Elizabethville – Daniel’s Millinery, 1909-1912 – Lykens Valley: History & Genealogy

A 1910 newspaper advertisement for Mrs. W. J. Daniel‘s place, Corner of Main and Market Streets, Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

HATS! HATS!

All the season’s smart and leading shapes marked down to lowest prices…

Research indicates that Mrs. Daniel operated a Millinery business here from about March 1909 through mid-1912, when the business was sold to Edna R. Lenker.

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Beulah Katherine “Kate” [Radel] Daniel (1886-1968) was the wife of Warren Joseph Daniel (1886-1959), a land surveyor. They had married in Duncannon, Perry County, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1905. In the 1910 census for Elizabethville, Mrs. Daniel’s occupation is given as Milliner.

The first “advertisement” for this business appeared in the Elizabethville Echo on March 25, 1909, in which Mrs. Daniel announced the opening of her millinery by inviting “the ladies of the town and vicinity… to look over [her] stock of hats, flowers, ribbons, etc.”

The above notice appeared in the September 30, 1909, Elizabethville Echo:

A radical difference is noticed in hats for the autumn. Splendid distinction instead of sensation. The poetry of ostrich feathers and gold and velvet, rather than flower, and silk, and felt. The flaring hat of the face, rather than the mushroom. Turbans, tam-o’shanter crowns, tricornes, Reynold’s picture hats and severely tailored, all the same collection.

The Elizabethville Echo noted on September 12, 1912, that Edna R. Lenker was operating the business as successor to Mrs. Daniel. Kate Daniel apparently gave up the business in 1912, which coincided with the birth of the Daniel’s first child in November 1912. In the 1920 census, Mrs. Daniel’s occupation is given as “None” with three young sons and her husband making up the household.

Featured below is a sampling of some of the ads readers of the Elizabethville Echo could find in the weekly local newspaper in 1910 – showing styles of hats that Mrs. Daniel bragged about that she had copied from leading European designers and offered to the public at cheap prices.