Main Street of Ushers Ferry Historic Village contains many different shops; including the Newspaper Office, the Post Office, the Millinery Shop, The Jail, the Barber Shop and the Tokheim Company. See below for a brief description of each of these buildings.

In many ways, the newspapers of a hundred years ago were not that different from the newspapers that we have today. Big cities featured large, informative editions every day, while smaller towns generally offered a weekly four-page sheet. Part of the reason that weekly papers were so common was that it took much longer to put a newspaper together than it does today. Every letter on the page was made by a separate piece of lead type. The printer had to pick each letter out of a type drawer, spell out words and sentences on a composition stick and build into a type block that would go into the printing press to print a page. On average, it took a small town newspaper in the 1890's at least 2 ½ days to put together and print one four page sheet. When you add in the time that it took them to find out the latest news and write the stories, it's no wonder the paper only came out once a week!

Newspapers played a very important role in many small town communities. When news was slow and there was lots of space to be filled in the paper, many editors often solved the problem by using the extra space to comment on political and social issues of the day. Since many people believed that "if they read it in the paper, it must be true," these "editorials" gave newspapermen a great deal of power with which they could influence decisions on many important matters.

In 1902 it would have cost 2 cents to mail a first class letter. How much does it cost to mail a letter today? Do you have an e-mail account? Do you think we will even have a Post Office in 2102? The small boxes in here are where your mail would be stored until you picked it up. In 1902 you came to the Post Office to pick up your mail-no postal carriers to bring you your mail-through rain, sleet, snow, or darkness of night! If you look around town you might notice something missing from the front of all the buildings...addresses!

The Millinery Shop is housed in the shell of an old tool shed that gained a new lease on life when it was moved from a farm that had been condemned to make way for the expansion of the Cedar Rapids airport in 1984. Joined together with the Jail and Ford's Tonsorial Parlor, it makes up the backbone of our downtown business district.

In a time that frowned upon women holding jobs and working outside of the home, millinery shops were one of the few economic enterprises that could be owned, operated and frequented by women with no fear of damage to their social respectability. Department store managers were only starting to realize the value of employing women in retail sales -especially in dealing with a store's female clientele. Women were attributed with having more tact and accuracy in serving customers needs, and the fitting of new garments was greatly simplified. As a result, millinery shops, which dealt almost entirely in ladies hats, gloves and other fine and fancy accessories, were to the ladies what the barbershop was to the men.

The term "millinery" is believed to date to the 16th century and means a supplier of fancy goods, gloves and accessories. The word itself is derived from "Milan" as the city of Milan, Italy was the premiere exporter of such fashionable apparel and clothing items, and most people who sold or exported such items were native "Milaners."

Over the centuries, hats came to the forefront of the millinery trade and by the 19th century most Millinery shops were in essence ladies hat shops with gloves and other fine accessories pushed to the smaller side counters as a relative afterthought. Throughout the history of fashion, hats served as a status symbol delineating the line between the social classes through their use of material, decoration, and utility (or the lack of it).

The millinery trade rapidly brought hat-making to the level of a personalized art form. Whether it was an upscale boutique in Paris, or a small shop on the plains of the Midwest, the milliner designed hats specifically for each individual customer, turning out creations that emphasized or exaggerated the personal characteristics of the wearer.

Jails at the turn of the century were much different than they are today. A hundred years ago there would have been very little crime in a small Iowa town like Ushers Ferry, Iowa. Most of the "crimes" would have been petty-such as overturning an outhouse or stealing a pie from a windowsill. The local saloon provided it's fair share of customers for the local jail-the town Marshall would allow a man to "sleep off" his night of overindulging. A small town such as Ushers Ferry, Iowa would have barely had a police force. Perhaps one town Marshall and a deputy would have been the entire force. After 10:00 at night they would have gone home and gone to bed-because everybody else in the town did so as well.

How would you know where you're at if you had never heard of a Tonsorial Parlour? By the Barber Pole outside the building of course. A Tonsorial Parlour was a fancy name for a Barber Shop. The modern Barber Pole originated in the days when bloodletting was one of the principal duties of the barbering trade. Bloodletting was still considered to be a viable cure for many illnesses in the 19th century The two spiral ribbons painted around the pole represent two long linen bandages, one twisted around the arm before bleeding-to make the veins stand out-and the other used to bind it afterwards.

The Barbershop was a man's domain. He came here every week to treat himself to a shave and perhaps a haircut. His very own shaving mug was on the shelf ready for his next visit. Do you know how much a shave and a haircut cost in 1902? Would you believe two bits? 21st Century translation: 25 cents.

The Tokheim building is an example of an early manufacturing company. A manufacturing company is one that made a product to be sold to a customer. John J. Tokheim came to America from Norway when he was sixteen years old. He paid for the cost of his ticket on the boat by working on an Iowa farm for the first ten months that he was in this country. John Tokheim invented things. He invented pumps that could be used to pump liquids from the basement up to the first floor. Since he was good at inventing pumps it was logical that he would be the first in line to invent a pump that could provide gasoline to those new fangled horseless carriages that were becoming popular in Iowa.

By 1910 however he experienced one of the first "hostile takeovers" in Iowa and he lost his rights to his very own Tokheim Pump. He refused to be discouraged and went on to invent many other useful measuring devices. In 1939 he wrote the following advice: Don't look for the white-collar job, or the easiest way out. To be permanently successful those jobs must be acquired.