Vigo County Historical Society

Terre Haute girl collected beautiful advertising cards

In the late 1880s, like other girls her age, young Gertrude Boring of Terre Haute collected advertising cards.

The cards were pictures of beautiful scenes, children, flowers and animals. On each card was printed the name and address of a local business and was, for that particular store or company, a means of advertising.

As Gertrude accumulated these serene pictures in varying sizes, she carefully arranged and pasted them in an ornately covered "Scrap Album."

Turning the pages of the scrapbook, we find many of the prettiest advertising cards, including the one pictured, were "Compliments of A.H. Boegeman, 104 S. Fourth Street, Terre Haute, Ind."

This business is listed in the 1880 City Directory as a boot and shore store and was operated by Albert H. Boegeman, who was then 28 years old.

Boegeman was born in 1851 in Enochsburg in Franklin County. After attending the common schools, he learned the shoemaker’s trade.

Two years after moving to Terre Haute, he married Frances Cooley and had four children. Boegeman worked at the shoemaking trade for seven years before beginning the selling of shoes and boots at the South Fourth Street location.

The advertising card featured as this week’s Historical Treasure is large and lavishly decorated as was typical of the time period. It is a frame topped with a kitten perched on a bouquet of flowers. In the fame is a winter scene of mistletoe being cut in preparation for the holidays. The wagon is already loaded with evergreen boughs.

Gertrude Boring later married Charles H. Ehrmann. The scrap album was given to the Vigo County Historical Society by her son, Howard Ehrmann of Ann Arbor, Much.