17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, February 5, 1913: Nothing very much for today. Went up to practice this evening.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was going to be in her class play, and went back into McEwenville in the evening for play practice. (She probably had to come home after school to help milk the cows.)
Grandma obviously appreciated whatever culture was available in her small rural community. I recently found this advertisement for Victor Victrola’s in the March 15, 1913 issue of a farm magazine called Kimball’s Dairy Farmer.
If there is any place where a Victor-Victrola is needed and sure to be appreciated, it is in the homes of the farmers—in your house.
You haven’t the opportunities city people have for attending the theatre, opera, and musical concerts—and yet you have real need of such entertainment to rest body and mind after your day of toil.
And you can have it with a Victor-Victrola in your home. You can enjoy the world’s best music, sung and played by the same great artists who entertain the large city audiences.
You can hear whatever kind of music you like right now.
You don’t have to wait until you feel you can afford a $100 or $200 instrument—any Victor-Victrola you choose as the instrument for your home will play every record in the Victor catalog, and will give you almost as perfect music as the Victor- Victrola XVI, the instrument by which the value of all musical instruments in measured.
Any Victor dealer in any city in the world will gladly demonstrate the Victor-Victrola to you and play any music you wish to hear.
Write us for the handsome illustrated Victor catalogs.
Victor Talking Machine Co., Camden, N.J.
Berliner Gramophone Co., Montreal, Canadian Distributors
Victor-Victrola XVI, $200, Mahogany or quartered oak
Victor-Victrola X, $75 Mahogany or oak
Victor-Victrola VI, $25, Oak
Victor-Victrola IX, $50, Mahogany or oak
Other styles $15, $40, $100, $150
Victor: “His Master’s Voice”
Seeing the RCA “trademark” reminded me: my sisters were teenagers when I was born, and they had Elvis records. His label, of course, was RCA. When I was a little girl, I call that dog: “Elvis’s dog”.
Thanks for reminding me! That’s an interesting old ad.
That’s a great ad! In 1910 my grandfather lived near Amarillo, Texas – not a big town then. He had a Victrola that he could take to friends houses. He was very popular – I think the Victrola helped! Thanks for the post.
Continued bravos for a wonderfully creative
Blog.
I’ve seen a few of these at the Antique Mall. The cabinets are always so pretty. They were pretty expensive even back they hey? I don’t think my grandparents had one. They had a cabinet radio, which I would die to have now.
I think they were seen as an expensive status item back then–sort of the same way that the latest piece of technology is seen today.
I think back in those days people really knew how to spend quality time with family and friends!
I just found one of my relatives who worked for a Talking Machine Co. I didn’t think of it being a phonograph business.
I wonder what it was (a telephone company??). You’ll have to research it and do a post on it. 🙂
I still have my grt grandparents victor victrola XVI cabinet. This one has a small curved mirror on the back. I store some antique records that were theirs or some that we bought. My sons’ love the Sons of the Pioneers.