Square Detective

Case #1: The crowd at the courthouse, 1886

A famous photo, a dated archive record, and a few details that don’t quite add up. Look first. Then open the answers.

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Find the clue

Count the chimneys. How many can you find, and why would a courthouse need so many?

Find the roofline. Count every stack that sticks up, even the skinny ones.

See the answer

We count six stacks on the roof facing the camera: four brick chimneys and two thin pipes (marked 1–6). The far side of the roof isn’t visible, so there may be more. The 1914 fire-insurance map answers the “why” for this building: its note reads “Heat: stove. Lights: electric.” The same map shows offices in the four corners. Stoves need flues, and for buildings of that era generally, the National Park Service says heat “was primarily from fireplaces or stoves and, therefore, was at the source of delivery,” room by room. Which chimney served which room, we can’t say: no floor plan of the inside has turned up. Confidence: count high for the side we can see; the room-by-room link is a guess.

Source: Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9 (Library of Congress) · NPS Preservation Brief 24 (general, not this building)

Dig deeper: How was the courthouse lit in 1914? · The square’s history

What does it suggest?

What time was it? Find the clock on the tower.

Zoom in on the clock face. Then look down at the street: the parked buggies, the big crowd, the hats and light dresses. Does the clock agree with what you see?

See the answer

The hands make an almost straight line, one near the 2–3 position and one near the 8. That reads as about 2:40 or about 8:10, and even the archive’s largest scan can’t tell the hour hand from the minute hand. Now look down at the street. The whole scene is in bright daylight, too bright for 8:10 in the evening. Buggies with big spoked wheels are parked out front, and a huge crowd in hats and light dresses has already gathered around the courthouse. That looks more like the middle of a busy day than early morning. Our best reading is about 2:40 in the afternoon. Confidence: low to moderate; a busy morning can’t be ruled out.

Source: TSLA high-resolution scan, 2295 px

Dig deeper: What were people wearing? · What time was it on the 1909 postcard?

Open case

Look up at the second floor. Who’s in the window, and why that window?

Find the bunting. Then count the faces.

What we know so far

Bunting is draped below one second-floor window, and people are crowded into that window, looking out. The photo’s archive record says the crowd gathered for the 1886 debate between the two candidates for governor, so a decorated window may have been a place of honor. That’s a guess. The record doesn’t say who was in it, and we haven’t found anyone who knows.

Source: TSLA catalog record

Dig deeper: Who was in the windows in 1911? · Tell us if you know

What does it suggest?

What were people wearing? Look at the hats first.

Find a woman in a light dress. Look at her hat and the back of her skirt.

See the answer

Nearly everyone wears a hat. Many women wear long, light-colored dresses and wide hats; most men wear dark suits, a few in shirtsleeves. Buggies and saddle horses fill the street, and the trees are in full leaf. What the photo can’t show at this size: whether the women’s skirts have bustles, the big back-projection the Metropolitan Museum says was at its peak in the mid-1880s.

Source: The Met: Nineteenth-Century Silhouette and Support

Dig deeper: Spot the difference: 1886 vs 1911 · Is this really 1886?

Evidence locker: photo: 1886 courthouse crowd (TSLA) · map label: 1914 courthouse note “Heat: stove” · museum source: The Met on the bustle

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #2: The postcard courthouse, about 1909

A tinted postcard of the 1874 courthouse. What can a postcard prove, and what might it be hiding?

Open case

What time does this clock say? Get as close as you can.

Find the tower. Then zoom until the face turns to dots.

What we know so far

Up close, the face breaks into printer’s dots, and the archive’s largest scan is only 1920 pixels wide. We can’t be sure which marks are hands. One more thing to weigh: postcard makers routinely retouched photos, adding clouds, removing wires and sometimes painting in details. So even a readable clock on a postcard might be paint. What do you read?

Source: TSLA postcard record · Postcard Production in America: Retouching

Dig deeper: Read the 1886 clock instead · Tell us what time you read

Evidence locker: postcard: c.1909 courthouse (TSLA tpc1330), front and postmarked back · county history: Goodspeed 1886 · research: how postcards were retouched

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #3: Old courthouse or new?

Two buildings on the same lawn, about a century apart. Look at both, then make your case.

