Jack Swain, the volunteer curator, kindly made a copy for me to take back to Chicago to peruse at my leisure.

(Slick urban museums don't let you touch anything-even looking bothers them. Country museums let you touch things, and, "Hey, you want a copy, no problem.")

The directory identifies every rural family in Marion County along with the names of their children, the amount of farmland they own and rent and if they have a telephone.

Thus, Mr. J.F. Penner delivered mail to 87 families south of Hillsboro on Route 3. He earned $1,200 a year for this task.

Among the families on his route were my grandparents, Nick and Helena Suderman, and their two children, Daniel and Jacob. (Since my Aunt Easter is not listed, I presume the directory dates to around 1908 or 1909.)

Nick Suderman owned 140 acres-a middling-sized farm for the time- and did not have a telephone-but then neither did most of his neighbors.

Most families of the time owned or rented about 160 acres of land. The two largest holdings were Mr. Kriger, who took care of five sections of pastureland on Rural Route 1 near Lehigh, and Mr. Johnson, who was the foreman for the Townsand Ranch on Route 5 near Peabody.

Until December of 1905, Marion County farmers picked up their mail when they made shopping trips into town or went to the nearest village with a post office.

Rural Free Delivery changed America, allowing farmers to shop at home from catalogs sent by Chicago hucksters like Montgomery Ward and Sears and Roebuck.

(They were the Wal-Mart of their generation-an external threat to local merchants.)

One suspects this directory was a boon to traveling salesmen. They could locate farm families plus know where to find lodging and transportation.

Hotels are advertised for Marion at the Cottage Hotel and the Baker Rooming House, the Stauffer Hotel in Ramona, the Valley Hotel in Durham and the Cottage Hotel in Florence. The Silver Room Restaurant in Florence offered both meals and lodging. Rooms were $1 per night and meals cost 35 cents.

Livery stables were everywhere, offering both a place to keep a horse and carriage but also to rent them by the day or week. Thus the Beeton Brothers in Peabody offered, " A livery and breeding stable," but also "fine rigs and auto livery, city hacks and baggage." (Was there actually a cab service in Peabody?)

One could buy a Mitchell Automobile from a real estate agent in Peabody or a Reo at the Davidson Hardware store or go to Aulne and buy a Fuller Automobile at D.A. Cornelson's general store.

Some businesses were highly specialized, thus F. H. Bartel in Hillsboro claimed to be the only retail and wholesale broom maker in the county.

Ferd Funk in Marion took the opposite approach, he offered furniture and other items in his store but added, almost as an afterthought at the bottom of his advertisement, "Undertaking a specialty."

G. F. Maschoff in Ramona would let you select from a full line of pianos and organs-and tune and repair them. His competitor in Hillsboro, J.F. Banman, offered the same products plus sewing machines and the new "talking machines."

There were rival restaurants in Tampa. If you stopped by E.S. Hackler, you could get ice cream, short orders, and oysters "in season," but also haircuts and post cards.

His local competitor at Martin and Gundlach offered fresh and cured meats, a confectionary plus cold drinks.

No liquor stores or taverns are listed for the county. But by mail order, one could buy a case of whiskey for $13 from Mr. Fuchs in Kansas City or Edelweiss Beer from the Schoenhofen Brewing Co. in Chicago or a gallon of bourbon for $2.50 from Clem Mees in Kansas City.

The Rural Route Directory offers a fascinating textual portrait of Marion County 50 years after it was unsettled prairie.

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