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.