"The Dean of Advertising Men"--Earnest Elmo Calkins and His Leading Lady, Phoebe Snow

At the turn of the 20th Century, advertising would take a new and fast track. Under the pioneering practices of a deaf man who almost didn't graduate college, the world was introduced to graphic design like it had never seen before.

Earnest Elmo Calkins was the son of a lawyer, and a very strict Baptist mother who forbade him to read. Young Earnest found books a solace, especially after a childhood bout with measles left him almost completely deaf. Verbal communication would prove a lifelong challenge, but he excelled at writing, which is doubtlessly the reason he was able to graduate from Knox College in 1891 after lectures he couldn't hear threatened to sink him.

His first taste of work was in typesetting, and he developed a love for and creativity with font usage. He entered an advertisement contest and won, leading to a job in New York City as a copy writer for a printing firm. After a few bumpy years, his career hit stride when he joined up with the Manhattan ad firm of Charles Austin Bates, one of the judges in the contest he'd won. Along with copywriting, he experimented with typography and design. He was drawn to visual strategies to incorporate and strengthen advertisement messages.

By 1902 he had his own ad agency partnering with one of Bates' other employees who specialized in securing marketing accounts, while he designed ad campaigns. Together they literally wrote the book on modern advertising.

One of his best known campaigns was for the Lackawanna Railroad company in 1900. Incorporating a fictional character, Miss Phoebe Snow, and developing a running story around her travels, he achieved several firsts in advertising:

• using a model in ads--Phoebe's character was drawn based on a live model 
• incorporating illustrators and artwork--Calkins organized the first juried advertising art show
• the "soft sell"--creating an almost subconscious awareness of a need or desire for a product
• "consumer engineering"--creating a need based on clever advertisement
• "planned obsolescence"--replacing a perfectly good object because it is considered outmoded
• and finally, developing a fictional character in an ongoing ad campaign.

The character Phoebe Snow was an ingenious way of presenting the solution to a very real problem for rail travel at the time. Coal locomotives held the dubious distinction of coating travelers with their soot.  The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, however, had an advantage that Calkins illustrated with advertising genius--Anthracite coal. Anthracite, which the rail line had vast access to, burned clean--clean enough that the well traveled New York socialite Phoebe Snow could go all the way to Buffalo with her snow white attire and trademark violet corsage unspoiled.

Each new promotion ran with rhyming and catchy ad copy. Read the first campaign ad:

Says Phoebe Snow
about to go

upon a trip to Buffalo

"My gown stays white

from morn till night

Upon the Road of Anthracite"

Early Elmira

Phoebe and her railroad success would have gone on unhindered except for WWI, when all anthracite was needed for the war effort. But In later years, The Lackawanna Railroad brought her back when it named its premier passenger line after this beautiful fictional character.
This has particular interest to me, as an artist, married to a graphic designer, and a lifelong resident of Elmira, NY. Elmira was a rail town for over a hundred years, and Phoebe Snow plays a nostalgic part of its history.



Kathleen L. Maher has had an infatuation with books and fictional heroes ever since her preschool crush, Peter Rabbit. She has a novella in BARBOUR's 2018 Victorian Christmas Brides collection, featuring her hometown of Elmira, New York. She won the 2012 ACFW Genesis contest for her Civil War historical romance, releasing this summer under a new title The Abolitionist’s Daughter. Her debut historical, Bachelor Buttons, blends her Irish heritage and love of New York history.  Kathleen shares an old farmhouse in upstate New York with her husband, children, and a small zoo of rescued animals. 

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Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley - Finding Treasures in the Snow

Bentley at work, {PD}

Snow can bring us joy and peace while we enjoy its frosted beauty as snowflake upon snowflake build into a blanket of sparkly bright crystals. For others snow means dangerous slippery roads and tragic accidents.

Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley saw something bigger in each tiny snowflake. He observed evidence of a creator—God as an amazing designer of each one. 

As far back as 135 B.C., Chinese scholar Han Yin wrote about the six-pointed structure of the snowflake. In 1611, German scientist Johanes Kepler compared the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes to that of flowers. Several people throughout history documented observations about snowflakes, but Snowflake Bentley brought it to a new level. Growing up in Vermont on a farm in a snow belt area gave him the perfect conditions for observing snow. He was home educated until high school and was first interested in observing the heavens with a telescope. When he was 15 his interests turned to the microscope. 

Bentley became fascinated with observing snowflakes through its lens. With an average snowfall of 120 inches per year where he lived in Jericho, Vermont, Bentley was in the right place. He even drew the ice crystal structures to capture their beauty to share with others, but found they often melted before he could finish. His parents saved money so they could purchase a camera Wilson could use with his microscope four years later. He pioneered the field of photomicrography when combining the two pieces of equipment. 

"Studies Among the Snow Crystals" by
Wilson Bentley, ca. 1902 {PD}

He saw in each snowflake an individual masterpiece, designed by the Creator. He referred to God as the Great Designer and was humbled by the singular beauty of each sparkling ice crystal, especially in not finding any two, of the thousands he’d observed, alike. Bentley was amazed by this.

No matter the pattern, Bentley learned, snowflakes are hexagonal and very rarely, in extremely cold weather are three-sided. What he also observed is that in the many minutes between the time it takes the ice crystals to form and fall to the ground, they move up and down on currents between the differences of temperature and humidity. All of these factors affect their unique formations. He saw them as “miracles of beauty,” creations which declare to us the glory of God. 

Over the years, from the first one he made in 1885 to his death in 1931, Bentley preserved over 5000 photomicrographs of snowflakes. He was considered a leading expert in his field and was sought out by universities. He wrote articles, citing Bible verses, ever aware of God’s hand in the creation of ice crystals. In 1903, he donated 500 of his snowflake images to the Smithsonian Institute, knowing they would be kept safely. In 1931 a collection of 2300 of his photographs were published in a book titled simply Snow Crystals, which has since been reprinted and is still available.

Shortly after the publication of Snow Crystals, Wilson Bentley walked six miles on a cold and snowy night and contracted pneumonia, from which he died in December of the same year. 

A young man who was once inspired by the reference to “treasures in the snow” from the 38th chapter of Job, pursued what today would be called his passion for learning more about snow than anyone had before. Yet He was driven by an even greater passion for the God who placed the desire in his heart.

For more detailed information about Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, read the article “Snoflake Bentley: Man of Science, Man of God” and the Official Snowflake Bentley website.

Snowflake Study by Wilson Bentley, ca. 1890, {PD}

Kathleen Rouser has loved making up stories since she was a little girl and wanted to be a writer before she could read. She desires to create characters, who resonate with readers and realize the need for a transforming Savior in their everyday lives. Her first full-length novel, Rumors and Promises, was published by Heritage Beacon Fiction, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, in April, 2016.

Previously a homeschool mother of three, she more recently has been a college student and is sometimes a mild-mannered dental assistant by day. Along with her sassy tail-less cat, she lives in the Midwest with her hero and husband of 35 years, who not only listens to her stories, but also cooks for her.

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