By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

The Sentinel, aided by the Dade County Library’s amazing new microfiche reader – and by its amazing manager, Marshana Sharp, for guidance on use of same – spent a recent afternoon in the library’s genealogy room cruising through vintage newspapers for any reference to the fabled Klondike Springs of Rising Fawn.

The Sentinel found none, but that is not to say the Sentinel came away with nothing. The Sentinel, bless its heart, does usually find something. 

What the Sentinel found this time was indications that in the early 1900s, practically everyone in the United States seemed to have been clutching his or her stomach moaning in agony more or less constantly, and thus ripe to buy into the dyspepsia-healing properties of Rising Fawn’s miraculous mineral springs.

“There is nothing that will repair wasted tissue more quickly or replace lost flesh more abundantly than Scott’s Emulsion,” reads one ad. “It nourishes and builds up the body when ordinary foods absolutely fail.”

“Wasted tissue” and “lost flesh” sound more serious than can be imagined curable by patent medicines, but most of the ads in the Dade County Sentinel’s June 1905 editions were for preparations with names like Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral and Mozley’s Lemon Elixir that seem aimed mostly at the digestive system. They were touted to cure “Constipation, Indigestion, Sour Stomach, Headache, Colic, Disordered Lungs and Kidneys, and Keeps the System in Perfect Harmony, regulating Bowels.”

Some preparations had multiple and confusingly mixed uses – Dyspepsia, Constipation and Sick Headache, for example. “Bromo Quinine Tablets” promised “To Cure a Cold in One Day.” Another ad promised: “No fits or nervousness after first day’s use of Dr. Kline’s Great Nerve Restorer.”

The Dade County Sentinel itself was confusingly mixed in those days, too. Pictures tended to run on the ad pages while the front was a solid wall of words, and A1 tended to contain not local stories but news of the world, such as mine explosions in Wales or China’s determination to be represented at the Russo-Japanese conference. 

The world is smaller today, but so is the Sentinel, and “China Seeks to Butt In” is now a less likely headline on these pages than “GDOT Installs Stealth Stop Sign.” Wales, in any case, is way off the Sentinel’s beat. The Sentinel seldom stretches itself past, say, Wildwood.

But it was in fact local information the present-day Sentinel was seeking, with increasing impatience, in its cobwebbed back editions. What it found was that in those days Dade County news came only in small, intriguing paragraphs submitted individually by Dade’s various precincts. 

The “Rising Fawn News” contained snippets like: “Little Misses Julia and Marian Cureton, daughters of Rep. Cureton, are here visiting their grandparents”; “Mr. Cantrell B. Hale was a Chattanooga shopper Monday”; and “The Odd Fellows of this place anticipate having a picnic soon.”

Innocuous stuff, but just as today, a flash of acid journalistic personality was discernible from time to time, as in: “Quite a nice crowd out at prayer meeting Sunday evening. Next time they need come a little earlier.”

But the most interesting passage came from “The Morganville News” section dated July 7, 1905: 

“The 4th of July passed off quietly at our place. Most of the farmers are very busy laying by their crops.  We understand W.S. Porter and Thos. Jones are offering $50 reward for 20 acres of corn they lost on Lookout Creek.

“The boys say they planted it and it came up, but they can’t find it now. Boys, if you don’t hustle, Gen. Green will take all of your crop.”

Again, no news of miraculous mineral waters in this roundup; but the digestive aid market leads to interesting speculation that in those pre-Dade-Water-Authority days not all drinking water was as healthful as those advertised at Klondike Springs.

And as the for the mysterious Morganville news, the Sentinel has no idea who Gen. Green might have been but does remember that corn is used in making whiskey.