Clare's Irish Festival

[editor's note: On Monday, March 17 at 7:00 pm in the Park Library Auditorium, the Clarke will welcome William Rapai, author of of The Kirtland's Warbler: The Story of a Bird's Fight Against Extinction and the People Who Saved It. At a time when the world is seeing many species go extinct, the Kirtland’s warbler, whose population became dangerously low in the 1970s, is not just a survivor, it’s a rock star. The story of this intriguing bird is a stirring example of how strong leadership, vision, commitment, sustained effort, and cooperation can come together to protect our natural world. A reception will be held in the Clarke following the presentation.]


Clare's Irish Festival

by Casey O'Gamble and Bryan McWhitledge

Clare Sentinel, February 11, 1976, p. 1

The small town of Clare, Michigan is more than well known for its adoration of St. Patrick’s Day and all things Irish. The weekend-long event is filled with Leprechaun contests, races, craft shows, live music, and plenty of green beverages to go around at the Doherty Hotel. But when did all of the fun begin?

Clare Sentinel, March 16, 1993, p. 1

Clare didn’t always have an Irish name; The county was first called KaykaKee after a Sauk Indian Chief. Then, in 1843, when an Irish surveyor came to the land, he decided to name the county after his homeland of County Clare in Ireland. The town took the name Clare when it was founded in the early 1870s. It would be more than 100 years before the townsfolk really began to embrace Clare’s Irish history. In 1976, the Clare Chamber of Commerce decided to adopt the Irish theme for the city. They began promoting it on billboards, in window displays, and giving Clare its official Shamrock symbol. The theme has stuck around for 42 years, and the crowd during the week of St. Patrick’s Day seems to grow bigger (and greener) every year.

The evolution of the Clare Irish Festival from the mid-1970s through today has been featured in the pages of the Clare Sentinel. Fortunately, these pages are available to researchers all over the world with just a few keystrokes into a web browser and a couples clicks of a mouse. A search of “Irish Festival” and “Clare” in the CONDOR historical newspaper database yields 334 results! You can read all about the history of the Clare Irish Festival or any other event with this website.

Clare Sentinel, March 20, 1990, p. 1

The Irish Festival is a weekend you can’t miss, especially if you are a native to Clare. People come from all over the area to join the party, don green attire, and have a grand time reminiscing about Clare’s Irish connections. Thanks to resources like the historical Clare Sentinel, the celebrations will be recorded in history and accessible to researchers from Clare County, Michigan to County Clare, Ireland.

The Clare Sentinel and CM Life digital newspaper conversion projects now complete on CONDOR

by Amber Wright

The Preservation Microfilming Department here at the Clarke has recently completed two important local projects – preserving and digitizing over 100 years of The Clare Sentinel (1896-1999) and almost 80 years of CM Life, stretching all the way back to 1919, when the newspaper was titled Central Normal Life.

These projects provided the preservation team with many interesting finds. You can view the original newspaper issue where these items were found by clicking on the link that is embedded in the date and you can enlarge the images by clicking on them:

• Some finds were important, such as the articles about small pox vaccination on the front pages of the February 8th (p. 1, col. 5) and 22nd (p. 6, col. 3), 1939 issues of Central State Life (another title by which CM Life was called (1927-41)).

• Some were quirky, like this issue from December 30th, 1965 in The Clare Sentinel, which contained a depiction of a baby in astronaut gear on page 9, allegorically symbolizing the turning of the New Year and commemorating the first spacewalk completed by a U.S. Citizen on June 3, 1965. Central State Life had its own quirky stories of the professor who spoke about the “universal language” known as Esperanto in 1930, as the August 6th article describes on page 2, column 4.