The old courthouse (1874–about 1970)

• A 150-foot clock tower you could see across town
• Brick, two stories, tall arched windows
• Chimneys and stoves: “Heat: stove” on the 1914 map
• Offices in the four corners and a vault

Today’s courthouse (about 1970)

• Colonial Revival, the county’s fourth courthouse
• Still holds the county offices
• Built for a modern county government
• Air conditioning, elevators, room to grow? Tell us what you know.

Evidence locker: postcard: c.1909 courthouse · photo: 2008 courthouse (Wikimedia Commons) · map label: 1887 “150′ tower” · county history: Goodspeed 1886

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #4: The parade on the east side, about 1911

A band, a crowd, a car and a row of storefronts. Scan the edges, then look up.

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Find the clue

What instruments can you spot in the parade?

Find the drum first. Then count the bells of the horns.

See the answer

We see a bass drum at the left of the band, a large upright horn at the right (a baritone or alto horn, perhaps), and several smaller horns raised to play, likely cornets, maybe a trombone. The printing dots make anything smaller a guess. Which band it was, the card doesn’t say. Confidence: high for the drum; moderate for the horns.

Source: TSLA postcard record

Dig deeper: Who’s watching from upstairs? · Do you know the band? Tell us

Find the clue

Look up: who’s sitting in the second-floor windows?

Scan the arched windows on the right-hand building.

See the answer

At least four people sit on the upstairs window sills, mostly women in white blouses, watching the street. A window seat over the square was the best view in town.

Source: TSLA postcard record

Dig deeper: Who was in the 1886 window? · What were the upstairs rooms used for?

What does it suggest?

What were people wearing? What makes you say that?

Pick one woman and one man. Describe the hat, then the outline.

See the answer

Women in white dresses and wide-brimmed hats; men in dark suits with straw boaters and derbies. The Met describes the early-1910s silhouette as slimmer and more columnar than the 1880s bustle line, with the narrow “hobble skirt” of about 1911. Compare it with the 1886 crowd.

Source: The Met: Twentieth-Century Silhouette and Support

Dig deeper: Spot the difference: 1886 vs 1911

Make your case

Spot the difference: 1886 vs 1911. What changed, and what didn’t?

What we know so far

What museums say changed: the Met says the bustle was at its greatest extension around 1885, and that by about 1911 the fashionable line had become slim and columnar. What we can see: both crowds are full of light dresses and wide hats, and both are full of hats on men. What’s new in 1911: an automobile in the street. What we can’t settle: whether the “1886” women really look 1880s. Make your case.

Source: The Met: Nineteenth-Century Silhouette and Support · The Met: Twentieth-Century Silhouette and Support

Dig deeper: Is the courthouse photo really 1886? · What rolled into the parade?

What does it suggest?

Horses or horsepower? Find the odd one out in the street.

Scan the left edge, then the middle of the street.

See the answer

An early open automobile rolls behind the band, while a buggy waits at the left edge. Three years later, the 1914 map still lists buggy sales, wagon and grain, harness and feed on the square. The 1926 map labels most storefronts just “S.” (store), so it can’t tell us when the horse trades gave way.

Source: TSLA postcard record · Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9

Dig deeper: The square through the decades · What did a harness shop do?

Find the clue

Read the sign under the right-hand awning. What drink is it selling?

Find the white awning on the far right. Look just under its edge.

See the answer

Coca-Cola: the script is clear even through the dots. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says the first glass was sold at an Atlanta pharmacy in 1886 (the same year as our courthouse photo), that it was marketed as a “temperance drink,” and that bottling rights were sold in 1899 to two men in Chattanooga. Confidence: high.

Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia: Coca-Cola Company

Dig deeper: Fayetteville history · Which store was under that awning? Tell us

Open case

A storefront sign starts “GEO.” Can you read the rest?

What we know so far

We can read “GEO.” and only scraps of the rest; a pole and the printing dots hide the middle. Whose store it was, we don’t know. Do you?

Source: TSLA postcard record

Dig deeper: The east side storefronts · Make your case

Evidence locker: postcard: c.1911 east side parade (TSLA tpc2287) · map labels: 1907 and 1914 east side · museum source: The Met on silhouettes · encyclopedia: Coca-Cola

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #5: Stock Day, 1910: where was this?

A postcard titled “Stock Day in Fayetteville.” Nobody has pinned down the spot yet.

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Evidence locker: postcard: Stock Day, postmarked Oct. 7, 1910 (TSLA tpc1417) · county history: Goodspeed 1886

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #6: The square in color: look again

Two close-ups, colorized. Color can make you notice things you skimmed past. It can’t tell you what color anything really was.

