Henry Wersell and his Bird Store

 

Henry Wersell and his Bird Store                                        by Alan Borer

 

Henry Wersell and a monkey outside his store. (Toledo-Lucas County Public Library)

            Newspapers used to offer suggestions for shoppers looking for Christmas gifts.  Such advertisements were a way for smaller shops to buy ad space in modest (and inexpensive) quantities.   For the newspapers it was a goodwill gesture that filled space while big advertisers made the newspaper profitable.  I was digging through the December 10, 1914, issue of the Perrysburg Journal, which offered a “Christmas Gift Suggestions” column in the back pages. when I spied a small advertisement at the bottom of the page: “When in Toledo Visit Our Bird Show:  Special prices beginning December 12.”  Two Christmas gift ideas items were suggested.  At the high end, shoppers could purchase a “Hartz Mountain“canary for $3.50.  It that was too pricey, one could buy a fish and a “globe” for a dime.

            Who was running a “bird show” or “bird store” at this early date?  The ad was placed by a retailer named  Henry Wersell, a prominent member of Toledo’s German-American community.  Born in Germany in 1860, he arrived in America in 1876.  He married an American born German girl, Mary Streicher, in Toledo in 1884.  The family resided at 34 Rockingham Street near Cherry Street and Central Avenue.  But unlike so many fellow Germans who worked in breweries and other industries, Wersell carved out a niche for himself: pets.

During the 1900s and 1910s, Wersell ran what he called a ‘bird store,’ first at 608 Summit Street and then at 328 Cherry Street.  Birds were bought and sold, but Wersell offered many other kinds of pet-related merchandise.  A 1914 ad listed imported canaries, Mexican parrots, dogs, cats, rabbits, goldfish, cages, bird seed, and veterinary supplies.  Ferrets and monkeys were occasional guests.  The shop also boarded animals.  When your pet passed away, Wersell offered taxidermy services for both birds and animals.[i]  With so many different animals all living in close quarters, one can imagine how noisy the shop must have been.

Wersell participated in a booming market for pet birds.  The popularity of caged birds in the first decade of the twentieth century made them the most popular indoor pet in the country.  Their singing and companionship was believed to cross social and ethnic lines, and while only a landowner could keep dogs and horses, birds were inexpensive, low maintenance friends.[ii]

The shopkeeper advertised heavily in the newspaper classified ads.  In some of the ads, Wersell seemed to speak directly to the reader: “Received a shipment of imported parrots, young had raised birds that I guarantee to talk.”[iii]  Another Christmas ad read, “Make Xmas merry by getting a good singing bird of Wersell.”[iv]  Other venues were pet sales.  In 1900, the Toledo [Pet] Fanciers had an exhibition just after the holidays.  Held at 129-131 Summit, the show featured many kind of pets.  Henry Wersell had an aquarium display:

The north window is occupied by the display of Henry Wersell of this city.  Gold fish and other handsome or quaint inhabitants of the waters are disposed in prettily quipped aquariums.[v]

Depending on the needs of the pet owner, birds were also livestock.  Wersell placed many ads in poultry journals.  He cooperated with other growers and breeders of birds.  An example was Legron’s Duck Farm, at the corner of Glendale and Detroit.  They offered incubators for rent or sale.  Customers could leave their eggs at either Wersell’s Bird Store or take them directly to the Duck Farm, which would incubate them for $2.00 per hundred eggs.[vi]

One example of other-than-pet merchandise Wersell sold was the “Mandy Lee” chicken incubator.  The George Lee Company of Omaha, Nebraska, did a big mail order business, selling every piece of equipment necessary for brooding, hatching, raising, and selling chickens.  Lee himself owned 2500 chickens.  He may have named the incubator “Mandy” after his daughter, Ivy May, but the elder Lee sold his incubators through the rapidly expanding combination of parcel post and the railroad system that delivered them

Henry Wersell died on May 11, 1920.  According to his News Bee obituary, he had been ill for several months.  He left his wife and six children, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery.[vii]  It may have been World War 1 and its disruptions, or failing health, but Wersell’s bird store was closed by 1920.

