Historic Ads | Flashback : Dallas

February 12, 2014

Start Your Brilliant Career at Dallas Telegraph College — c. 1900

by Paula Bosse

The Dallas Telegraph College opened in 1889 and admitted both men and women as students (if not from the beginning, certainly by the early years of the new century).

1889 ad (click to see larger image)

In the 1904 photo below, you’ll see one lone woman in the group.

1904

Below, the text of a 1908 ad — published in a San Antonio newspaper in hopes of drawing students to Dallas from around the state — rather optimistically promised hard-working students the possibility of earning an “enormous” salary and maybe even becoming the head of a railroad!

The Dallas Telegraph College is a school of more than state reputation. Prof. L. C. Robinson is president, with J. E. Hyle as superintendent. As is well known, telegraphy is not only one of the pleasantest of studies, but offers a brilliant career to the man who ‘makes good.’ A great many railroad presidents started as operators. The men who have made good now head railroad systems at enormous salaries. What one man has done, another may do. The Dallas Telegraph College has been a chartered institution for fifty [sic — this should be “twenty”] years. Why not send for one of their beautiful catalogues?

dallas_telegraph_college 1908 ad

1908, via DeGolyer Library, SMU

According to a 1912 article by Lewis N. Hale on Texas schools and colleges in Texas Magazine, the students learned to ply their trade by tapping (…as it were) into the actual railroad telegraph lines which, rather conveniently, ran right through their classrooms. A very murky photo from that Texas Magazine article is below.

dallas-telegraph-college_tx-mag_1912_photo

The goal of students was to secure employment in a nice, well-appointed office, such as Dallas’ Western Union headquarters, shown below in 1914.

via Dallas Public Library

Next stop: an enormous salary!

***

Sources & Notes

Top ad (“Learn Telegraphy”) from 1904. Second ad from 1889 (from the pages of the Dallas city directory). Third ad (with Guild Building address) from 1894.

Photo showing 1904 class from eBay.

1908 photo showing students standing in front of the building from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; more info on this card is here.

Western Union office photograph — “[Western Union Telegraph Company interior main office – Trust building at 801 Main Street]” (1914) — is from the DPL Van Orden Western Union Telegraph collection of the Dallas Public Library Dallas History and Archives Division (Call Number PA2007-2/2).

An entertaining read on the history of telegraph service in Texas by Mike Cox can be found here.

The Handbook of Texas entry on telegraph service in Texas can be found here.

Absolutely EVERYTHING that you (and Ed McMahon) would ever want to know about the telegraph and telegraphy is here.

3 Comments

February 9, 2014

J. Delgado’s Medicinal Bowl of Red — 1893

delgado_chile_parlor_dth_1893

LADIES’ and GENTS’ CHILE PARLOR — 318 Main

I beg to call the attention of the public to the medicinal qualities of J. Delgado’s celebrated Chile con Carne. I can safely recommend it as a preventative of chills and fever, and sure cure for fresh colds. Chile is not only a wholesome food but is a blood purifier. Prepared for family orders. J. DELGADO, 318 Main.

Chili-barking, nineteenth-century-style. From an 1893 issue of the Dallas Times Herald, which, at that time, appears to have been in need of a more careful typesetter.

2 Comments

February 7, 2014

Oak Cliff Wants YOU! — 1890

oak-cliff_southern_mercury_dallas_1890

by Paula Bosse

Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, presents a landscape of Hills, Vales, Lakes and Vistas, the whole forming a panorama of beauty. Apart from its natural attractions, Oak Cliff has been laid off to meet the demand of an existing necessity for the rapidly increasing population of Dallas.

This beautiful suburb, overlooking the city, half a mile from the court house, and just across the river, has been magnificently improved at great cost, with Lakes, Parks, Paved Streets, Water Works, School Buildings and an Elevated Railway which is built to this suburb from the Court House square.

With these pre-requisites, its attractive situation, great elevation, pure and abundant water supply, it offers superior advantages as a beautiful, agreeable, healthful and picturesque site for residences, while the grounds between the foot-hills and river are admirably adapted for factory sites by reason of the never-failing and abundant supply of water and railroad facilities.

Mr. Marsalis, the president of the Oak Cliff Co., deserves credit for his successful management of the many advancements of Oak Cliff and its people.

Oak Cliff incorporated in 1890, boasting a population of 2,470, and the PR department of the Oak Cliff Co. was on promotional overdrive, running this ad many times over the course of the year. More on the history of one of Dallas’ most “beautiful, agreeable, healthful and picturesque” suburbs can be found here.

***

From the front page of the June 5, 1890 edition of the Southern Mercury, a weekly newspaper printed in Dallas.

1 Comment

February 4, 2014

M-K-T Railroad’s “Katy Flyer Route” — 1902

by Paula Bosse

Ah, Texas rail travel in the corset-and-carpet-bag days, from a 1902 issue of Dallas’ Southern Mercury newspaper. Sign me up.

***

Sources & Notes

Color images from a 1900 MKT timetable, offered a while back on eBay, here.

An entertaining history of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (with lots of wonderful photos) can be found here.

A history of the railroads in Dallas can be found here.

And the Handbook of Texas entry for the M-K-T (known familiarly as the “Katy” railroad) can be found here.

See another post featuring the Katy Flyer — “Leaving Dallas on the Katy Flyer — ca. 1914” — here.

Click pictures to see larger images.

7 Comments

Category: Historic Ads

Sources & Notes

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Sources & Notes

Share this: