Hamburger buns (1902 again)

Sat Feb 3 20:32:35 UTC 2007

FWIW, another hamburger article has appeared today, this time in the Fort
Worth (TX) Star-Telegram. The author of this article (Bud Kennedy) states that
"I found a long 1902 newspaper feature about customers in Decatur, Ill.,
lining  up at hamburger stands and bakeries running out of buns."
...
This is from NewspaperArchive. This 1902 Illinois cite is later  than the
1902 Iowa hamburger buns cite found by Sam Clements (and already  on my site),
but it's a good long (frequently illegible) article. I've copied it  here in
full (below) and placed it also on my website
(_http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/hamburger/_
(http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/hamburger/) ).
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_http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/16615403.htm_
(http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/16615403.htm)

Posted on Sat, Feb. 03, 2007

Taking a bite out of Athens' claim
By Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

AP/DONNA McWILLIAM
Athens Mayor Randy Daniel eats a hamburger. The city  needs more evidence if
it wants to be the "home of the hamburger."

For years, an East Texas town has claimed to be the "home of the  hamburger."
Now, that looks like a double-decker stack of bull.
Historians in Athens, southeast of Dallas, will have to cook up new research
to prove that young potter Fletcher Davis grilled the very first hamburger
sandwiches there about 1890.
A New York author and food writer has skewered the claim along with state
Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, sponsor of a Texas House resolution to officially
declare Athens the "Original Home of the Hamburger."
Writer Josh Ozersky disassembled the legend last weekend in a Los Angeles
Times essay headlined: "Want lies with your burger?"
The Dallas Morning News first declared Athens the hamburger  heartland in
1974, based on stories handed down through generations of the  Murchison oil
family and the Millers, founders of Athens Pottery.
The way columnist Frank X. Tolbert told the story, the Millers hired a young
Missouri potter named Davis in about 1885.
He set up a grill and started making sandwiches with what was then called
"Hamburg steak" between toast with mustard, mayo, pickle and onion.
The burgers were as popular as the pottery, so "Uncle Fletch" Davis opened a
grill on the town square. In 1904, the Millers took Davis to the world's fair
in  St. Louis, where New York reporters supposedly bit.
Ozersky put researchers to work.
They found the whole story thin.
First of all, Ozersky couldn't find a single 1904 New York newspaper report
about the hamburger.
Second, he couldn't even find Davis listed as an official fair vendor.
"In fact," Ozersky wrote, "we found no documentary evidence for Texas' claim
at all."
Athens officials think the whole controversy smells.
They've been criticized as far away as Wisconsin and Connecticut, where other
 towns also stake claims as the "home of the hamburger."
Chamber of Commerce President Gus Fleener said by phone Friday that townsfolk
 will "get up in the attic and hunt down some pictures and whatever else it
takes" to defend Uncle Fletch and his wife, Racilla, known as "Aunt Ciddy."
Fletcher Davis died in 1940, his wife in 1953.
Apparently, they never told their hamburger story in print.
Athens' claim to hamburger history didn't turn up until 1974, when Tolbert
began researching lore the Murchisons heard from East Texas wildcatter Clint
Murchison Sr.
Descendants of Athens Pottery founder McKendree Miller -- Tolbert called him
"Kindree" -- had heard the same story.
In one column, Tolbert described a photo of Davis' hamburger stand at the
1904 world's fair opposite a booth where Apache chief Geronimo sold  autographs.
Peggy Gould, daughter of a former Dallas Morning News executive, was  named
Athens' "Hamburger Queen" in 1984 when the city started an intermittent
festival.
Now, Athens is counting on her to rescue the city's burger honor.
"We need to find that photo," she said by phone Friday. "We've never tried to
 get a lot of documentation. I guess we always took the story for granted."
Tolbert's daughter, Kathleen Tolbert Ryan, now runs Tolbert's, the family's
chili parlor and hamburger grill in Grapevine.
"I think my dad's work is accurate," she said. "I believe he was a Texas
historian first and a storyteller second. Sure, he liked telling stories. But he
didn't tell lies."
Ozersky, the New York writer, also swept away other hamburger history
claims.
Seymour, Wis., claims that a fair vendor there sold hamburgers in 1885, and a
 sandwich shop in New Haven, Conn., has sold burgers on toast since 1900.
Instead, Ozersky credited "the hamburger we think of today" to Wichita, Kan.,
 and White Castle diner founder Walter Anderson, in about 1915.
Fine. I love White Castle, too.
But the history of the hamburger must go back further. I found a long 1902
newspaper feature about customers in Decatur, Ill., lining up at hamburger
stands and bakeries running out of buns.
So Texas might not be the home of the hamburger after all.
Unless Athens comes up with more beef.

____________________________________
 Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and  Saturdays.
817-390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com
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16 October 1902, Decatur (IL) Daily Review, pg. 3, col. 2:
The Odorous
Hamburger...
It Looks Good, Smells
<i.Good and By Gum It Is
<i.Good -- and Everybody
Eats It.

Everybody asks himself or his neighbor how the hamburger steak stands  manage
to pay ground rent and other expenses. They are legion and it would seem
that competition must drive them all out of business if you should happen along
the street between 11 and 12 o'clock at night the question is answered. It is
then you seethe hamburger steak men in action. The throngs have disappeared
and  there is no more crowding and jamming on the sidewalks but there are
plenty of  people that are still out. The hamburger steak appetite is raging and
the vendor  of the odorous viand is the busiest man in town.

"They smell good they taste good and by gum they are good," excites one
dealer as he deftly turns the steaks on the griddle, splits the buns and slices
the onions. Everybody apparently accepts the statement as true to the letter
and  a row of people are waiting their turn.

EAT IT LIKE HASH.

No one stops to worry about the composition of the steak. It may be
dessicated dog, pulverized mule of ground prime beef, it is all the same. It  smells
good, tastes good, and by gum, it is good.

Who eats hamburger sandwiches? The man who is trying to satisfy his  appetite
with a five-cent meal you may say if you were never along the hamburger
avenue at the dead hour of midnight. Nay, nay, my dear. The hamburger appetite  is
not respected of persons or purses.  It falls upon rich and poor, high  and
low alike. The man who's munching a hamburger steak at your side may have  had
a three-dollar beef steak for supper and was probably mighty particular  about
how it was cooked or maybe he had no supper at all.  His gastric  machinery
may have been made clamorous by various and sundry alcoholic  stimulants or it
may be normal hunger from the strenuous life and hard work of  the carnival.

WANT ALL THAT'S COMING.

"Put that piece of onion on, I'm paying for that onion," called a bon  vivant
when the sandwich man in his haste (Illegible -- ed.) of the onion get  away.
"A little more onion please, another slice yet  I can't sleep without
onion," he urges and the sandwich grows corpulent with onion.

"Two more hamburgers," calls a newcomer, a young man with a lady on his  arm.
They have just come from a dance for refreshments of a substantial sort.
Here is a substantial business man and there is another, chewing hamburger
sandwiches as if it were the most important business of their lives.

"Damn (Illegible word -- ed.) I c'n get home without some  hamburger,"
hiccoughs one of a party of roysterers. The crowd is in sympathy  with the
sentiment, a halt is called and hamburger sandwich is ordered for  everybody. And so it
goes till long after midnight. The saloons close,  merrymakers go home, the
streets become deserted and the hamburger man takes a  well earned rest.

Does the hamburger man do any business? Fifty pounds of the raw steak a day
is a fair order for a man with a good location. It is not necessary to try to
figure how many sandwiches this will make. The meat is furnished by the local
 packers for the most part.

Buns, too, are an important constituent of hamburger sandwiches. One  Decatur
bakery yesterday disposed of 5,000 buns. At this rate there must have  been
25,000 buns consumed in the city yesterday. At 11 o'clock last night the  bake
shops were besieged for buns. Today they scarcely expect to supply the  demand.

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