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Evidence locker: photo: 1886 courthouse (TSLA) · postcard: c.1911 east side (TSLA tpc2287)

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #7: The 1914 map labels

The fire-insurance mapmakers wrote down what every storefront did. Some labels are puzzles of their own.

Find the clue

Which building was a pool hall in 1914? Find it on the map.

See the answer

Two neighboring storefronts on the south side are labeled “Barber / Pool Hall” (1914 numbers 109 and 111). Today they are 111 Market St. E., home of Señor Lopez Mexican Grill, and the lot at 113 Market St. E., where no building stands now. Sanborn abbreviation lists use “Bill’ds” for billiards, too.

Source: Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9 · MIT: Abbreviations for Sanborn maps

Dig deeper: 111 Market St. E., building by building · What was upstairs here in 1887?

Find the clue

Find the harness shop. Where was it, and what’s there now?

See the answer

In 1914: “Harness Shop” at 107 Market St. E. (1914 number 105½), today Southside Barbershop. Earlier, the 1887 map lists “Harness; Hardw.” at 103 Main Ave. S. (today a public office), and in 1897 a grocery and harness shop shared 113 Market St. E.

Source: Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9 · Sanborn map, 1887, sheet 1

Dig deeper: Why did harness shops vanish? · 107 Market St. E.

What does it suggest?

In 1914, one shop on the square was marked “electric motor.” What did it mean?

See the answer

It was the print shop at 121 Market St. E. (1914 number 117), labeled “Printing (electric motor).” The most likely reading: an electric motor ran the press. Why write it down? The Library of Congress says these maps were made to help fire insurers judge each building’s hazard, and that use labels mattered because they had “some bearing on the likelihood of fires.” The same 1914 map notes the courthouse’s “Heat: stove. Lights: electric.” We haven’t found the map key’s own wording for motors, so “ran the press” is our best reading, not a quote. Today no building stands on that lot. Confidence: high for the label; moderate that it powered the press.

Source: Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9 · Library of Congress: Interpreting Sanborn maps · Library of Congress: Sanborn maps resource guide

Dig deeper: Why did a drugstore keep oil in its cellar? · 121 Market St. E.

What does it suggest?

In 1907 you couldn’t dial a phone. How did your call get through?

See the answer

Through the “Telephone Exch.” upstairs at 127 Market St. E. (the 1907 map: “Post Office; Telephone Exch. 2d”; today The Skin Refinery). At a manual exchange an operator answered, you asked for a name or number, and she plugged a cord into the right socket on the switchboard. Operators were mostly young women, and their scripted greeting was “Number, please.” Which company ran Fayetteville’s exchange, and when dial phones arrived here, we haven’t confirmed.

Source: Sanborn map, 1907, sheet 2 · PBS American Experience: The Telephone

Dig deeper: Where was the telegraph office in 1887? · When did Fayetteville get dial phones? Tell us

Find the clue

Crockery and queensware: what were they selling?

See the answer

Dishes. Crockery is earthenware (Merriam-Webster). Queen’s ware was Josiah Wedgwood’s cream-colored earthenware, named for Queen Charlotte in the 1760s (V&A). On the square: “Hardware & Queensware” at 104 Elk Ave. S. in 1907 (today a law office), and “Crockery” in 1914 at 131 Market St. E. (today a boutique and a law office) and at 100 Elk Ave. S. (no business listed today). Whether anyone here sold real Wedgwood, the maps don’t say.

Source: Merriam-Webster: crockery · V&A: Wedgwood, an introduction · Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9

Dig deeper: 104 Elk Ave. S. · 131 Market St. E.

What does it suggest?

What was an “Electric Picture Show”?

See the answer

A movie house, at 125 Market St. E. In 1914 the map calls it the “Electric Picture Show”; in 1926 the same building is labeled “Movies.” In 1891 it had been an undertaker’s and furniture repair shop. Films were silent, and the Library of Congress says silent films “were always accompanied by at least one instrument,” from a piano or organ up to an orchestra. Why this one called itself “Electric,” we haven’t found.

Source: Sanborn map, April 1914, sheet 9 · Library of Congress: A Warming Flame (silent film music)

Dig deeper: It’s 1926. What’s playing? · 125 Market St. E.

