Newspapers found under floorboards offer window into the N.B. of a century ago
Janice Hambleton says she’s enjoyed peeking into the past as she renovates her home
Over the last several weeks, Janice Hambleton has been reading newspapers filled with advertisements for Atlantic steamship crossings, suits for under $30 and warnings of a looming stock market crash.
She found the nearly 100-year-old newspapers underneath the floorboards as she renovated her 1850s Penniac home, about 18 kilometres north of Fredericton.
"I started renovating the house and ripping up the flooring, and it was just layers and layers of flooring and at the very bottom there was just newspapers," she said.
"I started gathering together and realized there was quite a bit of newspapers and a lot of them were full, complete papers."
The copies of the Fredericton Daily Gleaner and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal range in publication date from 1927 to 1929.
Stories tout provincial revenues of $6 million, while advertisements offer 25-cent bags of onions and haddock for five cents a pound.
The papers also chronicle the beginnings of historic events familiar from school textbooks, including the stock market crash of 1929.
"It starts in January and starts talking about the stock market and how volatile it is and it goes all the way to December," Hambleton said.
"Just seeing some of the things where you go, oh yeah, hindsight is 20/20."
She began posting pictures of the papers on social media, along with old board games and clothing she's found as she renovates her home.
But she was most amazed by the newspapers.
"They were so old and were in such good condition, and I started reading them and then I thought, 'Well if I find these this interesting, I want to share them with some other people,'" she said.
James MacKenzie, the associate dean of libraries at the University of New Brunswick, said it's not uncommon for people to find newspapers in their walls and floors when they renovate, having been a common form of insulation in the past.
The papers also do a fantastic job of providing a glimpse in time.
"It's a great snapshot of what was happening at a given point in time and newspapers capture that almost in an unfiltered way because of the quick turnover," he said.
"If it's within your own lifetime or even before that, you can look back and see what was affecting your grandparents, what was affecting your great-grandparents, what were the issues of note."
Hambleton hopes to find the newspapers a permanent home and has gotten in touch with the historical papers project at the University of New Brunswick.
But for now she's enjoying the glimpse into a different world.
"It's just interesting to be able to see all the newspapers and see the history of it and realize people actually lived here and what their lives must have been like at that time while they were laying this floor," she said.
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