Revelations Of Old Almanacs

PHOTO: 1937 Old Farmer’s Almanac.

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

“Oh, Young New Year, take not these things from me- The olden faiths; the shining loyalty Of friends the long and searching years have proved – The glowing hearthfires, and the books I loved.” – Laura Simpson.

Those words were at the head of January’s calendar in the 1937 issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac by Robert B. Thomas. That particular Almanac is called old because it began publication in 1793 and has probably outlasted its former competitors because it has more to it then the others did.
The 1937 edition says it is by Robert Thomas even though the last edition that he personally edited was in 1846 and the last year that his family was in charge of the almanac was in 1877.
The farmers’ almanacs all have astronomical calculations and information about sun risings and settings as well as those of the moon, length of days and lots of other statistics and weather forecasts. The larger ones contain a lot of other information useful to farmers and curiosity seekers.
Some almanacs of the past, like Brown’s, which was published in Concord, New Hampshire, had blank pages in which one could write notes or reminders. Brown’s had sections available for the owner to write on for every day of the year in 1846.

The owner of the copy I have, belonged to a prominent citizen in New Hampton, Stephen S. Magoon, and has some revealing notes by the man.
Stephen was a merchant and his almanac looks like a ledger with one page listing expenses on a trip to Boston and New York City. I’ve tried to put together the pieces of the few notes Stephen made about his trip and use my imagination to reveal what it was like to make the journey late in that year of 1945.
It was on November 10, 1845 that he paid $3.00 for his fare to Concord, presumably by stagecoach. The stage route went through New Hampton, possibly right by the house that Mr. Magoon lived in, so I wonder if he could have boarded there or maybe went to the regular stopping location.
Stagecoaches are listed in 1934 as going through New Hampton six times a week on a route that ran between Concord and Haverhill. Mr. Magoon’s trip would have been just a few years before train service reached the area. He paid 75 cents for dinner and another $3.50 for the ride to Boston where he spent 50 cents for the cab-man.
Cab-man? Yes, a cab-man in 1846.
I can’t tell you if it was a yellow cab or not, but we do know that a cab in 1845 was a cabriolet, and that a cabriolet is a type of horse-drawn carriage with a folding cover used for public transportation. Today the term cabriolet is applied to a convertible automobile.
I wonder if his wife was riding with him because on the way Magoon paid $2.50 towards a bonnet and $3.25 for a hat. He paid 37 and ½ cents for the stage to a destination I couldn’t decipher and 25 cents for another before buying tickets to New York.

Stagecoaches, which could carry nine passengers inside the coach when each was allowed just 15 inches of seating space (no social distancing there), had curtains to put over the windows in cold weather. They were open spaces during the warmer months. If needed another six or so persons could be carried on top of the stage which was pulled by four or six horses.
On November 14th, Magoon bought tickets to New York for $6.50, paid $1.50 for supper and lodging and another $2.00 for steamboat fare “to Hudson.” Maybe that meant on the Hudson River.
Why Stephen Magoon made that trip I can only guess, but my guess is that he was purchasing items for the store he ran out of his home because on other pages with other dates he had lists of different items that could have been bought to re-sell, or possibly for his own use.
Back home in New Hampshire Magoon wrote in his 1846 Brown’s Almanac some notes about serving on a jury in August of 1851. He listed the members of a twelve-man jury which made me wonder if any of the readers are descendents of one of the men so named. The jury foreman was N.M. Taylor, and the remaining eleven members were listed by the towns they represented. Stephen Magoon and Samuel Smith from New Hampton, Charles Rollins, and Mr.- Tibbets from Alton, George(?) Downs, David Jacobs, and William Nutter from Barnstead, Nathaniel Bachelder from Meredith, Ebenezer Hunt from Guilford, Daniel Swett from Gilmanton, and Samuel Hanaford from Sanbornton.
Mr. Magoon may have not been the best of spellers, though some words were not spelled the same in the mid-1800’s as the are today. He wrote down a “Resipee for mending Iron. To 3 parts of sulphur and one part black lead. Melt the sulphur and add the lead. Pour out and cool and put on the crack & soder with hot Iron.”

Probably the most unusual almanac I have seen is really a calendar though published as an almanac. It was copyrighted in 1888 by S.W. Atwood and reveals all the days of the week from January 1, 1800 to January 1, 1955 if you can figure out how to use it by properly following the directions.
By turning a wheel with months and days of the week marked on it and then matching it with a chart showing years and days in a month on it one can find accurate dates for the 155 years. There is also a chart showing the number of days from any one month of the year to any other month. It shows which years a presidential election was held and what years are Leap Years. If my calculations are correct in using this almanac I was born on a Thursday.
The 1933 Old Farmers Almanac gave some advice under the heading, To Destroy Musquetoes. It reads, “Take a few hot coals on a shovel or chafingdish and burn some brown sugar in your bedrooms and parlors, and you effectually destroy the musquetos for the night. The experiment has been often tried by several of our citizens, and found to produce the desired effect.”
Leavitt’s Farmer’s Almanac of 1920 had a section called “Some of Luther’s Proverbs.”
One was “Bees find the flowers, not because they are symmetrical and beautiful, but because they have honey in them. If sinners are ever attracted to the churches, it will not be by the observance of stated and stately forms, or by the display of gaudy paraphernalia, but because there is honey in them.”
Leavitt’s 1933 Almanac had this commentary: “We shall not mourn the passing of 1932, a year of unemployment and actual want, not only in our own country but in all parts of the world. Our only regret at its passing is that it finds us all one year older, just one year by the calendar but many years in wisdom and experience, for haven’t we all learned something from the experience, that we are our brother’s keeper and we shall not let him suffer if the power of human agencies can protect him from want.”

almanac Old Farmer's Almanac