The Century Old iPad
This spring [2020] I was amazed at the technology available to our grandchildren, Ari Atwell and James Wescott Atwell (ages 13 and 11), as they completed their school year from home. In addition to receiving assignments via the internet and class discussions using Google Classroom, Ari used composition software to write a string quartet and James presented his experiment on photosynthesis in an online science fair.
I held back on comparative tales of the unsophisticated tools of my mid-century schooling (Big Chief pad, No. 2 pencil, Westcott Ruler and a leaky fountain pen), but finally to drive home how fortunate they are, I posed the question “What did school kids have during the great pandemic 102 years ago?” and brought forth a turn-of-the-last-century iPad from the Westcott Collection. Here was my pitch:
The Slate Book was one of the many promotions and merchandising events that helped C.E. Wescott and his sons Clifford and Hilt keep their clothing store in Plattsmouth, Nebraska in successful operation for 76 years (1879 to 1955) despite a store fire in the first year, the two World Wars, the Great Depression, flooding from the Missouri and Platte Rivers, and, oh yes, the 1918 pandemic. The cover of the slate book announces, “One of these Slates given Free with every Boys’ Suit, or every $3.00 purchase.” The date of the promotion is unknown, but it was probably sometime between 1901 when second son Hilt became a partner and 1906 when C.E. retired and moved to California with his wife and their third son, Earl. Clifford and Hilt remained in Plattsmouth and the store was renamed C.E. Wescott’s Sons.
(left) Flood waters flow down Main Street in Plattsmouth in 1906 in front of Wescott and Son during a flood in 1906. (Right) The storefront in a drier moment about the same time.
The grandchildren did not abandon their devices for a slate book, but they were fascinated with the variety and low prices of the Wescotts’ weekly ads in the Plattsmouth Journal.
Store founder C.E. Wescott was an eighth-generation descendant of Stukely and Juliana Westcott (Clarence Edgar Wescott8, Stephen Westcott7, Stephen6, Stukely5, Stukely4, Stukely3, Jeremiah2, Stukely1). He was born on October 14, 1841 in Cheshire, Massachusetts and died on January 5, 1924 in Los Angeles, California. A note in Whitman’s Westcott genealogy (Vol. 1, Pg. 239) captures some of C.E.’s adventures between Cheshire and L.A.:
He was the eighth child of his father’s family and was not yet seven years old when his parents removed from Cheshire to central New York. In 1854, he started on a load of heavy green lumber drawn by three yoke of oxen, from LaPorte to accompany some men to the home his father was building in Nebraska, but fell under a wheel and for months was cared for in a neighboring log house occupied by one Ezra Moe. Early in life, he dropped the third “t” in the spelling of his surname, perhaps for the same reason another Wescott in Vermont did, who thought two “t’s” were enough for any name. He taught school, clerked in stores, was a book-canvasser, went to California in 1863, where he was critically ill, and returned home in 1865. His parents then dwelled in Taylorsville, Iowa, where his father was postmaster. After a visit, he returned to LaPorte, Ind., where he again was a clerk in stores and where, in 1868, he was married. He purchased an interest in a dry goods store, then in 1871 removed to Taylorsville, and in 1878, to Plattsmouth, where he established a clothing business which has continued without break, and in 1932 was being conducted under the firm name of “C.E. Wescott’s Sons.”
In 1914 C.E. Wescott’s Sons celebrated its 35th anniversary with a variety of specials such as a free Stetson hat for any customer who traveled 35 miles to the store and a “handsome suitcase” with every $35 purchase. It was a one-week extravaganza as advertised in the Plattsmouth Journal on May 18.
Two months after the 1929 Crash, when Clifford and Hilt were joined by brother Earl and the next generation for a photo, the Wescotts are as confident as they are dapper. The Wescott merchandising knack continued to work as the store prospered until the mid-century.
Plattsmouth, Nebraska, December 26, 1929 – The sharp-dressed sons and grandsons of C.E. Wescott: from the left, Edgar Street and his father Edgar Hilt; Charles Clifford and his son Mason Eaton; and Shirley Brown and his father Earl Coffin.
Sources
Slate book and 1929 photo of the Wescotts from the SSWDA Collection, undated and unattributed.
Whitman, Roscoe L. History and Genealogy of the Ancestors and Descendants of Stukely Westcott. Oneonta, New York: Otsego Publishing Company, 1932.
Facade Survey, Plattsmouth, Nebraska. City of Plattsmouth Historic Preservation, 2008
The Plattsmouth Journal. Plattsmouth, Nebraska (1901-current). Nebraska Newspapers. University of Nebraska Online Library
“Mr. C.E. Wescott and Wife Here for the Home Coming Week,” Plattsmouth Journal, September 4, 1916
David Wescott Smith, SSWDA Historian
Comments and corrections always welcome at historian@sswda.org.