining to pocketknives. The
school he attended when a small boy was a one-room, log structure that was
elevated off the ground by large boulders, one at each of the four corners. The
hogs that ran loose in the neighborhood frequently sought shelter under the
building where their loud grunting occasionally became annoying. When they
scratched their backs by rubbing against the underside of the floorboards,
Charlie remembered how the older boys, all of whom carried pocketknives, would
open them and stick the blades down through the wide cracks into the pigs’ backs
to make them squeal.
Picture
not available
The “Rapid” Ripping
Knife ad was found in the August 1891 The Delineator, a popular magazine
of the period. The three-inch long knife had a “ripper” at one end and a “pen”
blade at the other.
The
knives and forks shown in the picture below are some of those on exhibit at the
Champaign County Historical Museum. They are typical examples of celluloid and
bone handled cutlery, the kind usually intended for everyday use.
Picture not
available
A
small book entitled A Pretty Little Pocket Book, printed in America about
the time of the Revolution, listed rules for the behavior of children at the
table. They never were to ask for anything on the table; never to speak unless
spoken to; always to break the bread, not to bite into a whole slice; never to
take salt except with a clean knife; not to throw bones under the table. They
were instructed to “Hold not thy knife upright, but sloping; lay it down at
right hand of the plate, with end of blade on the plate.”
One
of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes refers to a knife:
Little Tom Tucker
Sings for his supper;
What shall he eat?
White bread and butter.
How shall he cut it,
Without e’er a knife?
How will he be married
Without e’er a wife?
In
1683, eighty-five thousand acres of land in what was to become the state of New
York was purchased by the Verplanck and Rombout families from local Indians.
The selling price—a very long list of goods which included “ten holl adzes,
forty hatchets, and ten drawing knives.”
An account book for a Mr. Joseph
Gould recorded the purchase of a case of knives and forks in 1752. He paid: “a
Dear Skin, a Bottel of wine, 3 Dousen and a half of Bras Boutens,
½
a yard of Buckram and a pint of Rum.”
A 1760 invoice for George Washington
included “6 carving knives and forks—handles of stained ivory and bound with
silver.”
The
peculiar looking tool pictured below was used for sharpening knives.
Picture
not available
Today,
knife boxes and high quality silver tableware of all kinds are sought by antique
enthusiasts. Pieces with elaborate designs and elegant monograms are especially
valued. Even objects like the more primitive knife sharpener eagerly are
collected.
This
month’s newsletter will conclude with a bit of folklore. If you drop silverware
you may expect company. If it’s a knife you drop, your company will be a man;
if a fork, the company will be a woman; and a spoon means that a baby will be
your guest.
The End
Compiled
and written by Barbara E. Sour