Evidence locker: map labels: Sanborn 1914 sheet 9; 1907 sheet 2; 1887 sheet 1 · research guide: Library of Congress on Sanborn maps · dictionary and museum: crockery, Queen’s ware

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #8: Movie night, 1926

The map says “Movies.” The rest is up to you.

Evidence locker: map label: 1926 “Movies” (UT Knoxville) · national film history: Library of Congress

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #9: From the old paper: the courthouse well, 1876–1878

Two years, two holes (maybe), one pump. Read each clip, decide what you’d do, then see what happened.

Eight short items from the Fayetteville Observer, in the order they ran. At each one, stop and decide what you’d do next. Then open it to see what the county did.

Clip 1 of 8

July 1876. The county wants a well in the courthouse yard. You’re on the Well Committee. How do you pay the diggers: by the day, by the job, or by the foot? What would you do next?

See the answer

By the foot. The committee took sealed proposals at the Circuit Court Clerk’s office until noon on Aug. 5, and asked bidders to state “the price they will charge per foot in depth.” Next: four weeks later, the diggers hit rock.

Still open: Who won the bid, and at what price per foot? We haven’t found it. Do you know?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, July 27, 1876, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 2: 25 feet down

Clip 2 of 8

August 1876. About 25 feet down, “the diggers are now in solid rock.” Paid by the foot, in rock. Keep going or quit? What would you do next?

See the answer

They kept going. The next item we’ve found is more than a year later, and by then the hole is 130 feet deep.

Still open: How did they cut through rock in 1876: picks, drills, blasting powder? The paper doesn’t say. We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Aug. 24, 1876, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 3: 130 feet

Clip 3 of 8

November 1877. 130 feet. No water. The borers have quit. What would you do next?

See the answer

Bring in a machine. Eleven weeks later, an engine and a well-boring machine were back at the courthouse.

Still open: What happened in the 15 months between clip 2 and clip 3? We haven’t found it.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Nov. 22, 1877, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 4: the machine comes back

Clip 4 of 8

February 1878. “The engine and well-boring machine are again at the court-house, at work near the south-east corner of the building, for water.” Would you bet on water this time? What would you do next?

See the answer

Four weeks later, a sign went up on a post at the courthouse to tell everyone how deep it was, and what they’d found.

Still open: Same hole, or a new one? The paper doesn’t say.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Feb. 7, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 5: the placard · Go look: the southeast corner today

Clip 5 of 8

March 1878. The placard says the well is “81 feet deep, 63 feet through solid rock and 30 feet of sulphur and salt water.” Do the numbers add up?

Our best guess

63 plus 30 is 93, and the well is 81 feet deep. One way to make it work: the 30 feet of water could be standing in the bottom of the hole, overlapping the rock. That’s our guess, not the paper’s. And 81 feet is shallower than the 130 reported in November, which hints at a new boring, but again, the paper doesn’t say.

Still open: How do 81, 63 and 30 fit together? We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Mar. 7, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 6: the bucket test · Make your case

Clip 6 of 8

Same week. Someone boiled down a bucket of the well water. Why would you do that, and what do you think was left? What would you do next?

See the answer

“A spoonful of salt,” the paper said, adding “we are told.” Next: they put in a pump anyway.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Mar. 7, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 7: the pump goes in

Clip 7 of 8

April 1878. The pump is in. Salty, sulphur water from under the courthouse. Would you drink it? What did people say it did?

See the answer

Some did, and the paper reported that the water “is claimed by parties who have tried it, to be medicinal in a high degree. Indigestion and dyspepsia, from torpid liver, are thought to have been relieved by its use.” Note the hedges: “claimed,” “thought to have been.” Next: one week later.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Apr. 18, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: Clip 8: one week later

Clip 8 of 8

One week later, the whole item is one short sentence. What do you think happened next?

What we know so far

“The pump in the new court-house well don’t work.” After that, we haven’t found another word about it. Was it fixed, capped, or filled in? We don’t know. Do you?

Still open: Is the shaft still under the lawn? We don’t know.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Apr. 25, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: Go look: the southeast corner of the lawn today · Know what became of it? Tell us

Evidence locker: newspaper clippings: Fayetteville Observer, July 1876 to April 1878, Library of Congress (public domain)

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #10: From the old paper: more case files

Short items from the Fayetteville Observer, 1866–1880. Read the clipping, then guess before you open the answer.

