Saturday, February 29, 2020
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Chinese Laundries in Clay County in the 1890's
A few years ago we posted a story about the Sanborn maps that were published for insurance companies around 1900. On the Sutton map for the north end of downtown, we saw one building identified as a "Chinese Laundry."
You can visit that site at http://suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2017/10/did-sutton-once-have-chinese-laundry.html
Further poking around found a similar reference in the Harvard maps suggesting that at least these two area towns had Chinese laundries, or was that a generic, perhaps somewhat racist reference for the time.
More recently, we stumbled upon this item in The Harvard Courier newspaper for March 6, 1895:
So we can now state, unequivocally, that there were Chinese businessmen operating laundries in Clay County in the 1890's.
We can imagine that Chinese entrepreneures from communities that had been associated with railroads in the 19th Century had followed the lines looking for new markets for their services.
This is definitely a topic calling for more research.
Clay County Sheriff's Department - 1995
Our weekly old-newspaper-exercise produced this documentation naming the personnel of the sheriff's department 25 years ago.
The 1995 Clay County Sheriff’s department celebrated the arrival of their new breathalyzer machines with a group photo for the county newspaper. Left to right: Jeff Franklin, Tim Rudloff, Brad Hulse, and Troy Starr.
This week’s photo was in The Clay County News on March 3, 1995.
County 4-H Leaders of 1995
These 4-H leaders were honored for their service at the 1995 Appreciation supper in Clay Center. The photo appeared in The Clay County News on February 16, 1995, but did not identify the folks.
Feel free to display the results of your own memory test in the comments below.
