Peddlers and Vagabonds
By Carole Christman Koch
Before modern transportation developed, a variety of itinerants—from homeless tramps and vagabonds to specialized peddlers, professionals and teachers—contributed to Pennsylvania's social and economic development.
Most peddlers were usually welcomed on their cyclic visits to isolated areas and townspeople. They supplied needs and luxuries, and provided news and gossip from outside areas. The itinerants traveled on foot, horseback, wagon, and eventually, old pickups or trucks. Those carrying wares were experts at packing goods into limited spaces.
Some traveled short circuits with regular customers; others traveled greater distances, as the frontier spread westward, hoping to sell their wares before winter.
The peddlers who sold and delivered to rural homes were called hawkers, hucksters or store wagon men. The late, Francis “Mickey” Sicher, of Emmaus, remembered the huckster on her grandparents' farm, Shamrock, near Topton, Berks County, who traveled by horse and wagon, usually stopping by once a week.
“He had an old-fashioned hand bell” Mickey recalled. “When we kids heard it, we'd run to buy penny candy from him. He sold flour, 'A-sugar' (the Dutch term for granulated), lard, dish towels, little brushes and other items.”
The small wares peddler, or “trunk peddler,” carried needles, pins, razors, scissors, perfume, small hardware and buttons. The specialized itinerant usually had a horse drawn wagon and carried chairs, brooms, clocks, tinware, pottery, glasses, cloth and books.
The drug peddlers dealt in herb remedies and different medicines. They bought in large quantities and sold the product under different names for different ailments. Their medicine lore usually came from their native homeland or the Indian.
They sold Seneca Snake Root for pleurisy, Bateman's Pectoral Drops for colds or Bezoar stone for all kinds of poisons, including snakebite. The Bezoar stone was originally a gallstone formed in the intestine of an animal, such as a goat. Some so-called “doctors” substituted pebbles for Bezoar and sold it.
Jon Fenstermacher, of Emmaus, remembers a medicine man who came to Topton once a month. “The man arrived in an old pickup truck and stood on the back bumper talking about his medicine. The bottles were behind a curtain and labeled—liniments, bellyache, salve for cuts and bruises. He had country musicians entertain his customers. He always drew a large crowd and people bought his medicine.”
Professional people also traveled the circuit, including judges, preachers, schoolteachers and doctors. There were barber-surgeon-dentists, who performed three jobs. The barber's sign, a red and white striped pole, originated from his performing minor surgery on his patients. It symbolized the bandage used for bloodletting, which was an early remedy for any ailment.
Other service providers included fencing masters, song masters, and dance teachers. There were printers, photographers, painters, profile cutters who made silhouettes, and cordwainers who made shoes.
The late, Anna Bauscher remembers an itinerant oil painter from Chicago. “I first saw him at my brother's log cabin at the foot of the Blue Mountains (near Kinkletown). He told our family he has painted all over Europe. He liked to sleep in church cemeteries and insisted that when the sun from the west hit a tombstone, it was the warmest place on earth to be. He dressed fairly well, with a long wool overcoat, and slept and ate with the family until painting was completed.”
Shabbily dressed itinerants were known as tramps, vagabonds or hobos. They traveled in railroad baggage compartments. They had to find food and lodging as best they could. Sometimes they performed odd jobs. Mostly, they begged. Those with destinations were called knockers, footers, roadsters and peregrinators.
I recall tramps stopping by my father's farm near Kutztown begging for food and a place to sleep. My mother always gave them food, but insisted they eat on the front porch. She referred to one particular tramp as “Der Bobblemoul” Pennsylvania Dutch for blabbermouth.
My father never refused them overnight lodging in the barn, asking only that they hand over their matches. He believed they left a sign for other tramps, such as placing stones at a specific spots on the land, as certain farmers were ignored while others had steady visitors.
The late, Anna Bausher, of Reading, lived near East Texas, Lehigh County, in her youth. “A small railroad station near Spring Creek had an open area where hobos slept,” Anna says. “The railroad had a plank bridge over the Little Lehigh. Beside the bridge was an enormous willow tree where they would stay. I'd watch them take three sticks, tie them together to form a tripod and hang a kettle to cook their stew, which consisted of whatever they received begging that day.”
“I was never scared of them,” she claims. “My father would say, 'Go your way and mind your business and nothing will happen.'”
As transportation improved in Pennsylvania with improved roads, cars and railroads, town merchants started to dislike peddlers selling goods and services at cheap rates. Local officials were pressured and eventually the itinerants required licenses. The new demands gradually put itinerants out of business.
Well into the 20th century, however, itinerants served our towns, frontier settlements and shopkeepers. The hobos, peddlers, hucksters, circuit professional riders and teachers have a place in the early history of Pennsylvania
