1888

Pastor Martin J. Stover, 81, conducting services in the third church building, which, like the second one, was known as the "Church on the Rocks," because it sat on a rocky ledge overlooking the Sawkill (about ¾ mile east of our present location--that is, north of present-day Route 212, across from the country club). (To enlarge the picture, just click it.)

The church acquired its third reed organ, and the supply of Lutheran hymnals (the new Book of Worship that was published during this year) was augmented.

According to historian Mark Anderson, there was probably little to distinguish our services from the typical services of other Protestant sects in America. The basic pattern was: scripture reading, hymn, prayer, Gospel reading, hymn, prayer, sermon, prayer, hymn, and benediction. Four times each year there would be a communion service; the service the week before would be a service of preparation for the communion.

Pastor Stover organized the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the Lutheran Church of Woodstock.(1)

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Prospectors were exploring the Woodstock area for coal, oil, and gas.

Local Civil War veteran John Schoonmaker toured mountain resorts with his "Phantasmagoria" (a magic lantern that produced the effect of motion to glass-slide images projected on a screen), showing a version of Uncle Tom's Cabin and featuring his own war service.

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Grover Cleveland (Democrat) was President. The 50th Congress was in session. A dollar in that year would be worth $20.91 in 2006 for most consumable products.

Immigrants from the British Isles and western Europe (especially Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany)--the so-called "Old Immigrants," most of them boasting a comparatively high level of literacy and accustomed to some level of representative government, who were either Protestant (most of them) or Catholic, were arriving during this decade at an average annual rate of 275,300. The "New Immigrants," those from southern and eastern Europe (especially Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia), largely illiterate and impoverished, who tended to be either Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish and who had little experience with representative government, were arriving at an annual rate of 92,600--34% of the Old Immigrants' rate, a threefold proportionate increase from a decade earlier and a fivefold increase in raw numbers. The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

Larvae of the gypsy moth (Porthetria dispar) continued to spread from Medford, MA, where French naturalist Leopold Trouvelot had brought the insect from Europe 19 years earlier with hopes to start a silk industry in New England. The moth population was exploding and defoliating American woodlands.

Solidly Democratic white supremacists held political power all over the South. The economically dependent blacks who even tried to vote (forget about being elected to political office) would be facing unemployment, eviction, and violence. Blacks (and poor whites as well) continued being forced into sharecropping and tenant farming; former slave masters were now bosses and landlords. Through the "crop-lien" system, the serflike small farmers could get food and supplies from storekeepers by agreeing to a lien on their expected crops, a lien they would never be able to fully pay off. The daily discrimination against blacks grew increasingly oppressive. Blacks were continually assaulted by harsh reminders of their second-class citizenship, and the white supremacists dealt brutally with any black who dared to violate the customary racial code of conduct.

Presidential election of 1888

The spoils of patronage--the awarding of government jobs (especially in the postal service) in return for party service, kickbacks, and votes--was vitally important within both parties and was essentially a big business like any other Gilded Age capitalist enterprise.

Republicans and Democrats differed very little on issues, but the race between them was fiercely competitive nonetheless. Each party was tightly organized. On Election Day, hordes of party faithful tramped behind marching bands on the way to the polls. The parties were able to turn out huge numbers of voters--nearly 80% of those eligible. Most of them voted a straight party line, too.

Staten Island, NY, photographer Thomas Adams, who had 16 years earlier introduced Black Jack licorice-flavored chewing gum, now brought out Tutti-Frutti gum in vending machines on station platforms of the New York Elevated Railroad.

The automatic railway "knuckle" coupler, enabling railway cars to join upon impact and preventing injuries and deaths of brakemen as well as excess sway of cars, patented 20 years earlier by Eli Hamilton Janney, finally became standard railway equipment.

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The coffee rust (Hamileia vastatrix), which had appeared in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 19 years earlier, was spreading throughout the Orient and the Pacific, wiping out coffee plantations and causing coffee prices to soar.

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