Old news, literally

My older nephew last Christmas gave me a gift of the March 26, 1875, issue of the Newburyport Daily Herald. I should have checked the date last week. The paper is shrink wrapped to a board so I can only read the front page.

Every so often, though, I take it out and consider whether I should break open the wrap so I can read the inside.

Most of the front page is ads. Interesting to see familiar names of today emblazoned on this old paper: Atkinson, Noyes, Pettingell, Fowle's. The main story, which runs down the left side, is about a Gen. John Sullivan, a NH officer in the Revolutionary war. Apparently some charges of collusion with French interests had been laid at his door nearly 100 years after his death in a "recently published volume."

The depth to which the article (which appears to have been reprinted from a Boston paper) goes to correct any "misconception" about the general is astounding. Shorter articles also are reprinted, about egotism and witchcraft. Two separate subjects, in case you were wondering.

"The persons suspected of witchcraft," it says, "were for the most part, old, lame, blear-eyed and wrinkled women, who led sullen and solitary lives." (Any comparison to any writers of blogs should not be made.)

Anyway, the most intriguing item is not Gen. John Sullivan, the besmirching of his character and his ardent defender nearly 100 years later, the egotism or the witchcraft, but a small ad in the lower right of the page.

"Night Soil. Persons wishing the contents of vaults removed can have it attended to by addressing SANITARY, Newburyport Post Office."

According to Wikipedia, "night soil is a euphemism for human faeces." The vaults referred to must be privies. Ick.