Clairvoyant
Mrs. Lydia Hanley can be consulted in the clairvoyant like at her residence 1024 First Avenue, hundreds of people can testify the train of my prophecies.
Miss Lydia Hanley, Clairvoyant Etc., 1023 First Avenue.
– Eau Claire Daily Leader | Jan. 15, 1887


Chad’s Take: A Slow Week in the News

The week of January 11th -17th was an extremely slow news week in the history of the Chippewa Valley.   I searched through many years and eventually found several decent stories, but that one great story just wasn’t there.  During my research I stumbled upon a nice little article about an ice skating contest in Eau Claire that took place in 1896 on Half Moon Lake, but I could not use it as no one fell through the ice (lucky) or was attacked by a lake monster (very lucky). 

I also came across the death notice of Joseph G. Thorp from January 17th, 1895, which normally would have been my feature story, yet nothing out of the ordinary happened as Mr. Thorp died a normal death, plus he died in while living in Massachusetts, not in the Chippewa Valley.  However, I found the news of his death needed some mentioning due to all of the contributions Mr. Thorp made to the Chippewa Valley.  Mr. Thorp was a lumber baron in Eau Claire who headed the Eau Claire Lumber Company that employed several thousand workers in the area.  Mr. Thorp lived in the Chippewa Valley for many years until he sold his interest in the company and headed out for a new life in Cambridge MA.   If you recognize the his name, it may be due to the fact that he was so well known and liked in the Chippewa Valley that they named the city of Thorp after him.

Ok, now on to the clairvoyant story.  For those of you who actually read this report on a weekly basis you may recall the story of a woman from 1907 who was trying to get a permit for palm reading in Eau Claire.  The woman was told the price for such a permit would be around $10 a day, which would have made it nearly impossible for her to make a profit.  At first I thought that Eau Claire simply wanted to keep her kind out of the city, but this article has shown me that I was wrong, because 20 years earlier the city had a hard working clairvoyant headquartered right down on First Avenue.  I am sure that through the years the Chippewa Valley has had its fair share of psychic, mediums, and clairvoyants pass through the area, and each one was probably treated a bit differently depending on social views of the time.  Yet it is nice to know that although nearly all of the lumbermen, prostitutes, railroad men, gamblers, and all other colorful characters have died out of the Chippewa Valley, we still have a psychic in town.