• Then there were the articles that gave us some historical perspective, such as the Central State Life front page discovery and re-concealment of the “cornerstone box” during construction in 1939, in the February 22nd (p.1, col. 2-4) issue. The box was a time capsule from decades before. Following tradition, it was replaced with contemporary objects, meant to be found again in the future. Even greater perspective was found in 1930. This January 15th (p. 2, col. 1-2) article exalts state support for student tuition with the claim that an education at Central was “[i]nexpensive, but not cheap.” The article explained that while the school charged a mere $279 per year for student tuition, the state was absorbing $270 worth. Because the state was “glad to bear such a high proportion of the cost” the bottom line for students was $9. Taking inflation into consideration, that’s $125 per year in 2013.

• Finally, there are fun cultural artifacts that can often be found in advertisements in the newspapers. For instance, in the September 19th, 1963 issue of The Clare Sentinel, (p.9, col. 1), there was a Cheez Whiz^TM ad suggesting how to use it with a baked potato. Today, there are several brands and styles of processed cheese sauces, but the narrow, tapered Cheez Whiz^TM jar seen in this 50-year-old ad was the original.

The Sinking of the Titanic and Clarke Resources

by Bryan Whitledge

April 14-15 this year will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic - an historic event, the legend of which permeates our general knowledge to this day. It has been characterized as one of the greatest maritime disasters in history and the hundredth anniversary is being remembered with a flood of information about the subject, from historic investigations of the sinking on news websites and in magazines to the re-release of a big-budget Hollywood film - this time in 3-D.

At the Clarke Historical Library, we are also marking the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking by reflecting on the coverage provided in local newspapers and highlighting some of the historic resources that we make available to researchers across the world. One of many local newspapers that reported the Titanic tragedy was the Clare Sentinel. The April 19, 1912 edition of the Clare Sentinel features the story of the ill-fated ocean liner front-and-center with stories of local happenings in Mt. Pleasant, Harrison, and Farwell. The first bit of information mentioned in this report concerns the number of survivors and why the survivors would include men and some of the crew members, commenting on the fact that "women and children first" was not followed 100%, but was the general rule.

Besides this edition, the Clarke has thousands of reels of historic newspapers available on microfilm for researchers to use - but that is not all. In addition to making historic newspapers available in microfilm format, this edition of the Clare Sentinel and the entire run from 1896 to 1945 has been made available in a digital format via CONDOR. You can view the entire April 19, 1912 edition of the paper by clicking on this link.

There are also numerous other historic and contemporary resources made available on CONDOR, including Central Michigan Life (currently 1968-98, but it is always expanding), the Chippewa Yearbook, CMU Board of Trustees Minutes, historic local newspapers, and select titles from the Clarke Historical Library and Park Library holdings. CONDOR, an effort of the Clarke Historical Library, the Park Library, and Central Michigan University as a whole, is a institutional repository or “a permanent, safe, and accessible collection of the academic and intellectual output of the CMU community.” The CONDOR homepage can be accessed via this URL - http://condor.cmich.edu/cdm/.

If you have any questions about the functionality of CONDOR or any of the web resources that the Clarke Historical Library makes available, or if you would like to see other historic newspapers that are not yet available in a digital format, please feel free to contact us for more information - clarke@cmich.edu. Stay tuned for a future post about the reaction to the sinking of the Titanic by a former Michigan Senator.

Do You Catch On?

By Kim Hagerty
 

What do you think of when you hear the question: Do You Catch On? This is actually a title of a newspaper article from The Clare Sentinel, dated February 10, 1911. The article explains that "catching on" is a term used to refer to the practice of catching on a moving sleigh. The reason for the article was to warn against the dangers of this activity. There had been a "catch on" related fatality in Clare, Michigan, and they were urging parents and teachers to discourage children from this practice since they could be seriously or fatally injured.

Is that what you thought of when you heard that question? It sure makes you wonder how some terms we use today will have a completely different meaning in the future. Interesting how our language is forever changing. The Clare Sentinel is being digitized and put up online for everyone to use on CONDOR, CMU's online digital repository. To read articles from 1911, click the Clarke Historical Library Newspaper Collection.