Question

In the 1870s the county dug a well in the courthouse yard. What came up instead of water?

Read the clipping. How deep did they go?

See the answer

Salt and sulphur. Diggers hit solid rock at about 25 feet; by November 1877 the hole was 130 feet deep with “no water,” and the borers quit. A boring engine came back near the southeast corner of the building, and in March 1878 the paper reported that a bucket of the well water “yielded a spoonful of salt when boiled down.” Some called it “medicinal.” A week after the pump went in: “The pump in the new court-house well don’t work.” Is the shaft still under the lawn? Nobody knows.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Nov. 22, 1877, p. 3 · Fayetteville Observer, Mar. 7, 1878, p. 3 · Fayetteville Observer, Apr. 25, 1878, p. 3

Dig deeper: The whole story, clip by clip: the well saga · Go look: the southeast corner of the courthouse lawn

Question

Why would a town set a pile of barrels on fire on purpose in 1877?

Find the words “coal oil.” What were they trying to prove?

See the answer

To test its new fire engine. “A large pile of dry boxes and barrels” was built on the southwest corner of the square and soaked with coal oil. It was allowed to burn ten or fifteen minutes before the stream from the engine was turned on. The flames were “readily suppressed.” The editor’s verdict: it worked, but “the engine cost too much.”

Still open: Where did the town keep its engine, and who ran it? The clipping doesn’t say. We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, July 5, 1877, p. 3

Dig deeper: Same corner, 1866: lightning down the drainpipes · The square’s history

Question

One Sunday night in 1866, something came down the drainpipes on the southwest corner and threw bricks out of the pavement. What was it?

See the answer

Lightning. It struck the building on the southwest corner, ran down two water pipes into the brick pavement and threw up bricks. Two young women were standing in a doorway about a foot from one of the pipes, “but, providentially, neither was injured.”

Source: Fayetteville Observer, July 12, 1866, p. 3

Dig deeper: Go look: the downspouts at 101 Market St. E.

Question

In 1871 the courthouse yard held “eight flying horses.” What were they?

See the answer

A carousel. Two traveling strangers put up a canvas tent in the courthouse yard with eight “flying horses” inside, the first the editor had seen since boyhood: “Only ten cents a ride, gen’lemen, with a chance for a premium.” Riders “clamored for seats.”

Still open: What made the horses go round: a crank, a horse, a man pushing? The paper doesn’t say. We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Sept. 7, 1871, p. 3

Dig deeper: What else has the courthouse lawn held?

Question

In 1870, court quit “without the formality of an adjournment.” What sent everyone running?

See the answer

The courthouse roof was on fire “in half a dozen places,” from an overheated stove-pipe, while Circuit Court was in session. The fire was put out, and the old brick courthouse survived three more years.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Nov. 24, 1870, p. 3

Dig deeper: Count the chimneys on the next courthouse

Question

In June 1873, two wooden buildings by the northeast corner disappeared in under 24 hours. What happened?

See the answer

The town’s committee declared them nuisances, and “in less than 24 hours they were level with the ground. Quick work!” Which lots they stood on, the paper doesn’t say.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, June 19, 1873, p. 3

Dig deeper: The northeast corner today · Make your case: which lot?

Question

Count the wagons. How many wheat wagons waited on the square one July day in 1876?

See the answer

Thirty-nine, waiting to unload. The square was a farm market long before it was a shopping street.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, July 13, 1876, p. 3

Dig deeper: The square through the decades

Question

In 1870, what made one back room on the northeast corner the most secure spot in the county?

See the answer

A safe weighing “over four tons,” installed for a new savings bank in the back room of a store on the northeast corner, and “warranted to resist the ravages of fire and the arts of the burglar.” Which of today’s buildings it stood in, we don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Dec. 8, 1870, p. 3

Dig deeper: The north side, building by building

Question

June 1880. One Saturday evening a crowd gathered on the square. What were they looking at?

Count the rattles in the clipping.

See the answer

A rattlesnake, in a cage. “A caged rattlesnake, having four rattles and a button, attracted considerable attention Saturday evening on the square.” That’s the whole item.

Still open: Who brought it, why, and where on the square did the cage sit? The paper doesn’t say. We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, June 10, 1880, p. 3

Dig deeper: Know snakes? What’s a “button”? Tell us · More crowds on the square: 1911

Question

May 1866. The paper called something at the courthouse “one of the filthiest places that can well be imagined.” What was it?

See the answer

The “magazine,” a leftover from the war. With cholera in the news, the paper warned that “that pest-hole is well calculated to engender sickness.” A week later the County Court named a committee to contract “for the removal and leveling of the bomb proof” at the court-house, with the pay to be set at the July term.

Still open: Where on the lawn did it stand, and what did it look like? No picture has turned up. We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, May 3, 1866, p. 3 · Fayetteville Observer, May 10, 1866, p. 3

Dig deeper: What else has the courthouse lawn held?

Question

February 1879. A runaway team, two wrecked wagons, and a horse that hit a lamp-post. Which corner of the square?

See the answer

The southeast corner. A team pulling a wagon load of hay ran away; the driver fell off and a wheel ran over his ankle, breaking it. In front of the Observer office the team hit a wagon loaded with wood, “completely wrecking the one they were drawing and tearing a hind wheel off of the other.” Then “the off-horse ran against a lamp-post on the south-east corner of the Square and suffered very severe injuries.”

Still open: What kind of lamps lit the square in 1879, and when did the first ones go up? We don’t know. Do you?

Source: Fayetteville Observer, Feb. 27, 1879, p. 3

Dig deeper: Southeast again: the courthouse well, dug near the southeast corner of the old courthouse

Question

July 1879. A “talking machine” came to Fayetteville for two nights. What was it?

See the answer

Edison’s phonograph, “on exhibition in Fayetteville last Wednesday and Thursday nights” (July 2 and 3, 1879). The editor skipped a description: “we have before published one of the wonder.” It was brand new. The Library of Congress says the first phonograph was finished in December 1877 and patented Feb. 19, 1878. The poster for the show survives; see the archive posters below.

Still open: What did people in Fayetteville say or play into it? Nobody wrote it down that we’ve found.

Source: Fayetteville Observer, July 10, 1879, p. 3 · Library of Congress: History of the cylinder phonograph

Dig deeper: See the 1879 poster

Evidence locker: newspaper clippings: Fayetteville Observer 1866–1880, Library of Congress (public domain)

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #11: New from the archive: posters printed on the square

Three posters from the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Each was printed for people standing right where you can stand today.

Open case

Read the poster. “Will exhibit to-night at ____ on ____.” Why would a printer leave the place and date blank?

Our best guess

Our guess: so the same poster could be used night after night, with the place written in by hand. That’s a guess, not a fact. The poster is dated “Fayetteville, July 3rd, 1879,” and was printed at the Observer office. A printed note at the bottom (cropped here) says the machine was shown “last evening” in a hall in town, which lines up with the newspaper’s “last Wednesday and Thursday nights.”

Source: TSLA broadside record · Fayetteville Observer, July 10, 1879, p. 3

Dig deeper: The newspaper item · Make your case

Question

October 1882. The town passed a new rule and printed it as a poster. Guess first: where did it become a misdemeanor to be drunk?

Read the first lines of the ordinance.

See the answer

“On the public square, on the streets, or in any other public place.” The fine: “not less than two nor more than fifty dollars.” Passed Oct. 23, 1882.

Source: TSLA broadside record

Dig deeper: Who sold whiskey on the square in 1887?

Open case

1867. A new store on the square sells only “for Cash or Barter.” What would you bring to trade?

What we know so far

Barter means paying in goods instead of money. What customers actually brought in, the poster doesn’t say. The poster promises fall and winter goods, boots, shoes and hats, sold “as Cheap as the same Articles can be bought in the State!” We don’t know what people traded. Do you?

Source: TSLA broadside record

Dig deeper: Before the cash store: the town scales · Tell us

Evidence locker: broadsides: 1867 cash store, 1879 phonograph, 1882 ordinance (TSLA, No Copyright – United States)

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #12: Clues you can still see today

Some evidence never made it into an archive. It’s still on the buildings. Stand on the spot and look.

Evidence locker: physical traces: 2008 and 2015 photos (north side) · newspaper: 1878 well boring

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.

Case #13: Bigger picture

What was going on beyond the square when these were made?

Evidence locker: context: presidents by year · map labels: 1887–1926 tally

Send us your old photo of the square. It could become a Square Detective case. Share a photo or email hello@ourtownalmanac.com. Only send photos you own or have the owner’s OK to share. Tell us how you’d like to be credited (initials, “a reader,” or your name). Loaned photos stay yours.