View Single Post
  #8  
Old 07-07-2012, 10:50 AM
Howe’s Hunter's Avatar
Howe’s Hunter Howe’s Hunter is offline
Ed McCollum
member
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Posts: 949
Default I suspect there are (or were) thousands more

Ralph, from my research on Ancestry.com (no, i'm not related to him), I found at the time the cards were out, he was 14. He lived in Alachua, Florida, which is now considered a suburb(?) of Gainesville, but is not it Gainesville proper (which explains why Main Street in Gainesville runs East/West, not North/South. It runs North/South in Alachua). Anyway, back to the theory... his father and his uncle (mom's brother) owned a market called McCormick and Howe (Howe was his mother's maiden name). There are no records of Howe ever attending a school in Alachua County. So my guess is as the only son of the small family, he worked at the store instead of attending school. Stuck at the store all day, he probably saw the cards coming out of cigarette packs that people were purchasing and got to a point were he was asking buyers to give him the cards if they didn't want them. All either Piedmont, Old Mill or Hindu. Over three years time, I'm guessing he got hundreds, if not a thousand. Over time, I would guess quite a few were lost, but my quest will probably go on forever just trying to round up the ones that have survived.
Reply With Quote