            There are still conflicting opinions over whether birds, especial fowl, are pets or livestock.  Millions of birds of both kinds live among us.  Henry Wersell was apparently satisfied selling any feathered animal, and many more with fur or fins as well.  Certainly he sold many of every kind – and stuffed a few as well.

(This was submitted to Bend of the River before the magazine ended in November 2023.)

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[i][i] New Bee, April 3, 1914.

[ii] https://daily.jstor.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-pet-bird/

[iii] News Bee,  July 25, 1906.

[iv] News Bee, December 19, 1913.

[v] News Bee, January 5, 1900.

[vi] News-Bee, February 28, 1914.

[vii] Toledo News-Bee, May 12, 1920.

Asking for a Wishbone from the President

 

Asking for a Wishbone from the President                                                by Alan Borer

           

            As a boy, I enjoyed Thanksgiving almost as much as Christmas, mainly because of the feast prepared and served by my mother and/or various female relatives.  For a small boy, it was pretty much a work-free celebration.  The only “work” I remember doing was carefully securing and drying the turkey wishbone.  I had read enough Thanksgiving story books, and seen enough holiday TV shows, that I was determined to follow that custom and receive whatever prize or luck came to the one who broke off the bigger portion of the wishbone.

            Lucky wishbones are an old custom.  The Etruscans of pre-Roman Italy thought wishbones brought luck.  In the Middle Ages, a goose breastbone was examined on St. Martin’s Day (November 11) for weather predictions for the coming year.  Turkeys were unknown in Europe before Christopher Columbus, but were soon part of “harvest home” celebrations.  Harvest Home, still celebrated in many American churches, marks the end of the growing season, when food was plentiful and easy to obtain.  Add in the presidential proclamations of a celebration the last Thursday in November, coupled with an avalanche of Thanksgiving galas, pageants, and greeting cards starting around 1900. It is no wonder that America developed a turkey-themed holiday, of which the wishbone played a part.

            Who was president when all this was developing?  Abraham Lincoln decreed the first national Thanksgiving, but the President at the time that the holiday really took off was none other than William McKinley.  McKinley (1843-1901), a native of nearby Canton, Ohio, proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday as was the custom.  It was no surprise therefore that McKinley declared Thursday, November 30, 1899 to be Thanksgiving Day.  McKinley was riding high in popularity that month.  The nation had won a brief war with Spain in 1898, and the economy was doing well.  He appeared to be a shoe-in for reelection with his even more popular running-mate, Theodore Roosevelt.

            Whether McKinley heard of a news story that appeared in the Perrysburg Journal the following spring is impossible to say.  But turkey wishbones were on the minds of many:

. . . . At least a hundred letters were received by President McKinley asking for the wishbone of the Thanksgiving turkey, and half as many more for the right drumstick.  Just think of it!  Asking for a bone at which the President has nibbled.  A bone from a common turkey, raised in a common barn yard . . . . served like any other old turkey, but to those worshippers of titles and aristocracy, made sacred by the lips of a member of the President’s household. . . . [February 9, 1900]

            We can assume that this was either written by, or was approved by, the editor of the Journal, one E. L. Blue.  Mr. Blue was outraged, at least editorially, that American citizens were “soft” enough to want a souvenir that smacked of royalty.  Whether the White House acted on these requests is unknown.  The idea of sending a greasy wishbone through the mail rather suggests it was not. 

            When William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York in 1901, he was succeeded by Roosevelt.  In an odd bit of coincidence, Roosevelt used the symbol of the wishbone in his 1904 reelection campaign.  He used the wishbone to proclaim the good times that country continued to have in the new century, and thousands of pins and buttons featured Roosevelt surrounded by the twin arms of a wishbone.  This time, the wishbone brought him the luck it symbolized.

            As Americans eat more and more processed food, fewer of us sit down to a home cooked or home carved Thanksgiving turkey dinner.  Restaurants big and small entice customers with buffets and prepackaged meals that, while featuring turkey, have eaten away at the home processed repast.  I‘m sure the symbol and tradition of the wishbone will survive for many for many years to come, although in fewer homes.  Check with your grocer or butcher if you are not doing the whole extravaganza this year.  They may be able to help.